By Neil Smith, ASCL Independent Sector Specialist

While the Curriculum and Assessment Review report (CAR) may have disappointed independent school and college leaders who hoped to read a more radical document, particularly with regard to public examinations and the assessment framework, there is still much in the report, and the government’s response, which should be of interest and relevance to the independent sector.

Curriculum autonomy
The final report does not impose mandatory requirements on the content independent schools will have to teach before pupils start their GCSE studies, but there are recommendations around how schools structure their curriculums which the sector may wish to reflect carefully on, related also to measures which are intended to make the learning experience more inclusive for all young people.

In Key Stages 1 and 2, the CAR makes it clear that the priority is to ensure children progress to secondary school with fluency in reading, writing and number within the context of a broad and rich curriculum, encouraging greater breadth and depth in learning to foster curiosity, confidence, and long-term engagement. In practical terms, this appears to reflect well-established practice in pre-secondary independent schools, and it should be no less than all children experience during their formative years of education.

However, the CAR also suggests that secondary schools should try to build their Key Stage 3 curriculums reflecting on the learning experiences of children joining in Year 7, and not backwards from GCSE. Reading this, I am sure many heads of secondary independent schools will consider this to be an impossibility, recruiting as they will from dozens of different primary and prep schools, some adhering closely to the national curriculum, others definitely not. 

However, the reasons for building forwards rather than backwards should be considered as important principles to underpin the experiences of children in Years 7-9: in an attempt to sustain curiosity, confidence, and long-term engagement, all schools educating secondary-age children should seek to avoid duplication of content taught previously.

At Key Stage 3, particular attention will need to be given to the skills which the CAR and DfE have highlighted as priorities for young people (literacy, oracy, numeracy and digital literacy), and at the very least it would be sensible for schools to review the opportunities which their individual curriculum provision provides for children of all ages in these areas.

For certain subjects, recommendations about subject content are made. Whilst recognising once again the autonomy independent schools have with the shape and content of their curriculums, it would be sensible for curriculum leaders in these schools to have at least an awareness of what changes colleagues in the state sector are having to make, as these may well feed into future content changes for GCSE.

Finally, independent schools have done much in recent years to diversify subject content, and the strong recommendation for all schools to now do so should not require fundamental curriculum redesign across the sector. Rightly, the CAR stresses the importance of all children being able to feel included in and represented by the material which they are taught.

Assessment and qualifications
Many in the independent sector will be disappointed that the CAR did not recommend a more radical approach to how young people are assessed at 16, but the recommendation to reduce the overall exam time by 10% will be welcomed.

The introduction of a new third pathway, V levels, to sit alongside A levels and T levels, will require those schools currently offering single or Extended BTEC qualifications to rethink what their offer could be for students not wishing to study A levels or the IB. Delivery of a successful vocational or technical could prove to be an effective means to retain or recruit students into the sixth form.

Opportunities for partnership
The CAR provides multiple ways in which the sector can work closely with state schools to help them respond to its recommendations. The following list is just some of the practical ways they can work together in meaningful and impactful partnership for the benefit of all children, and in doing so highlight the importance of cross sector partnerships in helping all children regardless of where they go to school:

• partnership over oracy programmes
• support with teacher education to facilitate delivery of three separate sciences
• participation in teacher training programmes such as the National Maths and Physics SCITT and National Modern Languages SCITT
• encouraging the roll out of language-based courses such as WoLLoW to help reverse the concerning trend in modern language take up at GCSE and A level

Furthermore, in its response to the CAR, the government stated that

We will set out a new core enrichment offer that every school and college, in every community, should aim to provide for all children – beyond the statutory curriculum and alongside this will develop a new set of benchmarks, to set out the steps every school and college can take to provide every child with access to a strategically planned and ambitious enrichment offer.

As has already been extensively documented, an obstacle to wholesale implementation of this laudable goal is a lack of resources in the state sector, whether these are facilities, staff or expertise. As has also been extensively documented, these are resources which many independent schools possess and either already share with state schools or have a willingness to do so. Here then, is another way in which independent schools can work in partnership to support other schools in providing this enrichment offer and meet the benchmarks soon to be identified by the DfE.

Impact for all children
It has been consistently trawled that this report would be more evolution rather than revolution and, at first glance, independent schools may not think that there is much for them to consider. However, not only does it provide opportunities for the sector to demonstrate its ability to contribute to the DfE’s strategic priorities, it should also prompt a comprehensive review not just of what schools are teaching, but also why they are teaching it and its potential impact on all of the children experiencing it.