I welcome landmark reforms to national curriculum after years of Tory neglect
I am really pleased to see today’s sweeping reforms to the national curriculum, designed to equip every child with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in modern Britain.
After over a decade of Conservative neglect, during which young people were left unsupported without the essential qualifications or the skills needed to get on in life, Labour is taking action to raise standards and restore opportunity for every child.
Responding to the Curriculum and Assessment Review led by Professor Becky Francis, the government will overhaul the curriculum to ensure strong foundations in reading, writing, maths and oracy – especially in primary and the “lost years” at the start of secondary school.
For the first time, children will be taught how to spot fake news and online disinformation, alongside financial literacy and civic education, preparing them for life in a fast-changing world.
Alongside academic reforms, the government is also setting out a new core enrichment entitlement, so that every child – wherever they go to school – has access to sport, the arts and more.
The reforms deliver on Labour’s manifesto promise and are central to the Prime Minister’s target of two-thirds of young people participating in higher-level learning by age 25.
They also come alongside a suite of measures introduced as part of this Labour government’s Plan for Change to ensure that every child has the opportunity to achieve, regardless of where they come from, and to provide more practical support for families.
With the delivery of 30 hours of free childcare, free breakfast clubs saving parents £450 a year, a cap on branded uniform items and £1.4 billion to fix the inherited state of crumbling classrooms, this Labour government is building a better future for our children and their families.
Labour’s Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said:
“It has been over a decade since the national curriculum was updated, and it’s more crucial than ever that young people are equipped to face the challenges of today, so they can seize the exciting opportunities that life has to offer.
“The path to our country’s renewal runs through our schools: they must be an epicentre of the strongest possible foundations of knowledge, and the skills to excel in the modern world.
“From the fundamentals of reading to the present danger of spotting fake news, as part of our Plan for Change, these landmark reforms will help young people step boldly into the future, with the knowledge to achieve and the skills to thrive as the world around us continues to rapidly evolve.”
- The new curriculum will be implemented in full, for first teaching from September 2028. Government will aim to publish the final revised national curriculum by spring 2027 – giving schools four terms to prepare for the changes.
- Key reforms include:
- Making citizenship compulsory in primary, ensuring all pupils learn media literacy and financial literacy, law and rights, democracy and government, and climate education early on.
- Replacing the narrowly focused computer science GCSE with a broader, future-facing computing GCSE and exploring a new qualification in data science and AI for 16–18-year-olds.
- Changes to school performance measures – removal of the EBacc and reforms to Progress 8 – to encourage students to study a greater breadth of GCSE subjects including the arts, humanities and languages alongside English, maths and science. This follows the failure of the EBacc measure to encourage take up of subjects including languages and constraining student choice.
- Supporting schools to develop a triple science offer, ahead of introducing a statutory entitlement for all GCSE pupils.
- A new primary oracy framework, and a new combined secondary oracy, reading and writing framework so these are embedded across the whole curriculum.
- Exploring a new language qualification which banks progress and motivates pupils to want to continue studying, complementing existing GCSEs and A levels.
- A new core enrichment entitlement for every pupil – covering civic engagement; arts and culture; nature, outdoor and adventure; sport and physical activities; and developing wider life skills.
