Curriculum and Assessment Review - first thoughts
The DfE’s long-awaited Curriculum and Assessment Review has finally landed. At over 197 pages the report makes suggestions for an updated national curriculum and assessment programme for Key Stages 1 to 4 plus the range of pathways available to learners aged 16 to 19.
The report includes eight recommendations concerning English, with five of those directly relevant to primary schools. In this article, I’ve taken each of the primary phase recommendations adding my thoughts, and where I can, signposting resources here on the Primary English website that may help you navigate potential changes.
“We recommend that the Government:
Ensures that the English curriculum sets out a clearer purpose, with more clarity and specificity at each key stage, including clarifying the distinction between English and literacy. This should include more clearly drawing out curriculum requirements for speaking and listening, as well as Drama. In particular, more clarity and specificity at Key Stage 3 should improve coherence between primary and secondary.”
There’s a lot to unpack in this recommendation. Let’s start with the distinction between English and literacy. English is the study of language and literature, whereas literacy is concerned with the foundational skills of learning to read and write. Clearly in the primary sector we spend A LOT of time on the foundational skills of literacy but year by year we take our children on a journey through English where they learn to analyse texts and shape their writing to meet the needs of different audiences and purposes. We most definitely do both. It will be interesting to see if the updated national curriculum can tease them apart making clear to us when we are teaching the subject of English and when we are teaching the skills of literacy.
What I must add to this though is: will making the distinction improve standards?
Drawing out the curriculum requirements for speaking and listening is very much in the Primary English ballpark. Our hugely popular Progression in Spoken Language document (link at bottom) provides the sequencing that is missing in the current national curriculum and that will hopefully appear in the new orders.
A couple of thoughts to take forwards:
Are we calling it spoken language, speaking and listening or oracy? I know there are subtle differences but as a profession we would be better served with continuity of language.
As much as I’m pleased to see this focus on speaking and listening, should it be included in the English programme of study or should it be an overarching aim across all subjects? Perhaps the aim is that children will learn through oracy across the curriculum with the skills of speaking and listening taught in English. I look forward to seeing how this develops.
Drama can be found tucked away in the Spoken Language objectives of the current National Curriculum so bringing it to the fore as has been suggested in the Curriculum and Assessment Review is great to see. This renewed interest in drama as a key component of oracy education does raise the question: how well is the workforce equipped for teaching drama effectively? To help plug gaps in subject knowledge and to help schools get to grips with this renewed focus on drama, I’ve uploaded three resources to the Primary English website today. One of these, Speaking and Listening Leaflets, will be known to older teachers from the National Strategies era. It may well be olden but it’s definitely golden for starting to explore how to use drama and speaking and listening in English and across the curriculum (see bottom for resource links).
“To support this, we recommend that the Government introduce an oracy framework to support practice and to complement the existing frameworks for reading and writing.”
The Reading and Writing Frameworks have certainly been useful for adding flesh to the national curriculum programmes of study.
Two thoughts from me:
Can the inspectorate and DfE remind themselves from time to time that these documents, whilst incredibly useful, are non-statutory guidance.
We need to be extremely mindful that in 2025 we’ve already had The Writing Framework, a new Ofsted Framework and now there’s a new National Curriculum on the horizon. We talk a lot about cognitive overload for the children; let’s remember teachers are equally at risk of too much information and change at one time.
“Reviews grammatical content to determine what content should be re-sequenced to later key stages, and what content should be removed entirely at Key Stage 2 to enable a greater focus on grammar in use rather than grammar in theory.”
Yes please. I’d happily see the removal of the subjunctive from the Key Stage 2 programme of study. But I’d also like the department to take a look at some Key Stage 1 content. I’m no fan of teaching what is (and what isn’t) an exclamative sentence with 6- and 7-year-olds based on whether there be an actual verb or an implied one. And I’d happily see the retirement of the current example of the man in the moon from Appendix 2 Year 2 when talking about expanded noun phrases. I have no problem with Year 2 children being taught to expand their nouns with adjectives but would prefer the post modification left entirely to Year 4 (or later in Key Stage 2).
“Replaces the current grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS) test with an amended test, which retains some elements of the current GPS test but with new tasks to better assess composition and application of grammar and punctuation.”
The current GPS test simply has to change. It promotes decontextualised grammar teaching and has little impact on children’s abilities to write engaging and effective texts. However, I’m concerned that the inclusion of tasks linked to composition and application of grammar risks overlap with the assessment of writing as it currently exists. In their work on this, I hope the DfE can reduce the amount of writing required to assess children’s skills at the end of Key Stage 2 rather than add another layer of writing into the mix.
“Once the new test is established in schools, the DfE may wish to consider whether the role of the test in accountability should remain as stands, or whether any changes, such as including the new test in headline measures, should be explored.”
Just one thought here. If the GPS becomes part of the KS2 headline measures, the broader written assessment will have to change. As I said above, I really don’t think we should be adding to the Year 6 workload (for children and teachers).
So those are the recommendations for English in the primary years. My thoughts about them may well change over the coming days and weeks but for now this article is a summary of my thinking on the day of publication. At this time, I’m surprised to see no explicit recommendations for reading in the primary years despite the desire to introduce a new test in Year 8. If all is well with the curriculum for reading in the primary years, why is a test required in Key Stage 3? And of course, enjoyment. I did find one reference to enjoyment through a keyword search; in design technology. In a climate of declining enjoyment in reading and writing, it seems more important than ever that we aim for our statutory curriculum to inspire enjoyment in learning. I hope this comes through when the curriculum is written.
For now, let’s see where the review takes us. But rest assured, I will continue to write articles, create resources and undertake training to support you as you implement the forthcoming national curriculum.
Resources to support Oracy and Drama.
