A Tory former education secretary who introduced the GCSE system in the late 1980s has branded the tests “outmoded” as peers debated the King’s Speech.
Lord Baker of Dorking welcomed Labour’s curriculum and assessment review, launched on Friday, which aims to ensure a child’s background does not prevent them from receiving a high standard of education.
Lord Baker, who went on to be home secretary in the early 1990s, suggested that GCSEs should be scrapped, along with other current assessments and curriculums.
The Conservative peer told ministers in the Lords: “Could I also surprise you by saying I welcome entirely all the proposals you put today to the House? I hope it’s the beginning of a great reforming Government.
“Endorsements by me of statements from the education department for the last 14 years have been rather rare events, but I hope this is a very good start.
“In your manifesto, you said that there’s going to be an expert-led review of the curriculum and assessment. Well done, congratulations, I urged the last government to do it again and again.
“Seven committees were set up that all urged that and said you should scrap EBacc and Progress 8 and also GCSEs, which I introduced, which I think are now outmoded.”
The EBacc, short for the English Baccalaureate, is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps children’s options open for further study and includes English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history, and a language.
Progress 8 is “value-added” measure of performance that indicates how much a secondary school has helped pupils improve over a five-year period.
Lord Baker said he would “give all the support of my charity in setting up successful technical schools, because we have a great deal of expertise, and I’ll support it”.
He emphasised the importance of employability skills like collaborative problem-solving, and of technical and cultural education, to boost economic growth and make education “suitable for this day and age”.
His comments came after Baroness Jacqui Smith of Malvern, a new Labour peer who served in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, gave her maiden speech.
She held many government roles during the New Labour years, including as an education minister and later as the first female home secretary.
She said her appointment as an education minister last week was “sudden and surprising”, but emphasised her long career in the sector.
She said: “It’s 25 years ago almost to the day since I first entered the Department for Education as a schools minister, and in that role I could reflect on my previous teaching career for 11 years in Worcestershire schools and at the Worcester Sixth Form College.”
She said she will miss the roles she has played since she was last in government, including as chairwoman of the Jo Cox Foundation, chairwoman of Sandwell Children’s Trust, and as a podcast host with Iain Dale.
On Labour’s plan for education, she said: “We will create a new era of opportunity, especially for those who have seen nothing but dead ends and closed doors, like the parents who are struggling to pay for child care, like the children whose life chances are damaged through persistent absence from school, or like the workers who are sidelined by technological whirlwinds that have left them wondering what’s happened to their jobs.
“Whatever the source, we will work to break down these barriers to opportunity and to deliver economic growth, better health and educational excellence for everyone.”
On the curriculum and assessment review, she said: “We have today delivered the Government’s commitment to an independent expert-led review of curriculum and assessment to ensure high standards in the curriculum in England, whilst ensuring greater attention to breadth and flexibility and that no child or young person is left behind.”
It was announced earlier on Friday that Professor Becky Francis, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, will be seconded from her role at the charity to lead the review for the Government.
