A child can arrive at secondary school, bright-eyed, keen to learn and spend much of Year 7 discovering what they’re good at. By Year 9, that same child can have their head down, avoiding the lessons they find hardest and choosing GCSE subjects according to what they think they can get through.
By the time the exam results tell us something has gone wrong, we have missed years in which we could have done something about it.
England’s education system has a missing middle. We pay close attention both to what children learn in primary school and the qualifications they gain at 16. But the same vigilance is not there in the early years of secondary.
And yet, those first three years of secondary school are a critical phase in their own right. Between 11 and 14, young people are working out who they are, where they belong and what they might become. They need adults who know them well, lessons that stretch them and opportunities to take on more responsibility.
Yet at precisely the moment when their horizons should be expanding, the pressure to secure strong GCSE results can lead schools to reach back into key stage 3 and start teaching GCSE content earlier.
I know the weight of accountability that school leaders carry. GCSEs open doors to further study and training, and an extra term of exam teaching can seem like a sensible way to help students who are behind. But those results can come to dictate what children study from the age of 11.
Time to build secure foundations
That is why I welcome the government’s plan to protect Years 7 to 9 by asking schools to wait until Year 10 before starting to teach GCSE specifications to a whole year group. It gives schools the time to build the knowledge on which success at GCSE depends and secures the early years of secondary as a phase of discovery across both academic subjects and wider experiences and interests.
Children need to read fluently, write confidently, reason mathematically and understand the ideas, events and scientific principles that shape the world. A carefully sequenced curriculum gives them time to practise, revisit ideas and use what they know.
A student needs enough historical knowledge to weigh two competing accounts of an event, just as they need time in a science lab to work out why an experiment produced an unexpected result.
Let them read a whole play, argue about a character’s choices and try performing a scene. That’s demanding work. It’s also how a child discovers an interest they never knew they had.
What a child knows at the end of primary school remains the strongest predictor of GCSE success. It absolutely should guide what we teach next, but it should not place a ceiling on achievement.
KS3 is our last universal opportunity before exam courses to help every student build secure foundations. A child who struggles to read a textbook needs help in Year 7, when it can make a difference in history, science and geography every week. A student who is still unsure about fractions needs time to master them before that gap makes algebra harder than it needs to be.
But none of this is possible if children are not engaged, or in too many cases, not even turning up. The truth is that we are in the grip of an attendance crisis. By Year 9, around a quarter of students are missing at least a tenth of their schooling.
The impact of attendance
The impact of poor attendance is hitting some groups of children particularly hard. This summer’s independent inquiry into white working-class educational outcomes found that the transition to secondary school was a critical point where gaps widened and engagement declined for these students.
The best schools know that academic excellence and strong relationships are not an either/or choice; they go together.
In early adolescence, children want more independence. They still need adults who know them well enough to notice when they’ve gone quiet or started to fall behind. They need chances to take on more responsibility, whether that’s leading a discussion, taking a part in a play or seeing a difficult project through. Feeling known and being challenged go together. Think of the teacher who spotted what you could do before you could see it yourself.
The government can protect the time, but schools have to make it count. At Lift Schools, we’re looking closely at when students begin to feel less connected to school, alongside what they’re learning and how often they’re in class.
This is feeding into the work of the national KS3 Alliance, which I co-chair with Lesley Powell. Here, we’re bringing schools together to learn from those already doing this well and test what works in different communities.
By the time students reach Year 10, the impact of these curriculum reforms should be unmistakable. Young people should be attending regularly, equipped to tackle demanding work and confident enough to ask for help when they need it. They should have discovered subjects that excite them and talents they want to develop.
Above all, they should see a future worth working towards, believe they can achieve it and understand the steps that will take them there.
Rebecca Boomer-Clark is chief executive of Lift Schools and co-chair of the KS3 Alliance
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