PAST attempts to introduce more flexible schooling for 14 to 16-year-olds have usually come up against a stumbling block - national curriculum legislation.
Cumbersome “disapplication” procedures in the 1996 Education Act let pupils seek exemptions from studying a modern language and design and technology. Some have even been allowed to ditch science, a core subject. But these subjects can only be dropped to allow a pupil to take part in work-related learning, concentrate on a curriculum area in which they have “strengths”, or consolidate their learning across the curriculum.
The 14-19 Green Paper, Extending opportunities, raising standards, published in February 2002, signalled the Government’s willingness to make it easier to drop subjects, partly to boost vocational learning. The statutory curriculum is being redesigned to include maths, English, science, ICT, citizenship, religious education, careers education, sex education and PE.
Modern languages, humanities, the arts, and design and technology will be given “entitlement” status. In other words they must be offered but students do not have to take them.
What this means in practice is that, as the Green Paper noted, “the disapplication arrangements should become redundant and disappear”.
Meanwhile, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is consulting on revising the grounds for disapplication. The Department for Education and Skills has also just published a document, Revised guidance on disapplication of the national curriculum at key stage 4, which should give schools much greater freedom. This guidance signals an important shift. Disapplication, it says in bold letters, should no longer be considered exceptional. However, parental consent is still required and the DfES says pupils should not drop a subject just because the school has a shortage of specialist staff or because they are not good at it.
Significantly, the requirement that schools provide monitoring information on disapplication to the QCA has also been removed.
Arthur De Caux is education officer of the National Association of Head Teachers. The disapplication guidance document reference is DfES06672002. It should be read with DfEE00842000
