“It’s a coincidence, and it’s unfortunately slightly confusing,” says Becky Francis.

She is referring to a Department for Education plan to introduce a new Year 8 reading test, reported just weeks before the release of the final report in her curriculum and assessment review, which recommends a different English test, also in Year 8.

“This is very separate to what the government is suggesting around Year 8 reading tests,” stresses Francis, who is chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).

The tests outlined in the curriculum review, which is published today, are recommended in both English and maths. They are intended to be diagnostic tools that will help teachers to identify and address weaknesses before students get to key stage 4.

“To be fair, I guess the DfE are also looking at KS3 and thinking about gaps and so forth,” Francis says.

The difference, she adds, is that “whereas we’re trying to think about momentum in KS3 in preparation for KS4”, the DfE’s reading test could be characterised as “sort of looking backwards at what hasn’t been done - at what, in my view, should have been done in primary”.

Curriculum review recommendations explained

This unexpected and coincidental policy overlap is just one example of the many challenges involved in conducting an overarching review of the entire national curriculum and assessment system in England.

It’s a process that Francis describes as both “absolutely fascinating” and “rather frustrating”.

“I can probably characterise the whole review as being about balances and trade-offs,” she explains. “Sometimes you can see something isn’t brilliant, but when you look at the various alternative solutions, you realise why the status quo has been the status quo.”

Despite these frustrations, conducting the review has been “quite heartening in many ways”, Francis says. “Not only are we in a strong place, but we have incredibly passionate professionals determined to make things better.”

“I hope that we have been able to identify a lot of areas where we can help and we can improve things,” she adds.

To find out more about the review and its recommendations, Tes sat down with Francis to unpick some of the panel’s key findings.

The review places a specific focus on oracy. Do we have good evidence to show that oracy can be taught and that it has a positive effect on a young person’s future life outcomes?

Yes, I think the evidence on the need for the spoken word is clear, and we’ve been convinced by it. The EEF’s own evidence shows that this is very important for young people’s futures, including their employability and so forth.

When it comes to pedagogy, oracy is already in the national curriculum and is pushed quite strongly in some areas. Yet we’ve heard very clearly that the teaching of oracy is not always happening adequately on the ground, in the classroom.

So, as well as strengthening the emphasis slightly in the English and drama curricula, we’re also recommending an oracy framework to sit alongside the existing reading and writing frameworks. This is to do two things: firstly, to give that signal to teachers that oracy is important, and secondly, to give them the resources to be able to put that into practice.

Some might see the recommendations for new Year 8 tests in English and maths as a de facto return to KS3 Sats. Was that a concern for you, and what would you say is the evidence for introducing those tests at that point in a child’s education?

You’re absolutely right about the trade-offs and some of the dangers here.

In terms of the rationale, we know that attainment gaps widen particularly as young people move from KS2 through KS3. We wanted to address that.

We see these tests as a tool for teachers. They are diagnostic tests, focused on narrow competencies around application in English and the core knowledge in maths that is needed to set young people up for successful progress through to KS4. At the moment, 40 per cent of students are not getting both English and maths grade four, and we know that those young people then don’t thrive at post-16.

We wanted to address the widening attainment gaps as students move from KS2 to KS3

We want to narrow the funnel as young people come through to GCSE study, by making sure teachers have this tool to identify where there are weaknesses sufficiently early and then still have time to redress those weaknesses before students move to KS4. That’s a rather different lens and direction to the government and its reading tests.

We do, though, recognise that there could be unintended consequences with this, and we’re certainly not thinking of them as KS3 Sats. We’re very clear on the stipulation that they should be narrow diagnostic tests of particular skills and competencies, and that they should be piloted before being rolled out nationally.

If they don’t work, we shouldn’t proceed, because otherwise you risk the need for annualisation, which we don’t want, or the potential for teachers to think of this as the end point of learning for KS3, so they can move on to KS4 earlier.

The review recommends encouraging greater uptake of the voluntary KS1 assessments. What benefits do you think these tests have?

Well, really, it’s formative for teachers. That is the only purpose of their remaining, and given that they are a freely available tool, it seems the DfE should encourage teachers to use them.

At GCSE, you’ve recommended reducing exam time by at least 10 per cent. How did you reach that 10 per cent figure?

The 10 per cent figure is based on Ofqual’s own modelling. Ofqual considers it to be relatively easy to reduce exams by 10 per cent without any significant trade-off on reliability or standards.

Once you go beyond 10 per cent, it gets a little bit trickier and the devil becomes in the detail, depending on the subject area and whether our broader recommendations have succeeded in dialling down content at GCSE a little or not.

So, we thought, let’s go with what Ofqual thinks is already doable, and just encourage it a little bit further with an “at least” 10 per cent. That’s the aim there.

England is an outlier when it comes to our very stressful, elongated exams period

And what is the driver behind reducing exams in the first place? Is it to do with student wellbeing or the accessibility of assessment, or something else?

It’s about both of those things, and the amount of time young people have to be learning other things. Exams are currently this very stressful, elongated period that young people have to endure, and it’s an unusually long period in England.

We have done some modelling about the relationship here for England versus other world-leading jurisdictions, and found that we really are an outlier. Only Singapore has anything near what we do at age 16.

The review advises that the curriculum retains its current “knowledge-rich approach”. What is your interpretation of “knowledge-rich”? Does it align with E D Hirsch’s view of knowledge, which was championed by former schools minister Nick Gibb?

I think we in England all have our assumptions about what “knowledge-rich” means. But we know that in terms of the various theoretical strands sitting under it, they’re quite diverse.

For us, as we set out in the review, it expresses care in sequencing and curriculum design that’s underpinned by cognitive psychology, combined with the entitlement to powerful knowledge for all and rich cultural capital for all, expressed by [education researcher] Michael Young and his work.

The review also places focus on developing skills within subject disciplines, rather than taking a generic or cross-curricular approach. Does that mean that skills do not transfer well across domains? Is that what the evidence suggests?

I think we’d all agree, probably, that there’s a sort of false dichotomy between knowledge and skills, and actually, a knowledge-rich curriculum doesn’t foreground kids developing skills. They necessarily do, through a knowledge-rich curriculum.

In terms of the areas that we’ve highlighted we need more on, we’ve got five areas that really popped out in our evidence taking: digital literacy; financial literacy; media literacy; climate science and sustainability; and oracy and the spoken word.

So, you can see that this is mainly knowledge, probably oracy and the spoken word is the one that stands out. But that, too, comes from a knowledge-rich curriculum, and as part of it, I think there is a lot of misunderstanding and some nonsense in this area. You can’t have criticality without knowledge, because then you’d have nothing to be critical of.

Likewise, when we’re talking about media literacy, that’s evidently about the skills of weighing evidence, research and so forth, and then bringing a critical lens to that evidence. If you don’t have knowledge, then what is it you’re scrutinising, and how would you make a judgement?

It’s an entitlement for all, so we must make sure that the curriculum is for all

Another recommendation is to create greater diversity within the curriculum. How do you think we can strike the right balance on that, given the current political landscape?

Almost 40 per cent of our young people are from minority-ethnic backgrounds. It’s really important that the national curriculum is for everybody, whether we are talking about class, geography, gender and so on.

We know from the evidence that when young people can see themselves represented in the curriculum, they feel more engaged, and that supports their learning. But fundamentally, it’s an entitlement for all, so we must make sure that the curriculum is for all.

That being said, obviously, we’re not in the business of either tokenism or damaging young people’s cultural capital by having entirely localised curricula that speak to particular local demographics and so forth. It’s really important that kids have their horizons broadened, not narrowed, and understand different perspectives.

What we’ve tried to do is achieve that balance between young people being able to see themselves and recognising the fantastic diverse contributions to all disciplines in the curriculum, while also making sure that central core concepts and canonical knowledge remain at the heart of what we’re doing.

The review points to the need to ensure the professional autonomy of teachers. Does this mean that reliance on centralised lesson plans should be reduced?

No, not really. I think that the balance between autonomy versus entitlement or mandate is really a delicate one throughout.

We have deliberately sought to facilitate teacher autonomy and teachers’ ability to bring the curriculum to life, to own the curriculum as their material and tool, and give them a bit more space to have the freedom to enhance and direct content, depending on their classroom.

Likewise, we’ve tried to give space for schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs) to be able to do the wonderfully innovative work they do at present. Many MATs have their own approaches, and that’s up to them, as long as it’s high quality and done well. But equally, the national curriculum has to be a really aspirational entitlement for every young person, whichever school they’re in. So, it’s finding that balance.

We have tried to better facilitate that in a range of ways, coming back to these principles that we’ve developed that we’re recommending be applied to the programmes of study.

One of the principles is that there is mindfulness to time in the school day as people are elaborating the programmes of study. Now, you and I might think that’s just common sense and would always be the case, but this is apparently an innovation and the first time that a review has said that this needs to be operated.

Similarly, we recommend that teachers should be involved in the groups that are developing the programmes of study and doing that design work, because they have both the classroom experience and the awareness of capacity and capacity for delivery.

There’s no point in memorising what a fronted adverbial is if you’re then never going to be able to use it

You’ve recommended a shift in how grammar is taught and assessed to focus more on practical application rather than “grammar in theory”. Can you explain the thinking behind that shift?

One of the things that we heard about in our evidence taking is that writing has had less attention and is an area of less strength, compared with reading, for example, so it needs more attention and focus.

In order to do that, we think that while learning grammar, punctuation and spelling obviously continues to be important, it needs to be applied. There’s no point in memorising what a fronted adverbial is if you’re then never going to be able to use it.

We have also recommended a slight trimming of the highly theoretical technical grammar being covered, which we think, at the moment, is coming at the expense of grammar in practice.

There’s also a recommendation to teach the three sciences separately at KS4. What’s the evidence behind that?

The evidence is very clear that there’s a very strong relationship between taking triple science and then going on to study science at A level and undergraduate level.

Rather lamentably, on the other side of that, there’s very strong evidence that you’re very unlikely to do that if you take combined science. And, of course, there’s a very large socioeconomic gap in the uptake of triple science.

So, we want to make sure that all young people have that entitlement, rather than finding that their access to futures in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) have been curtailed by something that happened in Year 9.

Stem teacher supply is a challenge across the board and is unlikely to be magically resolved very quickly

We know that there are ongoing issues around teacher recruitment and retention, with science being a particular area of challenge. Do you see that as a problem with this recommendation?

Yes. Teacher supply in relation to Stem is a challenge across the board and is unlikely to be magically resolved very quickly. So we have recognised that point in our recommendation, saying that the government needs to find ways to support this, and support schools to deliver it.

I guess that being said, you do need science specialists to be teaching combined science as well. But clearly, I’m not trying to minimise the resource challenge in this area. That’s something that will need to be carefully prepared for, and we do recognise that in the report.

You recommend “alternative” assessments in place of the phonics screening check and multiplication tables check for pupils who are unable to access those tests. What might that look like?

We didn’t get into the different prospective offers. I respect the Standards and Testing Agency and, as I’ve learned over the year, they are a very responsible and thoughtful organisation.

There are many potential pitfalls if you take a one-size-fits-all alternative approach.

I think what really troubled me was understanding that if a young person is, for example, pre-verbal or has selective mutism, then with the phonics screening check, the current stipulation is, “Well, if a parent wants to do it with them at home, they can”, and that’s it.

Our encouragement is to try to think a bit more creatively about how to have greater accessibility without any trade-offs. The risk is that if you open up some kind of alternative pathway, other kids start being put onto it. So, it’s finding a way through that.

You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on iOS and on Android