10. Raising the status of teachers and giving them renewed freedom and authority will make a significant contribution to improving schools. However, the best performing education systems also set clear expectations for what children must know and be able to do at each stage in their education, and make sure that the standards they set match the best in the world. Our system of curriculum, assessment and qualifications gives us the ability to do that in this country, but at present the National Curriculum includes too much that is not essential knowledge, and there is too much prescription about how to teach. 

11. We need a new approach to the National Curriculum, specifying a tighter, more rigorous, model of the knowledge which every child should expect to master in core subjects at every key stage. In a school system which encourages a greater degree of autonomy and innovation the National Curriculum will increasingly become a rigorous benchmark, against which schools can be judged rather than a prescriptive straitjacket into which all learning must be squeezed.

12. So, we will:

  • Review the National Curriculum, with the aim of reducing prescription and allowing schools to decide how to teach, while refocusing on the core subject knowledge that every child and young person should gain at each stage of their education. 
  • Ensure that there is support available to every school for the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics, as the best method for teaching reading.
  • Ensure that there is proper assessment of pupils at each vital transitional stage of their education, to provide information to parents about how well their child has done and about the effectiveness of schools, and objective evidence for teachers: at age 6, a simple test of pupils’ ability to decode words; at 11, as pupils complete primary education; and at 16 as pupils complete compulsory schooling.
  • Introduce the English Baccalaureate to encourage schools to offer a broad set of academic subjects to age 16, whether or not students then go down an academic or vocational route.
  • Hold an independent review of key stage two testing, seeking to retain a strong basis for accountability and information to parents and secondary schools, while alleviating the damaging effects of over-rehearsal of tests.
  • Give the independent regulator, Ofqual, the task of making sure that exam standards in this country match the highest standards overseas.
  • Reform vocational education so that it supports progression to further and higher education and employment, and overhaul our vocational qualifications following Professor Alison Wolf’s review to ensure that they match the world’s best.
  • Raise to 17 by 2013 and then 18 by 2015 the age to which all young people will be expected to participate in education or training.