THE EBACC IS NOT AN ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURE-APPARENTLY

The EBACC

Is it an accountability measure? Apparently not

Comment

Lord Hill of Oareford ,an Education Minister, said very clearly in the Lords, on 24 May, when replying to a question on the Ebacc, (some are concerned that Religious Studies are not included in Ebacc) that it was not a performance or accountability measure. He said “.. the EBacc is to provide information. It is not a performance or accountability measure. We use the same measure as we inherited from the previous Government-that is, five A to C GCSEs. The point of the EBacc, alongside other measures, is to try to provide more information.”

Lords Oral PQ 24 May 2011

Note; The government introduced the Ebacc to encourage breadth of achievement across a range of  academic subjects at GCSE. The  ‘English Baccalaureate’ is awarded to pupils gaining good GCSEs in English, maths, science, languages and history or geography .  Only 15 per cent of pupils nationally currently reach this standard (and Academies fare particularly badly).  Some Heads objected to the retrospective nature of the measure.  Quite a few  organisations are lobbying   the government to allow for the inclusion of Religious Studies, Classical Civilisation and English Literature in the “humanities” category.  There are also concerns that Music and the creative arts may be sidelined as schools, whatever Ministers might say, perceive the Ebacc as a performance measure.

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