English Baccalaureate
The English Baccalaureate (The Ebacc) letter to parents
Please can you complete the tear-off slip (download the document above) indicating your support for this important initiative and for the changes to your daughter/son's curriculum in Year 10? For those parents who would like to discuss the contents of this letter we will be providing an opportunity in the next couple of weeks. Please indicate on the slip below if you wish us to let you know when the meeting will take place.
The English Baccalaureate (The Ebacc)
You may have heard that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has recently published an Education Bill in which he has introduced the idea of an English Baccalaureate, suggesting that at Key Stage 4 all students should study a core of subjects including English, Mathematics, Science, a Humanity (History or Geography) and a Modern Foreign Language.
The Ebacc has received a great deal of support from employers, from universities and from parents and is likely to become the ‘gold standard' against which student and school performance will be judged in the future. In response to the Bill, schools across the country are planning changes to the curriculum they will be offering to students commencing their Key Stage 4 education in year 10 in September so that they will have the opportunity to gain the Ebacc.
At Ashcroft Academy we have been considering how we can give our current Year 9 students access to the Ebacc as they started their KS4 education in September 2010. Students who are currently studying Geography or History and a Modern Foreign Language are already working towards the Ebacc, but those who are not would need to take up a Humanity or a Modern Foreign Language or both.
As the majority of Year 9 students will complete a GCSE in ICT and a half GCSE in Religious Studies at the end of this academic year these subjects can be replaced in their Year 10 by a Humanity or a Modern Foreign Language or both. In this way we can give students the same opportunity of gaining the Ebacc as their peers throughout the country. This change in the core curriculum will represent a challenge for students who will be picking up subjects that they discontinued at the end of year 8, but we are confident that we have the expertise and resources to enable them to be successful and, of course, they will benefit from the same amount of time that students in previous years have had available to them to study a GCSE.
The EBacc will provide excellent preparation for students who wish to go on to study the International Baccalaureate (IB) in the Academy's sixth form. The IB requires students to study a Humanity subject and a Modern Foreign Language as well Science, English, Maths and a subject in the Arts. The introduction of the EBacc is bound to lead to enhanced interest in students who have achieved an IB by universities and employers.