University challenge: can a broader curriculum help create more successful graduates?

Baroness Tessa Blackstone will present the tenth annual Drapers Lecture.  In this lecture she will consider the Governments recent Green Paper ‘Fulfilling our Potential’. She will examine the proposals for a Teaching Excellence Framework; she will then go on to make the case for a broader curriculum for students at both sixth form and undergraduate levels.  Drawing on her experience of ministerial reforms of education, she will discuss the role that higher education institutions have played in narrowing students’ curricula through too great a focus on three ‘A’ levels. Once at university, the subjects that students study may bear little relation to the jobs that they will go on to do, so a broader approach to undergraduate programmes is needed.  Baroness Blackstone will also consider what higher education institutions can do to better support graduates in their search for work when responding to the Government’s focus on employability.