This petition was submitted during the 2019-2024 parliament
Petition Make Video Games a compulsory part of the national school curriculum
Make video games a compulsory part of the national school curriculum. We believe this could revolutionise education and provide a more comfortable and enriching experience for school children.
More details
We believe using more creative learning tools like video games could help schools encourage learning. Some young people dread going to school and hate their day to day experience.
Adding video games, which are very popular amongst school-aged children, to the curriculum, could give them a more familiar and enjoyable school experience.
For example, Minecraft was introduced a school in Sweden.
https://www.thelocal.se/20130109/45514/#.UPPklGdZO2q
This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months
Government responded
This response was given on 18 November 2022
The Department has no plans to introduce video games into the National Curriculum, nor make any changes to the National Curriculum for the remainder of this Parliament.
Read the response in full
The National Curriculum is broad, ambitious and knowledge rich. It provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens. It helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.
The Department has no plans to introduce video games into the National Curriculum, which already provides pupils with a broad and enriching experience.
A knowledge rich curriculum ensures that pupils have fair access to the acquisition of knowledge, the basic building block of education. The Department is committed to evidence based teaching and is not aware of any evidence that suggests video games are an effective tool for teaching a well sequenced, knowledge rich curriculum that is broad and balanced.
The Department has recently re-endowed the Education Endowment Foundation with £137 million to produce and disseminate high quality evidence on what works to raise the educational attainment of children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
This supports teachers to make evidence led decisions and choose interventions that they know are effective and appropriate for their pupils. Schools can also refer to the Oak National Academy and the network of subject hubs for support with teaching an evidenced based curriculum.
Department for Education