Education for 11 to 16 Year-olds (Committee Report)

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, on his able introduction to this important debate. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, on her ministerial appointment within the DCMS. The arts, for one, deserve that representation in this House, and I am very glad to see that. I hope that she will argue the particular case of the arts, which are in such severe financial difficulty. I was sorry that, unlike for science and technology, in whose interests the Government have hit the ground running, there was no slot for the arts and creative industries in the King’s Speech debate in this House. I therefore gently ask the Minister to look at the speeches and questions, particularly on Friday, when we got no reply at all. I do say these things gently, because many of us are very much heartened by the quite dramatic change in language that has taken place, particularly around arts education.

These things are important within the context of this debate, because education in schools does not occur in a vacuum. The report quite rightly focuses on the educational system, but education is influenced by social change, directly through a Government’s educational policy and by a Government’s industrial strategy, which feeds back into school education. The perceptions of parents and children will be affected by how worthwhile they believe studying any subject is—in the case of the arts, whether the arts and creative industries have a solid future in this country. After so much decline in creative subjects’ take-up at GCSE and A-level, which the report points up, these perceptions will now need a lot of turnaround. At present, there is every sign that the Government will agree with the report’s belief that there should be

“greater emphasis on technical, digital and creative areas of study”,

but parents and children will need to be convinced, having for so long been told the opposite, that the creative subjects are worthy of study and the arts and creative industries will be as much at the heart of this country’s future development as science and technology.

Some of us have been making repeated observations about the decline in the take-up of arts subjects for some time. The trend is graphically illustrated by both this report and the new The State of the Arts report, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. It was produced by Campaign for the Arts and the University of Warwick and had a well-attended launch in this House on Monday. It has a brilliant cover designed by Bob and Roberta Smith, the beneficiary of a more enlightened time in arts education. I hope the Minister will look carefully at that report as well.

The committee’s report rightly recommends moving away from a focus on a knowledge-rich approach towards a broader approach that includes skills and other non-academic subjects. On Wednesday, we had an Oral Question on the relationship between mental health and poor school attendance. I wonder how much of a circular argument that is and whether a different approach to education will also have an effect in this regard—an approach that does not rely so much on the sometimes deadening experience of “rote learning and ‘cramming’”, as the report puts it. Learning should be a joyful and fun experience. This is all about teaching to the individual child, not teaching to the test.

This is not to say that knowledge within certain contexts is a bad thing, but those contexts ought to be as meaningful as possible to the student. My daughter, who is now at drama school, is very much a case in point. She has no problem memorising pages and pages of a script for a play in which she is performing, but found it difficult at school to marshal facts and regurgitate the often already clichéd arguments that need to be put down in an essay in a specified time, which is great—well, perhaps great—if you want to be an academic, but she wants to be an actor. Those kinds of creative skills—in drama, music and the visual arts—are not taught enough in state schools and are certainly at present less available to underprivileged pupils.

One thing that is particularly good about this report is that it has cast its net wide; it has gathered evidence from many educational corners, including initiatives in independent schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said. I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, had a hand in that. One such initiative is Rethinking Assessment, which works between the independent and state sectors and from which the committee took evidence. The report recommends:

“In the shorter term, improvements could be made by increasing the use of coursework or other forms of non-exam assessment, including project-based qualifications”.


It is clear that such assessments go hand in hand with a move away from a knowledge-rich approach.

Reinstating and reinvigorating creative subjects will not in practice be just about removing the EBacc—one of the recommendations of the report—or about perception. It will also be about money. One of the things that at present distinguishes the arts offer in many independent schools is a willingness to spend money on performing arts facilities, art studios and musical instruments. In my view, music should be brought back into our state schools. While culture is increasingly consumed digitally, these kinds of production facilities still remain hugely important for schools, alongside digital media.

While Becky Francis carries out her review, we seem to be in that period of re-entry to the atmosphere called “blackout”, when there is radio silence. There are strong hints, and I hope the Minister will give us as much detail as she can. I hope Becky Francis takes on board the recommendations of this excellent report and what we say in this debate as well.