Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Newby

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty]

My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to have this important and timely debate and I thank the Library for its briefing note. I must attach a disclaimer to the terms of this debate, which is: “Will the Government reconsider the omission of arts subjects from the EBacc, if the reforms go ahead?”. A growing number, and I count myself among them, believe that the EBacc is severely flawed and, at the very least, should be postponed pending fuller consultation over all its aspects. However, I will come back to the wider debate later.

This Government continue to underestimate the significance of the arts and creative industries, culturally, socially and economically. It is perhaps no surprise that the ongoing reduction of investment in the arts signals a downgrade now being extended to the arts in school education. School education is so important, not only as a preparation for, but as the template of, the wider world of work including arts, design, manufacturing and so on. Due to this progression from school through to work, the implications of these reforms for the individual, wider society and industry are enormous.

High-profile arts leaders and practitioners have said they believe that in the long term the effect of these reforms could be more significant even than the cuts to public subsidies. Indeed, as the Minister will be aware, there has been a huge barrage of concern and criticism over the omission of arts subjects from the EBacc from both the subsidised and commercial wings of the arts—from film, theatre, the visual arts, including public museums and art dealers, music, dance, craft and design, and tellingly too from others outside the arts.

I am spoilt for choice from the many quotable things people have said in recent weeks, but I will pick out a few. The artist Grayson Perry said:

“If you think about the opening ceremony of the Olympics and all the things that we think of to symbolise modern Britain—from the Beatles to the internet—so many of them are based in creativity … The government is not looking at the country as it actually is: a place that is brilliant at fashion, broadcasting, design, the arts, drama, film”.

Julian Bird, chief executive of the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association in an open letter to the Secretary of State said:

“Managers of the UK’s … theatres are concerned that not including the arts in the proposed EBacc will have a negative impact on broader skills development”,

and,

“social mobility … the current proposals threaten the supply of talent needed to maintain one of the few industries where the UK is currently internationally regarded as a world leader”.

Last month, British designers including Jonathan Ive, Stella McCartney and Terence Conran, as well as design companies and universities, wrote to the Secretary of State saying:

“The innovation that fuels UK growth relies on knowledge, the skilled use of materials and the command of ideas. Design and the arts are vital components of an accessible and varied”—

note the word “varied”—

“education system that can provide these skills. The prospect of future generations growing up considering these subjects as unimportant is simply incomprehensible”.

The Secretary of State needs to listen carefully to this criticism, because at present the Government are displaying a blasé attitude that does not reflect reality. They say that pupils are still free to take arts subjects at GCSE level and schools are free to offer them, but the 20% or so left in the school timetable to teach non-EBacc subjects is like being thrown crumbs. Moreover, school governors have told me that once a subject no longer contributes to the league tables, it slips down the priorities for resources.

Further evidence that neglect is already happening comes from research commissioned from Ipsos MORI by the Department for Education, available on its website. The arts are already hardest hit, with 23% of teachers whose schools have withdrawn a subject—about one-quarter of the total polled—saying they can no longer offer drama or performing arts, 17% saying that art has been withdrawn and 14% that design or design technology has been withdrawn, trends confirmed by figures from the Joint Council for Qualifications in a Commons Written Answer to Dan Jarvis on 15 October. If this is already the result of the introduction of the EBacc as a performance measure, then it is not difficult to imagine the deepening of this effect once the formal qualification is in place. Most damning of all, perhaps, is the DfE research stating:

“Sixty-three per cent of teachers surveyed whose schools do not offer the EBacc combination to all pupils say this is because they do not offer it to lower-attaining pupils”,

a crystal-clear expression of the lower-class status that excluded subjects now have. The Government may want to move away from league tables but the effect will remain the same. There will be other serious effects if these reforms go through as they are. Many have pointed out that it will be children from poorer homes who will be disproportionately deprived of exposure to the arts.

The Secretary of State seems to believe that the EBacc is what universities and business leaders want, yet the representative body Universities UK gave this written evidence to the Education Committee’s inquiry into the EBacc in 2010:

“Given that the EBacc emphasises traditionally academic subjects, it has been argued that this could serve to further widen the gap between academic and vocational subjects. There is also concern that the EBacc could encourage a shift away from arts-related subjects … In general … there appears to be a limited appetite to include the award as part of a university’s entry requirements or selection criteria”.

I stress the phrase “a limited appetite”. I therefore wonder how much the Russell Group’s guidance that was set out in 2011, rather than indicating what universities would like, has been a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, because some universities will quite logically consider less those subjects that are already starting to be marginalised.

The issue of overspecialisation at too early an age is an important one. In its report First Steps: A New Approach to our Schools, the CBI, which is critical of the EBacc in many ways, talks about the need for what it terms a “rounded and grounded” pupil, echoing what those in the arts also say. Rosy Greenlees, executive director of the Crafts Council, tells me that while not wholly against a “techbacc”—and I would welcome some more detail from the Minister on the Government’s plans in this direction—she is worried about the possible reinforcing of what she calls the,

“traditional divide between the practical and the academic which is outmoded”.

On Radio 4’s “Start the Week” last November, which was devoted to art and design, Sarah Teasley, tutor in the history of design at the Royal College of Art, spoke about the need to push regional innovation through connections between research institutes and regions, between art and design colleges and local SMEs. There is a real need to bring arts, sciences and technology into a much more intimate relationship, and this must start in schools. Subjects need to be able to talk to each other within the curriculum much more than they do at present, but to do so they need also to retain equality and integrity. It is not enough to simply say, as the Government have done, that EBacc subjects can be taught “creatively”.

In terms of the larger structure of the EBacc, art and sport—which also feel that they are going to be neglected—need at this stage to see each other as allies in the interests of wider reform, not competitors for a position in what is being increasingly understood as a limiting and unacceptable hierarchy of subjects. What, too, about computer science, itself so crucial to the development of today’s creative industries, business, economics, sociology, and religious studies? The list goes on. There is concern, too, about the effective downgrading of the modular system—a system that many argue favours innovation and creativity—an action, as the National Children’s Bureau and other charities point out, that will also hugely discriminate against disadvantaged children and those with learning and other disabilities. For many of the reasons that I have discussed, Tony Kelly of the Education School at Southampton University says that the EBacc will be a distraction from the fundamental mission of schools to create well-being for students—not solely economic well-being but the development of the ability to turn opportunity into betterment.

The support for withdrawing the EBacc is now backed by teachers, parents, unions, national museums, major charities, the National Governors Association, academics and universities, Peers, MPs and former Education Secretaries, including the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. Seeing as the consultation for key stage 4 has been held very much in public, I am tempted to say that the Government hardly need to look at the results to see how institutions and many people now feel. The Government must give very careful consideration to the consultation and report back quickly. Although we have had the music plan, we are still awaiting the response of the Government to last year’s Henley report on cultural learning, which backed the inclusion of arts within the EBacc.

One of the frustrating things that so many working in the arts now feel is that we are living through a time when the arts and creative industries have become central to our society, central to our culture and, as I said at the beginning of this debate, hugely significant economically. They could of course be more so, but the arts are in real danger of taking a backward turn at a time when the Government should be seizing the day and capitalising on what is now in place but which might well be lost if the Government do not change tack.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, for the benefit of the House, I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate and all speeches are limited to three minutes.