Higher Education: Creative Courses

Lord Lemos Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we will hear from my noble friend Lord Lemos first then we will come to the other Benches.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope my noble friend the Minister will agree that as well as the problems in higher education we also need to reverse the dramatic drop-off in students studying arts and humanities subjects at GCSE and A-level. There has been a more than 47% drop for those GCSEs since 2010. As she mentioned, we also need to strengthen the career pathways between education and employment in the creative industries. I fear that we are still living with the ancient and false binary between arts and science education; I hope my noble friend agrees that we need both.