Schools: Drama

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree that the Royal Shakespeare Company has a huge role to play, and has played a big role in our education system; and I am sure that the noble Baroness is pleased that pupils will now study a minimum of three Shakespeare plays during their secondary school career. In addition to the toolkit, earlier this year we provided funding to help the Royal Shakespeare Company stream “The Merchant of Venice” into all schools. I can assure the noble Baroness that we regard this as an extremely important part of the curriculum.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that although the noble Earl’s sentiment is correct—we must open up professions —the quickest way of opening up professions to people of all backgrounds, especially disadvantaged backgrounds, is to give them a very rigorous academic education that can act alongside arts subjects and other subjects, so enabling them to get into apprenticeships and higher education and opening the doors to those kinds of professions?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend: studies have shown that this has had the effect of doing that with pupils. As I say, that is why we are so heavily focused on the EBacc. It is appalling that, until a few years ago, so few of our pupils were accessing such a curriculum.