Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

My Lords, I should remind the House of my interests, which include being chairman or trustee of a range of arts organisations, patron of the BRIT School and a visiting professor at the University of the Arts London.

The narrow focus which the Government have placed on the English baccalaureate is, to my mind, severely detrimental. It is already squeezing out the arts from much of the school curriculum and I fear that the damage will go a lot further over the years to come. In the short time available, I want to make three brief but fundamental points.

The first is that engagement in the arts for school pupils is fundamentally important to the well-being and full education of those pupils. To ensure that a pupil can emerge from school to live the richest possible life of the intellect and the spirit for the rest of their lives, engagement in the arts is absolutely crucial to enable them to develop the fullest, roundest possible degree of character and ability.

My second point is that engagement in the arts is of fundamental importance for the well-being of the school. There is case after case in schools around the country where engagement by the pupils in a large amount of excellent artistic activity helps the performance of the rest of the school. Engagement in the arts enables pupils and encourages them to perform well academically in other subjects. The same goes for the life of the school. If the emphasis on music, dance, drama and art is lost, then the rest of the school will suffer.

The third point is that engagement in the arts for pupils is fundamentally important for the future of the country’s economy. The importance of the creative industries, which is now something like 7% of our GDP, has been mentioned by virtually every speaker in this debate. Unless we nurture the spirit of creativity through school and then into the excellent tertiary education which is available for the creative sector in the UK, we are not going to keep our world lead in that sector. I think that the Government have both the tone and the detail of the English baccalaureate wrong. I plead with them to think again.