Education: A-levels in Creative Subjects

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on securing the debate and for her excellent opening speech, which set the tone very effectively.

“Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future”—

a truism if ever there was one. Those are the words of the playwright Sophocles, written around 2,400 years ago. Just four years ago, those very words prominently began the Government’s response to the Henley review of cultural education. Sadly, somewhere along the way since 2012, it seems that the Government have lost their belief in the value of the arts and creative subjects in schools.

This issue has come to prominence largely because exam boards have dropped history of art and archaeology A-levels, as noble Lords have said. These have always been very much minority options that not many students have had access to, but the fear is that this is merely the tip of a sizeable iceberg. Squeezed school budgets, a growing emphasis on the STEM and English baccalaureate subjects, and government reforms of qualifications are reshaping what our young people study.

Ministers believe that students should mostly take what they refer to as “facilitating subjects”. I will not list them, because noble Lords are well aware of them, but there is an absence of creative subjects from the list—let me say only that ancient Greek is included but not art and design or computer science. Ministers claim that, because these are the subjects that Russell group universities want, every pupil should take them. In fact, although the Russell group prioritises these subjects, it actually says that only two of the three A-levels should be from this list.

But the Government prefer the absolute position, which chimes with their pushing the EBacc subjects at GCSE. They regard other subjects as “soft options”. This was never more obvious than when, in November 2014, the then Secretary of State for Education claimed that, for children, choosing arts subjects at school would,

“hold them back for the rest of their life”.

That was not just downright nonsense but an extremely damaging statement, suggesting a one-size-fits-all regime that ignores the strengths of many pupils and demeans their choices. Given that the creative industries are now such an important feature of our economy, does the Minister agree that we should not be sending a message to schools and young people that creative and technical subjects are not valued?

The benefits of creative subjects are not merely economic. Subjects such as drama and music are widely taught in independent schools and, until recently at least, were also offered at larger sixth-form colleges. But, in recent years, the colleges have suffered funding cuts, while the continued absence of a VAT refund scheme for them—which is available to academy sixth forms—leaves the average sixth-form college with £385,000 a year less to spend on front-line education. How can the Government justify their intransigence on this issue?

Cuts to sixth-form college budgets have resulted in the need to reduce their range of courses in order to increase class sizes in the remaining subjects. They are also reducing the possibility of taking additional subjects to AS-level, partly because they cannot afford the extra teaching and partly because the AS itself has been downgraded by the Government. The English sixth-form curriculum has traditionally been narrow, with just three subjects at A-level. The efforts of the Labour Government to increase breadth through the AS-level are being reversed by a mixture of cuts and policy, which particularly affects creative subjects that might be taken as an “extra”.

This impacts on the decisions of exam boards. With the costs of managing small-uptake A-levels already an issue, boards must be feeling an additional financial pinch with the loss of AS-level income now that A-level is a stand-alone exam. The numbers studying music at A-level have never been large, but they are dwindling. Schools across the country have already reluctantly decided to stop offering music as an option, and the likelihood is that more will follow.

Even modern languages, one of the EBacc subjects, is not safe. Last week, the Sixth Form Colleges Association published a report based on a survey of its members, which found that more than one-third of colleges have ended courses in modern languages, including A-levels in German, French and Italian. Indeed, evidence points to languages suffering a slow death. This year, fewer than 4,000 students sat German A-level and French entries were down to fewer than 10,000. Schools and sixth-form colleges with pressurised budgets are forced to choose which courses to keep and which to cut. Not enough modern teenagers want to study a language, it seems, which is a great shame because a language is more than just a qualification; it is a skill for life. As the country becomes mired in acrimonious negotiations on leaving the EU and turns ever more in on itself, the future looks bleak for the study of languages.

In a trend that leads directly to the reduction of A-levels in creative subjects, the Sixth Form Colleges Association report also found that almost six out of 10 colleges have reduced extracurricular activities, including educational visits, music, drama, sport and Duke of Edinburgh award schemes, or cut them altogether.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the need to close the divide between academic and vocational education, but with the EBacc the Government are unequivocally promoting the superiority of the academic pathway. If the reduction in the availability of creative subjects is the result, should we be surprised? Less than 50% of students took the EBacc in the past academic year, yet already there has been a significant effect on other subjects since it was introduced—most notably on what I argue is the key subject of design and technology, for which there has been a 30% drop in take-up. The curriculum should not be driven by the needs of the minority who are going to the most selective universities—what my noble friend Lady Nye described as a false hierarchy of subjects taught. Every student should have elements of the EBacc subjects in their curriculum. Equally, they should have artistic and practical elements. Many of the essential work-related skills that the CBI says are in short supply may well be better developed in artistic and practical contexts.

More investment from government is essential if sixth-form colleges and school and academy sixth forms are to continue providing young people with the breadth of high-quality education, including creative subjects, which they need to progress to higher education and employment. Failure to do so risks turning sixth-form education into a narrow and restricting experience. That would be bad for students, bad for society and bad for the economy.