Schools: Arts Education

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think I am going to rise to that challenge. It is a pleasure to respond to this debate and I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for giving us the opportunity to raise these crucial issues, despite the air of pessimism that we seem to have engendered as the debate has gone on. I feel that I am among old friends here, with some new conscripts added. I particularly welcome the contribution of my noble friend Lord Cashman, whose personal testimony and insight this afternoon captivated us. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for her incisive and articulate maiden speech. I look forward, given her education background, to debating education policy with her at length in the future.

I mentioned old friends from around the Chamber, because when we have debated these issues in the past, we have reached a wide degree of consensus about the value of the arts and creativity in their own right—an importance that I think we all agree needs to be grounded in education from an early age. We also acknowledge its wide reach into our economy, our health and well-being and our society as a whole. As a number of noble Lords have said today, the creative industries have been acknowledged to be growing three times as fast as the national economy, and now make a contribution of more than £71 billion. So it is a worthwhile cause in itself.

However we measure it and through whatever prism we view the contribution of the arts, their significance to our society is impressive. In previous debates on the arts, Ministers responding have agreed with the central premise. How could they not, since the evidence is overwhelming? I am sure that the Minister will do so again today and will give us examples of some lovely projects and initiatives that have been introduced in schools during this Government’s reign. It would be churlish not to welcome them, and we do—but, sadly, they do not make up for the more substantial losses affecting arts education overall. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said, they should be the icing on the cake, not the cake. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, when there is a piecemeal distribution, we risk cultural capital becoming the preserve of the elite and the privileged. We are in danger of that now.

Ultimately, the Government will be judged by their overall record of support for the arts—and, as we have heard as the debate has gone on, this has left us with a series of very serious questions. For example, we have debated several times the effect that the disastrous reorganisation of the curriculum has had on the teaching of arts subjects. In retrospect, it was clearly a mistake to announce an EBacc system that gave no priority to arts subjects.While this has now been supplanted by the Progress 8 and Attainment 8 measures, which have slightly more flexibility, the take-up of arts subjects at GCSE is continuing to fall. Meanwhile, the important issue of discounting the value of arts subjects against each other continues to rumble on, with an inevitable negative impact on the take-up of certain arts subjects. To compound the problem, teacher-training places in arts education have been cut by 35%, as we have heard, with specialist arts teachers inevitably being cut and affecting the quality of teaching at all key stages in the future.

Yet we have heard from several noble Lords about the transformative impact that an inspiring, qualified art teacher had on them. We have also heard that arts activity at primary level has been cut by almost a third and after-school cultural activities are also being cut back. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that hot-housing at primary level and the lack of play have a corrosive effect that needs to be addressed.

Thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, we had an excellent debate on music hubs a couple of weeks ago—a policy which at that time we all supported. But even there the Minister was forced to admit that, despite some notable exemplars, their coverage was patchy and that disadvantaged children were particularly losing out in the provision.

What are we to make of Nicky Morgan’s more recent speech to which noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and others referred? Will the Minister let us know if he agrees with her comments? Of course we want to encourage more young people, particularly girls, to study more STEM subjects, but you do not do it by rubbishing arts and humanities and saying that they will not lead to decent careers. After all, 34% of chief executives from FTSE 100 companies have an arts background. How could she get the message so wrong, and what does this tell us about the Government’s commitment to arts subjects in the future?

Surely what we want to encourage is a broad education which embraces a mixture of arts and science, literally transforming STEM to STEAM with the arts taking their rightful place, perhaps even with universities offering more courses that combine arts and science disciplines. I applaud the joint master’s degree initiative at the University of London to which my noble friend Lady Nye referred. More of those sorts of courses should be offered. We want young people to be both creative and analytical and to have an education which ceases to stereotype them by the subjects they study and builds on their individuality.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, investment in arts education is more than the sum of its parts. We all seem to have quoted Professor Ken Robinson this afternoon, and I have my favourite quote, which is that,

“creativity, like learning in general, is a highly personal process. We all have different talents and aptitudes and different ways of getting to understand things. Raising achievement in schools means leaving room for these differences and not prescribing a standard steeplechase for everyone to complete at the same time and in the same way”.

Surely this quote captures the very creativity that will shape our lives in future.

That is the real challenge to this Government going forward. As several noble Lords pointed out, it is also that creativity that employers are craving their employees to demonstrate; it is obvious that film-makers need digital and visual literacy, that drama teaches confidence and communication, that engineers also need to be designers, that scientists need innovation skills and that craft skills are crucial for practical application.

So what would an alternative approach to arts education look like? It would make it a priority that that every child should have the opportunity to engage in the arts throughout their education, and we are consulting on how to make that happen. It would ensure that children from disadvantaged families do not miss out in the knowledge that access to high-quality arts and culture helps to close the attainment gap in educational outcomes. It would give every child a regular programme of access to the arts to see theatre and dance productions, to hear a wide variety of music and to visit museums and galleries. It would give every child opportunities to express themselves: taking part in art, drama, music and theatre, and learning how to perform on stage and create their own art.

It would reverse the negative messages about the importance of the arts in the performance and attainment measures and reject the binary choice between science and the arts. It would review the implementation of the music hub programme and consider how the aspiration that every child should learn a musical instrument and experience whole-class ensemble teaching could really be achieved. It would be imaginative in using new technology to support children’s creative learning. It would consider whether Ofsted should be able to rate a school as outstanding if it does not provide an outstanding cultural and arts education. It would build on the proposals for wrap-around education for primary schools from 8 am to 6 pm, and develop an exciting programme of extracurricular cultural activities, welcoming arts experts into the school to run workshops and short courses. It would also work with the Arts Council and the National Skills Agency to provide more high-quality apprenticeships, as an alternative to university, in the arts and culture sectors.

The previous Government had a great record of promoting and supporting the arts. Their achievements are too many to list here, although a number of my noble friends have already done so. However, those working and learning in the sector know our values and our record and will have confidence that we can deliver for them again. I will be interested to hear whether the Minister supports our aspirations for arts education provision in the future and I look forward to his response.