Secondary Schools: Funding

Baroness Nye Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am alarmed by the comments because it is quite clear that those schools that perform well in arts subjects also perform particularly well in the EBacc. As the NAO has said, by comparing efficient schools with others, there is plenty of money in the system and we have a number of tools in the department to enable schools to run themselves more efficiently, and those that do have sufficient resources, particularly for the classroom and for their curriculum.

[Baroness Nye (Lab)]

My Lords, it must be the case that these cuts will fall disproportionately on non-EBacc subjects as schools encourage pupils to take more EBacc subjects to boost their results. To avoid a ticking time bomb for the creative industries pipeline, will the Government consider including design and technology as well as computer science as part of the EBacc, as proposed by his colleagues in the other place?

[Lord Nash]

There is no evidence that the take-up in GCSE art subjects has declined as a result of the EBacc. In fact, the New Schools Network found that the number of art GCSEs taken by pupils has gone up since the introduction of the EBacc. We have to remember always that when we started in 2010, sadly, only one in five pupils in state schools were studying a core suite of academic subjects. That is why we focused on the EBacc and have doubled the number of pupils who have these academic subjects, which are particularly important for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.