Examination Reform
Debate between Bill Esterson and Fiona Mactaggart(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart
That is precisely the point I am seeking to make: there needs to be an additional pillar that includes these kinds of subjects.
I am worried about the Secretary of State, because in his response to my question about the achievements in Nobel prizes and so on, he said:
“The arts are mankind’s greatest achievement.”
We both share that view, but he went on to say:
“Every child should be able to enjoy and appreciate great literature, music, drama and visual art.”—[Official Report, 3 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 579.]
That is not enough; it is not sufficient for children just to be able to enjoy and appreciate, and one thing we have to do as part of education is to develop in children the ability to create. I welcome Henley’s report, but Robinson’s report on creativity in education, produced more than a decade earlier, rightly suggested that we should define creativity as
“Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value.”
This is one thing that children should learn in school. It is not sufficient to expect them to learn it outside school. Many of us ensure that our children are able to learn it outside school, but many children do not get that opportunity and it is those about whom I am most concerned.
I am also concerned about the effect on our country’s achievements. There is a reason why we are a world leader in creative industries: our tradition of creativity in education and of requiring these subjects to be part of every child’s entitlement. I am concerned—I have yet to hear an answer on this from Government Members—as to whether there is any tool that ensures what I believe the Secretary of State wants, which is that children should be able to learn the ability to create. The schools that he most admires—Eton, just next to my constituency, and others—provide outstanding creative education. They are not following a set of league tables that make them jump through hoops and be judged just against their EBacc levels.
On this issue, I am reminded of the bit in Dickens’ “Hard Times” where Thomas Gradgrind says to Sissy Jupe, who knows everything there is to know about horses, “Define a horse.” She sits there silent, not knowing how to do it, and then Bitzer says, “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth”. That is of course the right answer, because ours is a world determined by facts. The bit of the story that many of us have forgotten is where the inspector speaks later. Dickens has him saying:
“You are to be in all things regulated and governed…by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must”—[Interruption.]
Oh! Trust iPad!
Fiona Mactaggart
No, indeed. The inspector goes on to say, “You must not allow flowers and birds on your china, because they aren’t there. You must not allow horses on your wallpaper, because they aren’t there in fact. You must not allow flowers on your carpets, because they are not there in fact.” I do not believe the Secretary of State wants that world, but, unthinkingly, this EBacc is leading us towards it, not because that is what he wants to achieve, but because that is the measure by which our schools will be judged. We know, because every piece of research since he has introduced this measure by which we judge our schools shows it, that schools are cutting their education in creativity and reducing the number of their teachers qualified to teach these subjects. That is betraying future generations and it will damage our country’s international achievement, economic success and, in particular, the success of our creative industries. I beg him to think again, because I think he is capable of doing so and I think he is big enough to do so.