Education: Design Subjects
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take to encourage the study of design subjects in schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash)
My Lords, the Government believe that all pupils should have access to an excellent and well-rounded education. Art and design and design and technology are essential to that, and they are compulsory subjects in the national curriculum at key stages 1 to 3. We have reformed the D&T and art and design GCSEs and A-levels in response to feedback from experts such as the Royal Academy of Engineering and the James Dyson Foundation to make them more rigorous, contemporary and of greater appeal to students.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that skilled design is essential for our technical trades and creative industries? As the Government are correctly putting an emphasis on technical education, are they not concerned about the significant fall in take-up of GCSE and A-level design subjects, with a recent Association of School and College Leaders survey showing a drop of 44% over the past year alone in the number of schools offering GCSE design and technology? Will the Government address these concerns, and if so, how?
Lord Nash
My Lords, the figures for pupil number decline in D&T GCSE have fallen less in the past six academic years than in the four previous academic years up until 2010, so we have arrested the decline. We have introduced computer science for the first time. The number interested in that subject last year along with a substantial increase in IT entries considerably more than make up for the decline in D&T. Of course, as the noble Earl has mentioned, I do not think that anyone can doubt our commitment to technical education given the passing in your Lordships’ House yesterday of the Technical and Further Education Bill. New courses will be based on groups of occupations within the 15 framework routes, which will include creative and design.
Secondary Schools: Funding
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effect of proposed levels of funding allocated to secondary schools on the quality of education including the teaching of non-English-Baccalaureate subjects.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, through our careful management of the economy we have protected the core schools budget in real terms. This means that in 2017-18 schools will have more funding than ever before for children’s education, totalling more than £40 billion. We are also committed to ensuring that all pupils receive a broad and balanced curriculum that includes both an academic core and additional subjects that reflect their individual interests, strengths and characteristics, including arts subjects.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, is not the Minister alarmed by the recent comments of the head teacher of a school in Cheshire, who said that if further cuts—and they are cuts according to the National Audit Office—go ahead then all non-EBacc subjects could be removed from the curriculum, meaning no art, music, drama or design and technology? Arts departments across the country are already bearing the brunt of the current cuts, such as to specialist teachers, provision of materials and ICT. Will the Minister accept that there is simply not enough of a funding cake to go round?
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.
Education: A-levels in Creative Subjects
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her excellent introduction to this debate. Following the announcements of the discontinuation of history of art and archaeology A-levels on 12 October—three weeks and one day ago—there was an immediate outcry, which has not died down. Yet so far we have had no satisfactory response from the Government, so today I will listen to the Minister’s answer with great interest. This outcry is all the more remarkable—tens of thousands have signed petitions and hundreds have written to the AQA—considering that relatively few students presently study either of these courses. I will argue that many more could, yet it is clear that the value of these subjects to the country as a whole is the more significant consideration.
For instance, Mike Heyworth, director of the Council for British Archaeology, has said that the decision to discontinue archaeology is “disastrous”, telling the Times that this is,
“just at a time when we were looking to expand our support for the revised A-Level and its link with apprenticeships”.
The Royal Academy, the Courtauld Institute and many schools are among those who criticised the art history decision. Deborah Swallow, director of the Courtauld, has said:
“History of art is a rigorous interdisciplinary subject that gives students the critical skills to deal with a world that is increasingly saturated with images”.
Simon Schama tweeted,
“this government determined to impoverish the next generation”.
It is difficult, if not impossible, not to see such developments except within the wider context of the more general downgrading of the arts within the school educational system. Last year, for example, we also lost creative writing as an A-level. We also have a GCSE system, the EBacc, referred to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Nye, which excludes arts subjects from the core subjects. This year that has already led to a drop of 5% in take-up in art and design subjects, and it is having a detrimental influence on the teaching and perception of arts subjects at every key stage. On the subject of the EBacc, can the Government give further news of when they will respond to the consultation, since it will be one year this Wednesday since it opened?
One of the reasons given for the discontinuation of art history is the number of students studying it, yet teachers are repeatedly saying that the course is so popular that they have to cap the numbers. The BBC reports Godalming College, a state sixth form, as saying this, and Rose Aidin, who runs the A-level course at the Wallace Collection, says that there is a waiting list for this course which includes state school students. This again raises the issue of what subjects are encouraged to be studied in our state schools as a whole and whether the demands from students are being properly met.
A criticism of art history that has been made, notably by the art critic Jonathan Jones, is that it is a so-called posh subject. It is true that around 75% of students come from private schools, but this still leaves a quarter of students from state schools. If the course is cut, state school children will be barred for ever. Private schools will still run art history courses, and they will be right to do so to maintain the balance between arts, humanities and sciences which is increasingly denied within the state school system. Private schools will then own the subject, and their students will have the advantage in continuing on to degree level despite what AQA has said to the contrary. Again, this will be part of pushing the arts further into the hands of the better-off, which is already happening with music and drama.
Indeed there is nothing that says that art history or indeed any art subject is inherently posh. In 2013, in a talk on global citizenship Sir Nicholas Serota said:
“Art is a fundamental part of the public realm. In their work, artists express ideas, attitudes and beliefs. Often, these are central to politics, society and economics”.
This is true of all ages, and visual literacy should, in the 21st century, be a central aspect of our education.
One irony about the history of art A-level is that the new syllabus is intended to appeal to a wider range of students and to cover a wide range of cultures, as it is concerned with art on a global scale rather than concentrating on the history of western art. Learning about the arts is inherently about reaching out to other cultures, the importance of which, in our current more insular climate, we are at risk of dangerously underestimating.
The provision of creative subjects in primary schools and at key stages 3 to 4 lays the foundations of a rounded education which will give children the most informed basis for making a more specialised choice, a choice which should be as wide as possible if students’ needs and capabilities are to be fulfilled. Yet, in recent years, we have been cutting down on that choice. Justine Greening said last week that girls need to be encouraged into STEM subjects. A lot of them are studying arts subjects and would like to continue to do so. We could just as easily turn this question around and ask where are the boys in arts subjects. STEM needs to be expanded to STEAM.
AQA has also cited as a prime reason a lack of competence in marking art history and,
“the complex and specialist nature of the exams”.
I do not believe for one moment that there is not the expertise in this country to address this. Will the Government intercede on this matter in particular? In the end, it is not AQA which should be held responsible. The Government are responsible for our education, and they need to be held to account.
I do not know what the Minister is going to say about the future of the threatened A-levels. I hope he will not hide behind the reasons given by AQA and that he will supply us with good news about the continuation of these subjects that will at least make one or two of our arguments redundant.
Education (Pupil Information) (England) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is important that schools know how many of their pupils have English as an additional language. I hope that means that extra resources and support can be provided for those pupils. Indeed, schools and local authorities have been doing this for decades. However, the requirement for every school in England—by the way, we are not talking about Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales—to collect information en masse about every child’s country of birth is, frankly, unbelievable.
These regulations were made on 20 July and laid before Parliament on 27 July, after Parliament had risen for the Summer Recess. They were rushed through Parliament in the six-week summer holiday with no debate, no proper scrutiny or, indeed, public consultation. You might have thought that the DfE would have wanted to consult, take soundings and take the views of a range of organisations before embarking on this requirement. However, that was not the case. The regulations were rushed through Parliament and that was it.
Against a backdrop of a massive increase in anti-immigration rhetoric, as witnessed by big increases in hate crime, and at one stage the Government considering asking firms to report on the number of foreign staff they employed, there is real concern among members of different ethnic groups about victimisation and being targeted. I am afraid that this proposal has all the hallmarks of racism, particularly as language codes are already recorded for pupils with English as an additional language, as are codes on their ethnic background. We have already seen the effects of this new requirement. It became a duty for schools to collect this information this September. Some schools have asked pupils to bring in their passports. Can noble Lords imagine pupils having to bring in their passports? In investigating the school census, Schools Week found classroom discrimination whereby only non-white children were being asked to bring in their passports to school. The Independent reported that where parents do not provide information, teachers will be asked to guess the ethnicity of pupils. Is it any wonder that children and young people have felt discriminated against and embarrassed in front of their peers? The Government may say that the guidelines state such and such, but that is a very different matter from practice in schools.
What is the purpose of collecting the information? The Minister says in his letter to me that the information will help us to understand the impact of migration on schools—for example, what extra support we may need to provide. However, there is no extra budget financing. He goes on to say that it will help us plan how we ensure there are enough good places for every child. However, knowing where a child was born has nothing to do with school place provision. The DfE says that the information will not be accessible to the Home Office, but already on 18 separate occasions since 2012 the National Pupil Database data have been handed over to the Home Office, while information has been granted to the police 31 times.
The actions of the Government and statements from them on nationality and country of birth have also raised real concerns about the confidentiality of the school census as a whole and the child’s personal data given by parents in good faith when their child enrols at school. If information from the school census can be shared with other agencies, for example the Home Office and police, without any oversight at all or consent, what does that say about the confidentiality of such information? By acknowledging that the nationality and country of birth data are too sensitive to be kept on the National Pupil Database with other data, are the Government suggesting that that database is not a secure place for a child’s data to be stored? How does this rest with our child safeguarding responsibilities?
I am very grateful to the Minister for his letter of 26 October, in which he made a number of key points. I hope that when he responds to the debate he will deal with some of them. He says that the new data on nationality and country of birth will be provided to schools by parents only if they choose to do so. It will be entirely optional. What is the point of all this if, at the end of the day, it will be entirely optional? How will that affect the need for extra resources or school placements?
On the question of passing information to the Home Office, the Minister says that it is solely for internal Department for Education use. How can we have a 100% cast-iron guarantee that this information will not be passed on to other agencies? He also talks about how we currently give information to private organisations and for research purposes. Is there to be carte blanche? What checks and balances are currently in place when people ask to see this information, and how do we ensure that if we agree that information goes to a private organisation, we are happy that it will be treated correctly and properly?
Finally, to go back to the point I made at the beginning, the Minister talks in his letter about extra support. Are we to understand that there are plans to provide extra financial support for schools which have children from different ethnic backgrounds?
Children are children, and to use their personal information for immigration enforcement is disingenuous, irresponsible, and not the hallmark of a tolerant, open and caring society.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for introducing this Motion and I agree with his concerns.
There are two aspects to this. One is concern over whether school census data might be passed to the Home Office for immigration purposes, and the other is whether the gathering of these data oversteps the bounds of privacy, whether or not there is any usefulness for education. I have to say that but for the perseverance of campaign groups such as Against Borders for Children and Jen Persson of defenddigitalme, we would be none the wiser about the sharing for immigration purposes of the National Pupil Database between the Department for Education and the Home Office that has already gone on.
It has taken two freedom of information requests by Pippa King as well as Parliamentary Written Questions from Caroline Lucas to uncover, for instance, that in the last 15 months alone, requests to a total of 2,462 pupils have been made by the Home Office. I therefore feel that it is already very difficult to trust any reassurances that the Government now might make for the future. These revelations also contradict the statement that the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, made in this Chamber on October 12 when he said,
“I reassure the House that the information is kept within the Department for Education and is not passed on to the Home Office”.—[Official Report, 12/10/16; col. 1890.]
This is clearly untrue, and I hope that this statement will be retracted. So far, the Government have said nothing about these disclosures.
We learned at the weekend from the report in Schools Week that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has said that the nationality and place of birth data would be kept in a separate database. This raises a number of questions, not least whether this is a tacit admission that the NPD is not a secure place already in terms of data sharing—and of course we know now that it is not. But I would like to know what would be so special about this separate database. What is the precise wording that will ensure that these data will not be shared with the Home Office? Will this be a legally binding agreement? That these data would be on a different database seems to me to be meaningless in itself. What, then, of the NPD? Can the Minister assure us that those data, aside from nationality and birthplace, will not be shared in the future with the Home Office? What is the wording of any agreement which will ensure that?
Parents are upset, not just about how this information might be used but because these questions are asked at all. They are fundamentally intrusive in the same way that the listing of foreign workers would be. We also know that the same questions are also being asked of school governors. If it is unclear how pupils’ data can be used for the improvement of their education, it seems that the same information on school governors does not have anything at all to do with either a good education or good governance.
One of the things that ought to be emphasised is that these questions are in one important sense mandatory. You cannot leave them blank and, despite what it says in the guidance, parents have been asked for their passports for the simple reason that when the department asks a school to do something, they will naturally try to do so as effectively as they can. It is true that you can currently put “Refuse” as an answer, which parents are quite rightly doing out of protest at being asked these questions, but for many parents this will appear a provocative response. Can the Minister say whether there would be a straightforward opportunity for parents who are unhappy about having already given the information to have it retracted? Having “Refuse” as an option is a telling recognition that this is a sensitive area and, if these regulations continue, it will not surprise me at all if in a year or two that option is removed.
As everyone in education knows, it is a hard job to get pupils who may be excluded from mainstream education by circumstance into education. We need to get all our children into school, not frighten them away. In a sense, the Minister let the cat out of the bag in answer to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, that,
“it better enables us to monitor immigration issues within this country”.—[Official Report, 12/10/16; col. 1889.]
How is that a function of the DfE? Data gathered by the DfE should not be used to monitor immigration issues. Teachers are not border guards.
This is a children’s rights issue. Many parents are against the provision of these data and campaign groups have displayed serious concerns about it. The regret Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is unfortunately well founded.
School Census: Pupils’ Nationality
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government for what purpose they intend to use the information ascertained from the newly introduced question in the school census on pupils’ nationality.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, we will use information on pupils’ nationality and country of birth to understand how we can give all pupils a better education that caters to their individual needs. If there are people whose first language is not English, we will be able to see how well they are doing and how we can help their school to contribute meaningfully to raising pupils’ outcomes. These new data are solely for the DfE to use in research, statistics and analysis.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that parents are appalled by the introduction of these questions on nationality and place of birth, which have nothing to do with a good education? Is he further aware that a freedom of information request has revealed that the Home Office has frequently used the pupil database for immigration purposes? Does he not therefore agree that these questions are on the same level of intrusiveness as listing foreign workers, and should be removed from the census?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, the census covers a range of things, and we should be aware that children of foreign nationals can face additional challenges upon starting school in the UK. They are not likely to speak English fluently and may not have been here for the full school choice or application round, so they are more frequently placed in schools that, ideally, they would not choose. The education system they have arrived from may be different from the English system, so they may be behind our expected standards simply because they have yet to cover elements of our curriculum. Understanding nationalities helps us to put the right policies in place to help those children, and there are safeguards in place.
Schools: Drama
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage the teaching and study of drama in schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, we want all pupils to participate in and gain the knowledge, skills and understanding associated with the artistic practice of drama. All maintained schools are required to teach drama as part of the national curriculum in English. Teachers are expected to introduce pupils to works from a range of genres, historical periods and authors. Pupils are taught about role play, improvisation and performance, as well as studying the art of playwriting.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the latest figures—among them fairly catastrophic figures for arts subjects—which show a drop in England of 16% in the take-up of GCSEs in drama over the past six years? Does the Minister share the widely expressed concern that with drama being offered less and less in state schools, the acting profession will become accessible to only the well-off and privately educated? If so, what action are the Government going to take?
Lord Nash
What the noble Earl says about acting as a career could equally be said about many other careers, sadly, and that is why we have invested so much in school reform over the past five years. Specifically, we have provided means-tested support to ensure that talented 18 to 23 year-olds from all backgrounds receive the training they need to succeed in acting careers, and we have funded the Royal Shakespeare Company to provide all state schools with a free copy of its toolkit for teachers and to support young people performing Shakespeare in theatres.
Queen’s Speech
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I want to make a few observations on the arts, culture, education and the media. I would like to start on a high note, so first, I very much congratulate the Government on introducing a Bill finally to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This is great news. There should also be a special mention of the UK’s Peter Stone of Newcastle University, who since the beginning of the year has held the first ever UNESCO chair in Cultural Property Protection and Peace and has campaigned for this legislation for the past 13 years.
Bringing broadband to every household that wishes to have it is an excellent idea and I hope that project works well. I echo what others have said about speeds. In other areas I have some concerns. I am anxious about how the intention to allow local councils to retain 100% of business rates will affect charitable bodies, including art centres, orchestras and theatres large and small, which currently are allowed 80% mandatory relief, on which many organisations depend. If this is to be left up to already cash-strapped councils, it simply will not work. Can the Minister allay my fears on this?
In a wider cultural sense, there should be some concern about the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill. I am probably one of the few in this House who are a little sceptical about housing-led development, and who feel that we may be in danger of sacrificing what ought to be a sensitive, balanced and inclusive approach to urban design. One of the crises in the arts is the shortage of studio work spaces. Of course, this is only one kind of demand among many others. Nevertheless, this and other uses to which space might or should be put are increasingly likely to be shut out, not just by spiralling rents but by the not unrelated issue of the increased muscle of developers.
A different topic—arts education—was not in the Queen’s Speech. However, I want to make this point because it is timely. The petition to include arts subjects in the EBacc reached well over 100,000 signatures last month. Consequently, there will be a debate on this in the Commons on 4 July, as the Minister will be aware. I hope the Government will take into consideration the views expressed in this debate before they respond to the EBacc consultation.
I want to say a couple of things about the BBC. The way I think about the BBC—as do others—is as a public space. Public space is under threat in this country at present. Indeed, in the geographical sense of buildings and land, too much is being sold off. In respect of arts and cultural services, libraries and museums, particularly in the north, are under increasing threat from continuing cuts to local government funding—cuts which many now believe are unnecessary.
The BBC is a special kind of public space and, in this sense, the distinction that some have recently drawn between a state broadcaster and a public broadcaster is apposite. A public space should contain within it, by definition, a range of public interests, from the most popular to the specialist, but all accessible within this one space. That is why the term “distinctiveness”, as used by the Secretary of State, is the wrong language. In this context, it is about distinctiveness of product: that is to say—I think wrongly—about programme content. It is the language of the marketplace. This term is being used to do down the BBC at the same time as misrepresenting it. The BBC’s distinctiveness is already determined by its inherent shape, not primarily—and I emphasise the word primarily—by its programme content. Its shape, therefore, as a non-commercial broadcaster with programmes uninterrupted by commercials, is part of its character which should not be underestimated. If you remove the popular, the BBC would be destroyed as a public space, which would be a great tragedy.
My second point concerns the constant pressure to prove both independence and impartiality. Again, the BBC is, by definition, already both independent and impartial, because it is a public broadcaster and a public space. But with appointees to the new board accountable only to the Government, the BBC would—again, by definition alone—lose that independence. As an illustration of the current pressures, last month in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash, in the context of the EU debate, said that by,
“bending over backwards to be impartial … The danger … is that it reduces everything to claim and counterclaim”.
Facts then become hard to come by, and it becomes too easy to exclude other, more nuanced voices. Given the current uncertainties and the pressures on the BBC —some obvious, some less so—the terms of the charter review need to be scrutinised, and I would support this being debated and voted upon in Parliament.
Education: English Baccalaureate
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that children receive a balanced and rounded education in schools; and what effect the English baccalaureate requirements will have in that regard.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to have this important debate. I look forward to hearing all noble Lords’ contributions and the Minister’s response. I am only sorry that we do not have more time. I thank the many organisations that have sent me briefings, all of which, without exception, either decry the omission of arts subjects from the English baccalaureate performance measure or wish to see the measure removed entirely. The consultation on the implementation of EBacc closed last Friday, but I hope the Minister will take the contributions made today on EBacc specifically in the spirit of being additional to that consultation.
There is a sense of déjà vu. It is almost exactly three years since, following a huge outcry from educationalists, arts educators and the creative industries, Michael Gove made the announcement that the EBacc certificate would be “a bridge too far”. Yet, three years on, the Bacc for the Future campaign is reconvened, and here we are again with the EBacc strengthened as a performance measure. The newer “progress eight” accountability measure may include arts subjects, but there is every sense from the Government that the EBacc is to be the most significant measure.
There are many reasons why a broad-based or rounded education is a good thing—I would say an essential element of a child’s preparation for life. I will go through some of these reasons and suggest where the EBacc or other curricula might relate to it. I have an 11 year-old daughter who will go to secondary school later this year, so these concerns are very much on my mind. First, I believe that the important thing for my daughter is that her curiosity about the world should be met by her education and that she should enjoy learning. I could stop right there, because that is the most important thing and something it is far too easy to forget in today’s political culture—not necessarily shared by all—which so firmly yokes an idea about future work and assumptions about what employers will want to education, where education has become synonymous with what is termed “academic achievement”.
Personally, I would get rid of all league tables. Germany, which has recently reorganised its school educational system and has 7% youth unemployment, as opposed to our 12%, does pretty well without them. The Cultural Learning Alliance, alongside others, argues against having the EBacc at all, not just because of the arts omission, but because there is, as it says, an already desperately crowded accountability system of measures—five of them now, including three EBacc ones—with the exclusivity of the EBacc as an all-or-nothing measure particularly concerning. This is a long way from education for its own sake.
Secondly, a broad-based education creates as many opportunities as possible, whether it is the history class that fired you up, or that particular art teacher. Children will not necessarily be excited by everything. This is the cardinal mistake that Nick Gibb made in his social justice speech last June. Real social justice is to treat children as individuals who are open to a variety of possibilities. The narrow and, crucially, uniformly set EBacc curriculum of eight subjects, which could be pushed to 10, and the average number of subjects taken at key stage 4 of eight will, once you include statutory RE and PE—and PSHE, which should be statutory—leave very little room, if any, for art, music and drama, or other subjects, including technological courses.
It ought to be emphasised that this is an observation made not just by interested arts organisations. The Association of School and College Leaders, for example, argued precisely this in its EBacc consultation, noting, as many others have, the danger that music and drama courses will end up becoming the preserve of the elite, accessible only to those who can afford private tuition, or, indeed, private schooling. Department for Education figures, quoted by the Cultural Learning Alliance, show that between 2010 and 2014 the number of hours that the arts were taught fell by 10% and the number of arts teachers fell by 11%.
Other subjects, too, are being pushed to the margins—philosophy, for instance, which AC Grayling and John Taylor of Rugby justifiably argued should have its own GCSE. Tom Sherrington of the Headteachers’ Roundtable makes the case for sociology. But what all such arguments make apparent is the increasing lack of flexibility in subject choice. What is the Minister’s reaction to those schools which are resistant to the EBacc, particularly considering that an ASCL survey last year found that a staggering 87% of secondary school leaders are unhappy with the EBacc proposals? One of the conditions, too, of the setting up of academies was that they should provide a broad-based education, which, as I will endeavour to show, the EBacc, by its very nature, opposes.
Thirdly, a narrow curriculum will be a poorer one because a broad-based curriculum is one that, in a good school, will allow subjects to have conversations with each other. I like very much the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner’s description of the international baccalaureate—a more broad-based, balanced and outward-looking curriculum—as one which helps students,
“think critically, synthesize knowledge, reflect on their own thought processes and get their feet wet in interdisciplinary thinking”.
In this sense, an EBacc without the arts should be unthinkable; a core curriculum without the arts will not raise standards but lower them. Students being able to make connections between disparate subjects is not only part of the learning process; it will be that innovation that fires the future.
Finally, a rounded education treats the main areas of education as being of equal value. This is not just good for the pupil; it is good for society that in later life the scientist or technologist should have an equal respect for the artist or creative, and the artist the same respect for science. A broad-based education is not the enemy of specialisation but part of the same process—the T-shape. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have read the remarkable blog by 16 year-old Orli Vogt-Vincent in this week’s Guardian, which describes the prejudice she has had to face at her school, not just from fellow students but from teachers too, in deciding to choose dance as a main subject of study—shades of “Billy Elliot”.
But this kind of experience seems to be becoming increasingly common again, and unfortunately what the EBacc will do is institutionalise this prejudice further, and further polarise subject areas in schools which will not be a reflection of the reality outside. The artist Bob and Roberta Smith made an interesting contribution to last year’s Warwick Commission report when he said that CP Snow’s “two cultures” distinction of science and humanities—for which you can also read the arts—
“had been made irrelevant by … the power of digital technology”.
We have, for instance, a burgeoning video games industry which is dependent—as so much new enterprise is—on a number of different interactive disciplines. It happens to be crying out for fine and graphic artists, but the industry has to go abroad to obtain them. Nevertheless, the latest figures, released by the DCMS last week, show that the creative industries are now worth £84.1 billion, so we must have been doing something right somewhere —at least in the past. Because why then, even using the Government’s own arguments about education and work, is not the huge importance of the creative industries being reflected in a similar status for arts and art and design education in our schools?
Through changing the culture, the EBacc will have an effect throughout all the key stages and beyond. Why, for instance, would primary schools take seriously subjects that are considered inferior at a later stage? The National Society for Education in Art and Design, in a survey of more than 1,000 educators, the full results of which are to be presented at next week’s all-party art, design and craft education group meeting, indicates that in the last five years 53% of key stage 3 art and design teachers report a fall in levels of attainment at secondary transfer, whereas only 6% said that standards had increased.
At present, the EBacc subjects are taken up by just over a quarter of students. The Cultural Learning Alliance has shown that in the last five years take-up of GCSE arts and design subjects, including music, drama and design and technology, among other subjects, has already dropped by 14%. What, then, will be the outcome for a balanced education if the Government achieve their current target of 90%?
I repeat that the vast majority of secondary school leaders oppose the current EBacc as it stands. The National Association of Head Teachers, the NUT, the Creative Industries Federation, the Music Industries Association, the Design Council and the CBI—the list goes on and on. Hundreds of organisations and institutions have expressed concern over the omission of creative subjects from the EBacc as well as its inflexibility.
The EBacc is a flawed measure. It should either be radically reformed, or dropped entirely.
Creative Sector: Educational Provision
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Nash
All good schools will encourage their pupils to engage in these activities. It is all part of a well-rounded education. We are seeing this across the board. We are also seeing the creation of new free schools that focus specifically on arts and music. We have the East London Arts and Music Academy, the Plymouth School of Creative Arts, and my noble friend Lord Baker will be pleased to hear that we have a number of UTCs specialising in creative and digital media.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, does not the Minister agree that the point about a truly rounded school education is not only that it is a good in itself, but that it is the very thing that employers demand?