School Curriculum: Creative Subjects

Lord Storey Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am certainly happy to acknowledge the importance of creative and arts subjects. As I said, we have been doing a lot of work in providing funding to encourage arts and music programmes for schools. Schools themselves are leading the way in valuing these subjects and making sure that their young people have access to a whole range of activities. The new Progress 8 measure will give more scope to include creative subjects within it, which we hope will also reinforce the importance of creative subjects.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the creative subjects are hugely important to the British economy. We have seen the creative industries grow by 8.9%; I think that as a total package they are now worth £84 billion. Music alone has gained £2 billion in exports. Is it not absolutely crazy to see creative subjects in our schools declining because of this nonsense of not including them in the EBacc? The Minister talked about the Progress 8 measure, but what is happening is that the other subjects being chosen are the three sciences or another of history or geography.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that the creative sector is a great success story and is outperforming other sectors in our economy, with a growth of almost 9% in 2014, which was nearly double that of the economy as a whole. As he said, the core sector was worth £84 billion in 2014. We want to continue to see that great success, which is why we are also reforming the computing GCSE and the art and design GCSE to make them more relevant and ensure that young people have the skills for success in these great industries.