EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects

Michelle Donelan Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 111731 relating to expressive arts subjects and the EBacc.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. As a member of the Petitions Committee and the Select Committee on Education, I am delighted to introduce the debate. The title of the petition, which was signed by more than 102,000 people, is “Include expressive arts subjects in the Ebacc”. It reads:

“The English Baccalaureate, or Ebacc, is a standard which maintains that English, maths, science, a language and a humanity define a good education. The exclusion of art, music, drama and other expressive subjects is limiting, short sighted and cruel. Creativity must be at the heart of our schools.

Sec of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, states that she wants 90% of sixteen year olds to have The Ebacc. Numeracy and literacy are certainly key to future success in life, but it is wrong to say that the arts are not worthy of inclusion in a measure used to grade a school’s success. Our children deserve a broad, creative education, but the Ebacc is giving rise to massive declines in numbers of students able to choose arts subjects, at a time when the CBI demands more creative people.”

The petition was created by Richard Wilson, a drama teacher from Essex, because, as he explained, the

“marginalisation and downgrading of the arts and other creative subjects in state education is a topic which demands a debate in the Houses of Parliament.”

So here we are. Indeed, he says:

“The EBacc will have a dreadful impact on the arts in our schools.”

Mr Wilson’s petition was able to achieve the level of support it has thanks to the work of the Bacc for the Future campaign, and I know a number of people are here today, paying close attention to the debate. There is support from more than 200 organisations from the UK’s cultural sector, including the Design Council, the Creative Industries Federation, the BRIT school, Aardman Animations, the north-east’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, trade unions, orchestras, museums, art galleries, theatres, performing arts colleges, festivals, creative industry businesses and many more—all united in the belief that the Government’s education policies and specifically the EBacc risk profoundly damaging Britain’s rich and vibrant history of creativity and cultural achievement.

Those concerns have been passionately reflected in the countless emails and briefing notes that I have received ahead of this afternoon’s debate, and the responses I received to last week’s EBacc Twitter debate, which was kindly facilitated by the Petitions Committee Clerks. I have no doubt that everyone here today shares that passion and recognises the intrinsic value of the arts and arts education for society and the enjoyment and fulfilment they bring to children and adults in all walks of life across the UK. Of course, the opportunity of a creative education must be available to all—a view that appeared to be shared by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he wrote earlier this year:

“everyone—no matter who they are or where they come from—should have an equal opportunity to fulfil their creative potential.”

In a speech launching the Government’s life chances strategy in January, the Prime Minister pledged that

“culture should never be a privilege; it is a birthright that belongs to us all. But the truth is there are too many young people in Britain who are culturally disenfranchised. And if you believe in publicly funded arts and culture—as I passionately do—then you must also believe in equality of access, attracting all and welcoming all.”

The White Paper published in March by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport could not have been clearer, making a commitment that

“All state-funded schools must provide a broad and balanced curriculum that promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils. Experiencing and understanding culture is integral to education. Knowledge of great works of art, great music, great literature and great plays, and of their creators, is an important part of every child’s education. So too is being taught to play a musical instrument, to draw, paint and make things, to dance and to act. These can all lead to lifelong passions and can open doors to careers in the cultural and creative sectors and elsewhere. Without this knowledge and these skills, many children from disadvantaged backgrounds are excluded from meaningful engagement with their culture and heritage.”

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that those subjects are widely available at the moment, with the EBacc in place, and that the premise of the EBacc is to provide a core of academically rigorous subjects? Perhaps our attention should be on the evolution of the EBacc to include such subjects as design and technology, and on enhancing students’ career potential, rather than on including in it every subject currently offered in the curriculum.

[Catherine McKinnell]

It is helpful that the hon. Lady suggests a solution to the concerns I have outlined. The reality for the organisations, teachers and schools that have expressed concern to me in great numbers is that the take-up of the subjects she mentions is already starting to decline, which is of huge concern. I appreciate that she is trying to make constructive comments, but she cannot wipe out the fact that the concerns are real and must be addressed. I hope that the Minister is listening not only to me but to constructive solutions that may be offered.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Warburton]

I think that sharing music facilities and facilities generally is often a good way forward. That could certainly be considered, but schools need to work individually and to have the right facilities to look after their own pupils without having to look elsewhere—without having to run across the road and make sure that somebody else can help them out.

An EBacc that fails to make room for the arts can only entrench the inequality that I have described. Last week, I chaired a meeting of the all-party group for music education where we heard some very passionate views. We heard about a report from the charity Sound Connections, and Wired4Music, in which young people in London described the transformational impact of music education on their lives and careers. From the report, it is important to highlight the unanimity, strength of feeling and uneasy sense of shrinking opportunities for those in this generation, and succeeding generations, who might otherwise go on to careers in the creative industries.

I have to say, however, that the Government have made significant advances in supporting the arts. We have seen the first culture White Paper for 50 years, the Cultural Citizens Programme and the new heritage action zones. Alongside those headline initiatives, we have seen £15 million-worth of tax breaks for theatres this year and the welcome orchestra tax break, but widening participation in the arts must begin with education.

The debate this afternoon pivots on what a core curriculum is and whether an EBacc without the arts can ever be seen to provide that. The chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians said in a recent speech that this

“Government certainly seems to understand the importance of culture and creativity”.

It is because I believe that to be true that I urge them either to include the arts within the EBacc or to define a more balanced curriculum.

I will not quote figures because we have all heard plenty of those, but in 2014 the creative industries grew at twice the rate of the UK economy as a whole. Governments should play their strongest hand. We lead the world in music and the creative industries, but it is not just the utilitarian argument that is important—the arts are also important in themselves. Of course, this is not easy to prove, or even to quantify, but the broadening effect of the arts is very real.

It is not easy to show that people benefit from exposure to the mechanics of the arts, whether that is an understanding of the beautiful mathematical imperatives in four-part harmony or the experience of seeing Brunelleschi’s dome for the first time, in ways that they can take forward into other aspects of their lives. However, research has been done and a highly comprehensive study by the German Socio-Economic Panel in 2013 said:

“Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports”.

In addition, it found that children who take music lessons have

“better school grades and are more conscientious, open and ambitious.”

The study of music strengthens the motor cortex—although obviously not in every case. It improves working memory and long-term memory for visual stimuli. It helps people to manage anxiety and enhances self-confidence, self-esteem and social and personal skills. Studying music improves reading and verbal skills, and helps children to get good marks in exams. It raises IQ, encourages listening and helps children to learn languages more quickly. Some studies have even suggested that it slows the effects of ageing, just as being a Member of this House has precisely the opposite effect.

The moral effect of the arts is also critical. Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees. It is testimony to the unifying moral power of music that both the Taliban and ISIS, or Daesh, have banned it, just as one or two past Popes banned polyphony, then the interval of the tritone, and then excessive musical decoration.

I understand the pressure the Minister is under from all sides to add everything from Esperanto to den-building to the national curriculum. As an ex-teacher, I also understand that more of one subject must mean less of another. However, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, warm words butter no parsnips. The Department’s welcome focus on the ways in which education can form character makes it more important than ever that its place at the heart of the curriculum must be protected.

[Michelle Donelan]

Does my hon. Friend accept that adding creative subjects, such as art and music, would open up the options—for religious education, and for sport—and that the EBacc would be diluted more and more until it was dissolved? Is my hon. Friend in favour of the EBacc? I cannot see a way of having the cake and eating it.

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We can have a larger EBacc, we can manage our subjects more carefully, we can have an EBacc plus, as has been suggested, or we can have a more pick-and-mix, flexible and balanced approach, which might be more sensible. An EBacc without the arts is unthinkable. A core curriculum without the arts will not raise standards, but will lower them. Plato, 2,500 years ago, thought that music stood with arithmetic and geometry as a cornerstone of education, so who are we to chuck that away?

Depriving schoolchildren of the right to learn the pure language of the arts and music—the nuts and bolts—will deprive them of the right to understand, and depriving them of the right to understand is the unkindest and cruellest deprivation. It will confine them to a shrunken view of the world. I will go further. In so doing, we will reduce ourselves and our collective potential. A civilisation that denies its history and stops nurturing its cultural heritage is a dying civilisation. Civilisations die from self-doubt and dwindling confidence, not from enemy assault. Let us keep ourselves alive, play to our history, culture and strengths, and give everyone the chance to take part in that.