Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Nick Gibb(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
The leaked small schools task force report shows that the Department ignored advice to continue funding small schools to provide universal infant free school meals. This will affect 566 children in the schools represented by the Education Front-Bench team and thousands more children represented by those on the Government Back Benches. Will the Minister today commit to reverse this short-sighted cut and ensure that small schools have adequate funding to feed their infant children free school meals?
EBacc: Expressive Arts Subjects
Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Nick Gibb(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Mrs Hodgson
The hon. Lady makes a good point. Trips to theatres, cultural sites and museums are becoming increasingly difficult for various reasons, including safeguarding and cost—even though museums are free to visit, the children have to get there, which takes time and organisation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said earlier, such trips will be lacking from some of the children’s daily lives, weekends and holidays, so it is important that that shortfall is made up for in school. For more privileged children, no matter whether they go to state or independent schools, it is just a normal part of their existence. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention.
In May 2014, the Cultural Learning Alliance found that the number of hours of art teaching and of art teachers had fallen in secondary schools since 2010. Design and technology faced the greatest decline, with 11% fewer teachers and less teaching time. The number of art and design teachers had fallen by 4% and the number of teaching hours by 6%, even though the number of pupils in secondary schools has fallen by about 2%. It is clear that provision of arts subjects is declining disproportionately.
As I mentioned earlier, the National Society for Education in Art and Design conducted a survey of teachers working across England in the academic year 2015-16 on the impact of Government policy on art, craft and design education over the past five years. The study found that 33% of art and design teachers at key stage 4, across all sectors, reported a reduction in time dedicated to their subject over the past five years. That figure rises to 44% in responses from academies. Of those teachers, 93% said that the EBacc was directly reducing opportunities to select art and design at GCSE level.
The reduction in provision for vocational creative qualifications is even more illuminating and concerning. Between 2011 and 2015, completions of art, craft and design level 2 vocational qualifications decreased by 43%. Although we are discussing the EBacc, which is only a performance measure at secondary school, it is having clear ramifications for other stages of young people’s education. Figures from the Cultural Learning Alliance show that between 2010 and 2015, dance AS-levels have declined by 24% and dance A-levels have declined by 17%.
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on art, craft and design in education, I have heard anecdotally that primary schools are less free to dedicate time to creative education due to unprecedented pressure on the three R’s—reading, writing and arithmetic, which we all agree are extremely important. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, it should not be a case of either/or. Both are vital.
Secondary school teachers now report a fall in artistic skills and confidence when pupils arrive in year 7. Sadly, the ramifications of the curriculum changes are that secondary schools are putting less time and fewer resources into creative education in an understandable bid to climb the league tables. It is having a knock-on effect on other parts of the education pipeline. It means that pupils are being denied the opportunity to develop creative cognitive skills that are useful in other subjects, such as maths or science, and may become less confident and able to choose or pursue artistic GCSEs and A-levels.
A broad and rounded education is paramount to skilling our young people to enter the world of work in the 21st century. An art education can be vital to doing so, but if the Government insist on keeping the EBacc as a performance measure, in order not to weaken arts provision in our schools even further, the only way to maintain quality creative education is to include the creative arts in the EBacc. Excluding the arts subjects from the EBacc—
Mrs Hodgson
It could be left to the young person to choose, as with most subjects. We do not tell young people which language they must study, or which humanity. Let the young person choose; just put a list of creative arts there.
By excluding arts subjects from the EBacc, the Government have told our students that those subjects are not important and are a waste of their time and talent. The situation is simply not good enough. We need to be serious about providing a creative education that ensures that young people from ordinary backgrounds, as others have said, have opportunities to develop their skills so that they can become the next world-famous artist filling art galleries around the world, the next global superstar or actor packing out arenas or theatres or—I must declare an interest again—the next big games artist creating the next global game. The UK has world-leading companies in the games industry.
We should not limit young people’s life chances in this way. We need a forward-looking curriculum that provides a truly rounded education, remembering that subjects do not stand alone. Withdrawing opportunities from young people’s lives to express themselves creatively will not only ruin their chance to broaden their horizons and their understanding of what drives us as humans—our creativity—but affect the fledgling sectors that rely heavily on our nurture of the skills needed to make them soar.
Our human creativity is boundless, and studying creative subjects can harness it. That is why it is important that we ensure that whether or not the EBacc remains, the creative subjects have a place in our curriculum and do not face further and continual diminution by Government reforms. The arts are what we all do in our spare time, in one form or another. Why? They make our hearts soar. We are creative and artistic beings. Since the first caveman drew a buffalo on the first cave wall and danced around the fire singing, the arts have been how we express ourselves. They are intrinsic to being human. I ask the Minister: please do not make our education system a cultural desert for our children, as I fear the unintended consequences.
Mr Gibb
Yes, I will come to that.
The issue is that English, maths and science are compulsory until the age of 16. Until 2004, a foreign language was compulsory until the age of 16. It would not be hugely controversial to reintroduce such a compulsion, although we are not doing that. What we are really talking about is one subject—a humanity—for two years in our schools at key stage 4. All this debate seems to be about is whether children should continue to study either history or geography—one subject out of the whole school curriculum—for another two years at school. This debate boils down to that and whether we think it is important for students to study a language.
Our view is that it is important that young people at secondary school study history and geography at key stage 3, take both subjects seriously, and take one or other of them through to GCSE. We took that policy decision because we believe it is important that young people learn the skills of writing essays and that they engage in understanding that part of our history. It is a tiny part of the curriculum. We were also determined to keep the EBacc small to enable pupils to study the arts, a second foreign language or vocational subjects in the one, two or three extra slots that the EBacc allows.
Mrs Hodgson
I think we all agree that the aspiration behind the EBacc is honourable—the Minister cited figures for children in some of our poorer schools who were taking it, as opposed to those who are achieving it now—but why are we seeing the unintended consequences that are highlighted by the NSEAD report, which I cited earlier? Is he prepared to do anything about them?
Mr Gibb
People will look carefully at a school’s EBacc performance measure. We want more young people—90% by 2020—to be taking GCSEs in those core academic subjects, which will provide the widest level of opportunities for them in future. That is what all the evidence suggests, and the policy in China, Finland, the state of Ontario in Canada, the state of Victoria in Australia, Germany and Poland is that all young people study those EBacc subjects. In fact, no one present has disagreed that all those subjects should be compulsory to the age of 14, or that English, maths and science should be compulsory to 16: all the debate is about is whether young people should study a foreign language, or history or geography, for two more years. The policy of the Government is that they should be, because that is what is needed to have a broad and balanced education.
We deliberately kept the EBacc small—we received representations from all quarters asking for a whole range of other subjects, in addition to the arts, to be included in the EBacc. It could well become 10, 11 or 12 subjects if we gave in to those requests, but we deliberately kept it small—to seven or eight subjects—to enable young people to take an eighth, ninth or 10th GCSE, or an equivalent, in addition to the series of core academic subjects. That is what everyone in the Chamber today, I thought, had agreed with—that this is about what is in addition to the core academic subjects, and not instead of them.
On average, pupils in state-funded schools enter nine GCSEs and equivalent qualifications, rising to 10 for more able pupils. For many pupils, the EBacc will mean taking seven GCSEs and, for those taking triple science, it will mean taking eight. That means there will continue to be room to study other subjects, including the arts, as I have just said. If we extended the EBacc by including an arts subject, as proposed by the e-petition, pupil choice would be restricted, not expanded. Such a measure would prevent pupils from taking additional non-arts subjects of their own choosing, be that design and technology, religious education or a second foreign language. They might wish to study both history and geography, or to take a high-quality vocational course.
Mrs Hodgson
Does the Minister not recognise and perhaps agree that that might squeeze out other subjects, but would show that the arts are important? Science, maths, English and a language are important, but including a creative subject would send a vital message.
Mr Gibb
Messaging is one thing—I have said this to those who have been arguing about religious studies—but actually the lobbying itself is the messaging. I have never said, and no one in the Government has said, that arts subjects are any less valuable than the subjects in the EBacc. We have never said that economics is less valuable than any of the EBacc subjects. We have never said that vocational subjects are less valuable. In fact, we have had a whole review of vocational education, so that the remaining vocational qualifications that feature in the performance tables—more than 100—are valuable, deliberately, for that reason. We have never differentiated in our messaging between what is in the EBacc and what is not in the EBacc.
The purpose of the EBacc is to ensure that all young people take the combination of GCSEs that are taken by young people in the most privileged schools in our country and in the best and most high-achieving schools in the state sector. That is what we want and it concerns us that young people from deprived backgrounds who are eligible for free school meals are half as likely to take that combination, compared with their more fortunate peers. Tackling that issue is the core reason why the Government introduced the EBacc measure.
It has been suggested today that arts are not valued in the school accountability system. That is not the case. The EBacc is one of several measures against which school performance is judged. Progress 8, which forms the basis for the school floor standard, measures performance across eight subjects: English, maths, three EBacc subjects and three other approved qualifications. Those other slots can be filled by arts qualifications, if a pupil wishes. In addition, the once sprawling selection of GCSEs that was allowed to develop over the years has been narrowed to ensure that the ones we have are of a high quality—in fact, 28 GCSEs have been discontinued—which will further strengthen the position of core arts qualifications in schools.
There is no reason why the EBacc should imperil the status of arts subjects. Both core academic and creative subjects can, and should, co-exist in any good school. We have seen a dip in provisional arts entries this year, but since the EBacc was first introduced the proportion of pupils in state-funded schools taking at least one GCSE in an arts subject has increased, rising from 46% in 2011 to 50% in 2015. At Whitmore High School in Harrow, where 88% of pupils entered the EBacc in 2015, pupils benefit from opportunities to take part in a wide range of art, music and drama clubs.
GCSEs and A-levels in arts subjects have been reformed to include more rigorous subject content. From September 2016, schools will be teaching new GCSEs in music, dance and drama, and new AS and A-levels in music and in drama and theatre. We are working with exam boards and Ofqual to make sure it is very clear that all students should see live drama in the theatre as part of their drama qualification, and we expect that to be in place from September 2017.
It is worth noting also that one of the distinctive virtues of arts subjects is that pupils can and are very willing to participate in them as a part of their extra-curricular school experience. Pupils can perform in a school orchestra, take part in a dance group or participate on stage or backstage in a school play without necessarily taking music, dance or drama GCSE. It is for that reason that, between 2012 and 2016, we invested over £460 million in a diverse portfolio of music and arts education programmes designed to improve access to the arts for all children, regardless of their background, and to develop talent across the country. That includes support for the network of music education hubs, national youth music organisations, the National Youth Dance Company, a museums and schools programme and support for the Shakespeare Schools Festival. Those programmes are having an impact on pupils across the country. The National Youth Dance Company is in the middle of a national tour, which started on 26 June in Nottingham and takes in Newcastle, Leeds, Ipswich and Falmouth among other locations.
Music education hubs are intended to ensure that every child in England has the opportunity to learn a musical instrument through weekly whole-class ensemble teaching programmes. They are also expected to ensure that clear progression routes are available and affordable, and many hubs subsidise the cost of lessons for pupils. Under that programme, any budding seeds of musical passion that young people have will not remain un-nurtured. We announced in December that funding for music education hubs would remain at £75 million in 2016-17.
Introducing primary school pupils to the arts early on is important and that is why I am so pleased that every primary school in the country now has free access to “Classical 100”, which is a new resource to introduce pupils to classical music. It comprises high quality Decca recordings of 100 pieces of classical music from the 11th century to the 21st century that I hope will stimulate children’s lifelong appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of music. Examples include Beethoven’s fifth symphony and Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves as well as children’s classics such as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. That is something I was passionate about getting off the ground.
As well as programmes to ensure that all pupils receive a good arts education, we are continuing to invest in programmes ensuring the most talented can fulfil that talent. The music and dance, and the dance and drama awards schemes provide means-tested support to ensure that talented young people from all backgrounds receive the training they need to succeed in careers in music, dancing and acting. About 3,500 students a year benefit from that support, studying at world-class institutions such as the Royal Ballet School, Chetham’s School of Music and the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.
We have heard today concerns that the EBacc will hurt our creative industries. We absolutely recognise how important the creative industries are to our economy and our identity, but we do not accept that academic subjects at GCSE should prevent pupils from taking arts subjects.