Arts: Education

(asked on 7th February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of his Department's funding for arts and music education in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools in England in each of the last five years.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 20th February 2018

The Department is investing an additional £1.3 billion in school funding, over and above existing expenditure, with core schools funding rising from almost £41 billion in 2017-18 to £43.5 billion in 2019-20.

In addition to funding which schools receive to deliver their curriculum, the Government funds a wide range of music and cultural education programmes to ensure that every child, whatever their background, has access to a high quality arts education. The attached table shows total funding from the Department for these programmes.

In maintained schools, music and art and design are compulsory subjects and although academies and free schools are not required to teach the national curriculum, they can use it as a benchmark. Beyond this, it is for schools to decide how best to deliver their curriculum and we have not made an assessment of trends in the level of expenditure from the public purse on (a) time, (b) staff and (c) facilities associated with the creative arts in schools across England.

Reticulating Splines