Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of the English Baccalaureate on access to creative subjects.

Music and the arts are compulsory in maintained schools until the end of Key Stage 3 (age 14). The English Baccalaureate (EBacc) has been designed to be limited in its size in order to provide a rigorous academic core whilst leaving space in the Key Stage 4 curriculum for the study of other subjects. In July 2017, the department published an analysis of the trends in arts uptake in state-funded mainstream schools where EBacc entry has seen an increase since 2010/11. This analysis shows that there is little correlation between the change in EBacc entry and the change in arts uptake, though what correlation exists suggests that schools where EBacc entry has increased tend to have also seen an increase in their arts uptake. The proportion of pupils in state funded schools taking at least one arts subject has remained broadly stable since 2010. The analysis is available to view here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trends-in-arts-subjects-in-schools-with-increased-ebacc-entry.