Arts: GCE A-level

(asked on 18th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps he has taken to ensure that students living in areas of highest deprivation have the opportunity to study arts subjects at A-level.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 21st February 2019

The Department wants to ensure that all students have the opportunity to study arts subjects at A level if they wish to do so, regardless of their background or geographic location. It is up to individual schools and colleges to decide which A level courses to offer, and as part of that they may wish to work together with other schools and colleges in the area to combine resources and maximise choice.

The Department does not hold information on the number of institutions that have offered A level music. Instead the Department holds data for the exams entered at each institution. The attached table shows the number of institutions that entered at least one student for music A level. As context, it also shows the overall number of institutions that entered at least one student for an A level in any subject, and the percentage of those institutions that entered at least one student for music A level.

The number of institutions was recorded for each Local Authority District (LAD) in England; each of these LADs were ranked according to their deprivation score, as measured by the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index, and split into quintiles. The data is not held in the same format prior to 2015/16, so equivalent figures for earlier years could not be calculated without incurring disproportionate costs.

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