Big Creative Education is delighted to support the new report from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and A New Direction The Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future, calling on policymakers to ascribe greater value to the role of the arts as part of a rethink of the state education sector.
We believe the creative arts are a force for change and reflection, vital for societal growth and improvement. The report find that the arts are crucial for young people’s academic and personal development and recommends equitable access to them within our schools.
The report advocates ten recommendations:
1. A national conversation to consider and define new purposes for schooling: England requires a more rounded set of purposes for its schooling which are reflective of the world in which children live and will one day work. We would like to see a national conversation in England about the purpose of education which will inform a view on what is taught in schools and why.
2. New curriculum areas: England requires a coherent vision for a relevant, inclusive, broad and balanced curriculum. Only when the purposes of schooling are clear will it be possible to consider the value of each curriculum area to the overall purposes. Adopting a collective term to describe the arts – Expressive Arts – is helpful in giving clarity to their role as a defined curriculum area, in line with other subject areas (such as in Wales with Health and Wellbeing; Humanities; Languages, Literacy and Communication; Mathematics and Numeracy; and Science and Technology – six in total).
3. Changes to how we assess arts subjects: Arts subjects require an accountability, assessment and progression system that is sensible, proportionate, and developed through consultation with teachers and practitioners. We recommend that the models described in this report, including Rethinking Assessment, form the basis for considering approaches to arts assessment, reflecting the use of digital learner profiles, and achievements beyond exams.
4. Creating an arts entitlement within the school day, and extra-curricular arts as additional: Every child, including those in academies, should have an entitlement to a minimum of four hours of Expressive Arts education per week to the end of Key Stage 3.9 It is important that extra-curricular arts provision is not seen as a substitute for curriculum arts delivery, but is available for young people to extend their arts engagement to a deeper level. Opportunities should be made available for young people to continue with their arts interests outside of exam syllabuses at Key Stages 4 and 5 – as is the case with sport.
5. Representation and relevance: Representation in schools must be considered across the diversity of genres, course materials, texts chosen, artists studied, composers selected, and performances, stories and histories experienced, as well as in the identities of people leading and teaching, and in the syllabuses followed towards public examinations. This is important in ensuring that schooling reflects the lives, identities and cultures of society, both through contemporary work, and in making links between work that is considered part of a ‘traditional’ canon, and contemporary culture.
6. Teacher and learner agency: Children and young people should be active contributors to every part of school life. We would like to see the voices of all children and young people contributing to the arts offer in all schools through whole-school commitment to listening to their views and experiences. These voices are also important in national policy consultation about system change. Teacher agency is equally important in terms of what is taught, and how, and in developing communities of practice to build confidence and skills, and to share what works well. We require a system in which agency should be assumed rather than offered.
7. Improved and evidence-based case-making: We have a more comprehensive understanding of how valuable the arts can be for a child than in 1982. Existing (and new) work, including from beyond the UK, should be updated, built upon and developed to make the case for arts learning by asserting its value in delivering against a set of agreed purposes for education. This can be shared and used for professional development, and to inform evidence-based policy making. There is a need for a refreshed, coherent and evidence-based narrative that communicates the value of the arts for children and young people; this is important for parents, heads, governors, teachers, policy-makers, arts organisations and employers. In addition to the value proposition, telling practical stories about what works is also important, including case studies demonstrating impact and supporting improvement.
8. Support for the arts in schools from the professional arts sector: However important the school offer from professional arts organisations, its function is to enhance what happens in schools, and contribute to improving outcomes for children and young people. We would like to see:
- more collaboration between education and arts policy makers and funders to ensure that the resources of the professional arts sector can be made easily available and relevant to schools (including, importantly, online), and responsive to their needs;
- recognition by policy makers and funders that if schools are to access programmes, projects and resources from the professional arts sector, they require support and active brokerage work in order to do so;
- continued support and proper resourcing for arts-sector schemes that validate and encourage best practice in school arts provision and young people’s engagement, such as Artsmark and Arts Award;
- the arts as part of education for employment to build a trained workforce for a thriving and diverse creative industries sector.
9. Aggregating the findings of reports calling for education system change: During the period of our review of the arts in schools we have been aware of a number of publications, reports, commissions and reviews which have presented alternative visions to the education status quo in England – most not specifically addressing the arts in their focus on schooling more widely. We see many interests in common with those in this report. Their aggregated findings broadly align with ours and we would recommend that they are all built upon to establish consensus about what needs to change in general, and that the arts be included in this thinking.
10. Schools at the heart of their communities: We would also like to see schools able to respond more to local circumstances, engagement with civic society, and more agency for teachers to develop partnerships within their localities in order that schools can benefit from the creativity and resources available (as in Wales), reflecting the local economy, cultures, arts provision, employment needs and opportunities, and contributing to thriving local communities.
