Lots has gone on already in 2019 – granted – so you’ll be forgiven for missing this. Over the last few months there have been a steady flow of reports published that signal a rapid decline in cultural education in our schools. Just last week, new research has been published demonstrating the impact of this decline on music teaching in the UK.
Firstly, the figures: 68% of primary schools in England have seen arts provisions decrease in the last five years. Music is no longer taught in over 50% of state-funded secondary schools in the UK, and 2018 saw a 10% further drop in entries for arts subjects at GCSE, with a similar fall predicted for 2019.
So what’s going on? Talking to educators across the country, most cite the combination of two developments in schools in the last decade: Brutal cuts in funding to overall school budgets (8% in real terms since 2010), and the increasing prioritising of the EBacc (a performance measure for GCSEs widely considered to disfavour creative subjects).
Speaking on the phone to a state school teacher in Lincolnshire one teacher tells me that “across the county, GCSE and A Level teaching of creative subjects is disappearing.” This reflects a nationwide trend; nine in every 10 English state schools have had cut back on lesson time, staff or facilities in at least one creative arts subject in recent years.
Creativity, wellbeing, health are just three reasons why this matters. The benefits of studying arts subjects are well evidenced and extend to developing kids’ cognitive skills and improving their performance across the wider curriculum. Creative skills also sustain our creative economy, which brings in a whopping £100billion to the UK economy each year.
What does the government have to say? Well, in his first major speech as culture secretary in January, Jeremy Wright spoke of bringing “arts organisations and schools together”. Working in the culture sector myself, this, I have discovered, is a euphemism. Let me offer a translation: the government is passing the buck onto our museums, galleries, theatres, opera houses and orchestras to provide vital cultural education that schools can no longer afford.
Half an hour from Central London, in a school not far from Wembley Stadium, a Year 9 classroom is full of teenagers watching two opera singers locked in a love duet. Down the corridor a soprano scales the highest notes of Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria. In the school’s assembly hall, a 40-strong group of 14-year-olds provide percussion for a chorus from Carmen.
This is a day of English National Opera’s flagship schools’ programme Opera Squad. The programme targets schools without sufficient resource to devote significant curriculum space to cultural education. When the visit from ENO is over, kids from the school can expect a further year of workshops, talks, tours and Dress Rehearsal trips. The company now works with 22 secondary schools every year.
In the last decade, arts organisations have increasingly turned their focus to this area and have begun designating larger proportions of their funds to outreach in schools, sensing a greater responsibility to educate and inspire the next generation of artists and audiences.
One practitioner I speak to, with over 30 years experience in museum and gallery outreach, gives a more blunt analysis: “We’re being left to pick up the pieces. It’s us or nothing.”
Furious at what’s happening to arts education, in particular the widening gap between arts provisions in independent and state schools, Josie Long and Neil Griffiths set up the charity Arts Emergency. Arts Emergency now pair a 7,000-strong network of arts professionals with teenagers interested in pursuing creative study and careers from backgrounds or schools with little arts provision.
Of those students lucky enough to be matched with an Arts Emergency “mentor”, many go on to pursue creative higher education. Speaking to Neil, though, he is keen to remind me the charity goes beyond just helping students into universities and colleges. Those involved can often expect work experience opportunities, paid internships and bursaries, and visits to places otherwise off-limits.
While a trip to the set of The Crown – as was afforded one of Arts Emergency’s 2018 beneficiaries – can undoubtedly inspire, arts leaders are unanimous: it will never act as a substitute for an education with adequate funding for art, music, drama.
Jeremy Wright spoke in his “Value of Culture” speech of, aged 13, acting in a school play and the long-lasting impact this had on him; he went as far as to attribute the experience to the confidence he now exhibits in the House of Commons. It is here where he and Damian Hinds, the education secretary, will continue to outline the government’s policy for arts education. If they fail to work together and support arts education – leaving it to overstretched outreach departments found in pockets of the country well-populated with arts organisations – school plays might well be a thing of the past by the time the next generation are up at the despatch box.