Creative Education Access Bill [HL]

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for bringing forward this Bill. I look forward to the maiden speech from the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood. I will do my best to follow the marvellous speech from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman.

I declare my interest as chair of the Teaching Commission, established now for two years, consisting of teachers, leaders and policy specialists, with representatives from unions and the Chartered College of Teaching. I was also, in a previous incarnation, General Secretary of the National Education Union, which has run a fantastic “Arts and Minds” campaign to promote education in the creative arts for all children of all backgrounds.

The Teaching Commission’s second report, published in July, is titled Curriculum and Assessment for All?—there is a question mark at the end. The report examines the required conditions to successfully implement the new national curriculum in 2028. Commissioners welcome the ambition and vision of the 2028 curriculum. It signals a fundamental shift towards a more physical, practical, social and developmental experience of schooling for children and young people, along with a focus on inclusion, belonging and joy for all pupils.

The commissioners, along with many others, strongly welcome the significant broadening of the taught curriculum and, in particular, the revitalising of arts subjects with a requirement for breadth and more depth in detailed programmes of study in the foundation subjects of art, drama and music. Very welcome, too, is the establishment of a new national centre for arts and music education, which will promote arts education and enable high-quality teaching through a teacher development offer. These are all excellent developments to achieve the Government’s ambition to enable all children and young people to gain access to the creative arts as part of their education.

However, there are challenges which must be addressed and recognised. The broadening of the school curriculum to incorporate a much greater focus on creative subjects must also take into account the challenges that schools currently face, and will face more acutely in the near future, in employing teachers who are qualified and expert in the teaching of those subjects. In this respect, creative subjects face a particular challenge. Since 2010 and after the introduction of the EBacc accountability measure, arts subjects have seen a precipitous 42% decline in applications for initial teacher training, reflecting a trend where more than 40% of English state schools are no longer entering any pupils in music and drama GCSEs. These teachers have been lost from the system and the training pipeline has dried up. The Key Group conducted a small survey of secondary school leaders for the commission which revealed that 40% of secondary school respondents reported that that they would have difficulty offering a wider offer in art because of a lack of specialist subject staff. For drama, 40% of secondary respondents reported a lack of specialist drama teachers, and 45% reported that for music.

It is also the unfortunate truth that the teacher supply challenges are not evenly spread across the education system. Schools serving the most disadvantaged communities find it much more difficult than those serving affluent pupil intakes to recruit and retain teachers across the curriculum. The issue of the teacher quality gap is the subject of an Education Policy Institute 2025 report, Closing the Workforce Quality Gap, which reveals that teachers in disadvantaged schools are increasingly less likely to have a relevant degree, with disadvantaged schools now trailing affluent schools by 15 percentage points in the percentage of lessons taught by a subject specialist. Good teacher supply is essential not only to match the increased demands of a broader curriculum; it is also a social justice issue, so that the most deprived pupils have as much chance of being taught by teachers qualified in the subjects they are teaching as their more advantaged peers.

If the broadening subject base of the 2028 curriculum is to be well taught by qualified teachers, a new approach to initial teacher training recruitment targets must be developed by the DfE, which should take account of previous declines in applications and reductions in initial teacher training targets for arts subjects and the number of teachers teaching outside the subject area for which they are qualified. Ultimately, no education system exceeds the quality of its workforce. Broadening the curriculum requires considerable analysis and planning so that it can be successfully implemented, and I urge the Government to note the second Teaching Commission report and to respond to the issues and challenges in it.