Science and Heritage: S&T Committee Report

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hilton of Eggardon]

My Lords, I had the privilege of being on the original committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the follow-up committee. As she has said, there has been a considerable improvement in the coherence of the heritage sector since our first report, particularly in craft training and greater opportunities for careers for young people. However, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport still seems to be unwilling to have a more direct leadership role in the encouragement of heritage science, despite its importance to our flourishing tourist industry and to other sectors such as the arts and crafts industry. Moreover, it still does not seem to envisage a clear role for the chief scientific adviser and, while opting out of direct involvement in the sector, has also imposed a 30% cut on English Heritage.

My particular concern is about its lack of leadership in relation to the Government’s educational policy, where it seems to have exercised little influence in favour of a broader curriculum. The Government’s education policy is prescribing an ever-narrowing curriculum for schools, which is largely exam-based with a heavy emphasis on academic subjects. The proposed EBacc includes no room for creative subjects, which underpin not only the appreciation of music and art but also commercial success stories such as our flourishing fashion industry. Design studies, for example, which are exercises in problem-solving and lateral thinking and will be increasingly important in our rapidly changing technological society, are also excluded from the new curriculum. I wonder how the DCMS has been attempting to influence some of that rather narrow view of education. In its educational policies the Government are rapidly turning back not just to the 20th century but to the 19th century, with its emphasis on rote learning and the regurgitation of undigested lumps of information. I was fortunate enough to go to a school that was founded in the 1890s in direct opposition to the narrow education then available in the boys’ public schools. Bedales valued not only art and music but crafts and outdoor skills, such as farming and gardening, as being of equal validity to academic subjects. I still have a bookcase that I made there.

The other countervailing trend of the 19th century, of course, was the arts and crafts movement, with its emphasis on quality and design. Again, I declare a personal interest as one of my ancestors was a distinguished architect of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Horniman Museum and the Bishopsgate Institute. All three buildings were dedicated to increasing access to art and learning and crafts for all. The education policies of the Government appear to be narrowly directed at preparing a minority of pupils for university and not for any of the alternative careers that might be in the heritage sector, such as training in crafts and design, and without any appreciation of the technical skills that underpin engineering, architecture and our flourishing fashion industry.

To revert to the 19th century again, an interesting and well researched theory is that the great engineering and entrepreneurial successes of the Victorian era were specifically created by those excluded from universities, such as non-conformists and Quakers. Many talented people have skills that are not nurtured by a university education. The narrowing of the school curriculum will inhibit the creativity and flexibility that will be increasingly needed by the heritage sector and other sectors in our society if this country is to cope with the increasingly difficult times ahead. I urge the DCMS to take a more active role in influencing government policy, not only because heritage, science and the creative arts enrich individual lives but because they can underpin the future prosperity of this country. We should be fostering enterprise rather than educational stagnation. What influence does the Minister’s department have on government education policy