Education: A-levels in Creative Subjects

Baroness Nye Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nye (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for initiating this important debate about ensuring that there is a wide range of creative subjects at A-level. As she put it so well, this is not only vital to the pipeline that feeds our creative industries but essential to the life of our nation and makes us who we are. I make no apologies for fearing that the Minister is going to hear the same song sung many times in this debate, although he may have got used to that in the previous debate.

I, too, received an email from AQA explaining its decision. I accept that it was a decision not taken lightly but the fact remains that, even though the take-up of the history of art A-level was small, it was an important educational opportunity to get into a creative world that many students may never have considered. Given the long campaign of the Association of Art Historians to increase awareness of the importance of art history and to expand its uptake in schools and at university, this is a worrying loss. I hope that the Minister will be able to update us today on whether an alternative awarding body has been found.

The Government need to ask themselves why there was such an uproar from the creative community about the loss of a single, albeit hugely symbolic, A-level. It has been put to me that it was seen as part of the creeping dismantling of creative and cultural education. The Government are seemingly blind to the unintended consequences of their aim to get a 90% take-up of the EBacc by 2020 and the Progress 8 measures, which sideline creative subjects, because the subjects taken at GCSE will of course affect the choices at A-level and what happens afterwards. Numeracy, literacy and academic rigour are of course essential to our future success but creating a false hierarchy between subjects taught in our schools is not the way forward. It is a common phenomenon that what is not measured is not valued. This has meant that secondary schools are faced with putting less time and fewer resources into creative education, in a bid to climb up the league tables. One way in which the Government could prevent this is by making it impossible to get an excellent rating from Ofsted if there is no significant cultural offer. I hope that the Minister will say something about why the Government are against that.

Surveys by the National Society for Education in Art and Design and the Cultural Learning Alliance show that there has been a marked reduction in curriculum time, that courses have been lost and that there are significant shortages of teaching staff. This has resulted in a significant decline in the number of students taking GCSE, AS and A-levels in creative subjects, as shown in this year’s figures where the lowest percentage of students sitting art and design A-levels in 10 years has just been recorded. Counter to the culture White Paper’s claim that:

“Access to cultural education is a matter of social justice”,

the Creative Industries Foundation has found that schools with a high proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals have been twice as likely to withdraw arts subjects. This is an out-of-date and old-fashioned curriculum, almost identical to what was in place in 1904—although that curriculum included drawing.

The new Digital and Culture Minister said recently that in post-Brexit Britain:

“This nexus of art and technology is how Britain will pay her way in the 21st Century”.

However, it has been said that:

“This narrow academic curriculum will severely limit access to technical and creative subjects of the very kind needed in our new digital age”.

Those are not my words but the words of the architect of the national curriculum, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. In a recent report for the Edge Foundation he called, among other things, for the Government to introduce a broader EBacc which would include creative and technical subjects as well.

At a recent meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Art, Craft and Design in Education, of which I declare that I am vice-chair along with the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, we had a presentation from the Derby High School, which was the very first science and arts college. The students conveyed to us their thoughts on their education. These are some of their words:

“We are on an incredible journey to who knows where … Fast forward to 2025 … We will be applying for jobs that don’t even exist back in 2015 … In fact experts believe that almost 50 per cent of occupations today will be redundant … So how can we be educated for those unknown jobs?”.

We were told by the Derby High School that it believes its pupils should be educated to see science and the arts as complementary, and that each discipline has something fresh to offer the other when taught holistically. In that way, those students are being educated for those unknown jobs. Those students are right: automation and artificial intelligence may make today’s jobs redundant but they will not replace creativity.

I hope that the Minister will listen to those students—I am sure that they would come to give him the presentation if he wants—and to his noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking. I hope that he will listen as well to the very many educationalists, practitioners and employers who are asking the Government to change their mind on the EBacc and ensure that the pipeline of creative talent is nurtured and not damaged irrevocably. I also hope that in his response today, he can go a little further than the “in due course” answer we keep getting as to when the Government are to publish the results of the consultation on the EBacc. I also hope that the Government will use the consultation process to change the situation where England is the only nation in the UK to have no national plan ensuring that all children and young people are offered a high-quality cultural and creative education. I very much look forward to his response this afternoon.