English Baccalaureate: Creative and Technical Subjects

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Baroness for this very important debate at a time when, against the backdrop of Brexit, this country’s need to build on its skill base is ever more important.

I begin with two facts, one of which I mention often, and it has already been referred to by the noble Baroness. It is that the creative industries are the fastest-growing sector of our economy. However, there are currently 17 creative roles on the Government’s shortage occupation list, yet there is hard evidence that creative subjects are being squeezed out of the school curriculum.

Clearly, something is awry, and this appears to be the EBacc. It includes computer science, which is vital to our creative economy, but not any creative subjects. As we have argued often from these Benches, this is a serious omission. Our creative industries are hungry for talent and skills and they are crucial for the future prosperity of this country.

Darren Henley, now chief executive of Arts Council England, back in 2012 in his review into cultural education, noted that this area of cultural education,

“is no longer valued as much as it once was”,

and, further, the EBacc system has so far led to creative subjects being abandoned by state schools. Five years on, there is no improvement. The GCSE results for 2016-17 show a great drop in the uptake of creative and artistic subjects. I will not requote the figures because we have already heard them from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott.

Yet it is a fact that schools providing high-quality cultural education get better academic results across the board, not least, in my view—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said the same thing—because it inculcates a love of learning. It is a fact that private schools entice parents with access to culture. Thomas’s Battersea, so much in the news at the moment, offers alongside the national curriculum specialist teachers in art, ballet, drama, ICT and music. Does the Minister agree that what is offered to a Prince should be offered to all?

The Government’s long-awaited response to the EBacc consultation appears not to accept this, and the DfE data publication to which it refers insists:

“There is little correlation between the change in EBacc entry and the change in arts uptake in state-funded schools”.


Can the Minister explain why this does not take into account figures from before the introduction of the EBacc in 2011, or indeed the latest figures from Ofqual, as mentioned earlier by the noble Baroness, and why the DfE excludes design and technology from the list of subjects included in its analysis despite it being the hardest hit subject and such an essential part of the creative process, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has mentioned.

The Minister may suggest that it is up to the individual schools as to what is on their syllabus, but there is no incentive for them to offer creative subjects. There are 119 accountability measures that a state secondary school has to consider, and not one of them pertains to the arts. The fact is, as that great creative figure Grayson Perry has said:

“If arts subjects aren’t included in the Ebacc, schools won’t stop doing them overnight. But there will be a corrosive process, they will be gradually eroded ... By default, resources won’t go into them”.


That is backed up by the principal of Ferrers art college, who has,

“spoken to many headteachers who are cutting subjects … in order to feed into the EBacc … So … now the school is saying, geography is in the EBacc, drama isn’t, we really, really recommend you do geography”.

We on these Benches believe in STEAM not STEM. The success of those in the creative industries lies in a fusion of creative and technological skills. It was this fusion that fuelled the first Industrial Revolution. The Victorians understood this. They had a Science and Art Department and invested in what was to become the V&A in order to develop the skills needed to feed British industry. In today’s world, in what is referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, inventors recognise the need for creative skills to maximise the potential of their products, and they are working in ever closer collaboration with those who possess these skills, and vice versa. Notions of “us and them”—a perceived opposition between those who practise science and those who practice the arts—are being proved obsolete.

To ensure that our next generation is a generation of creators, schools need to be encouraged to promote not just either science or art but the arts-science crossover. I know the Government believe, as we all do, in the need for the pursuit of knowledge, but it is unnecessary for bogus battle lines to be drawn between the learning of fact and creative interpretation.

It seems a long time ago, but it was actually the beginning of this year, when the Prime Minister acknowledged the need for investment in skills. She said:

“We will go further to reform our schools to ensure every child has the knowledge and the skills they need to thrive in post-Brexit Britain”.


She also said:

“A Global Britain must also be a country that looks to the future. That means being one of the best places in the world for science and innovation”.


The emphasis on science and innovation is right, but does the Minister accept that the creative industries are an integral part? Does he also accept that the recent proposed reforms of the EBacc will not achieve the Prime Minister’s stated aims and should not be implemented?

Instead, we on these Benches, support the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the Edge Foundation’s new Baccalaureate, which delivers, as it says in its report,

“a stretching”—

a very good word—

“curriculum which provides a solid academic core alongside creative and technical subjects”—

and one which, crucially,

“links to the needs of the economy”.

We are a creative isle. Our arts and culture enrich us both literally and metaphorically as well as economically. We have hugely successful industries spawned on the back of our creativity that have generated soft power. However, unless nurtured and encouraged, we risk losing at this crucial stage in our history a great success story.