Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, is a tireless advocate for the arts and culture in this House. We owe him a big debt of gratitude, not least for the opportunity to discuss the topic of this debate. I remind the House of my interests, which include membership of the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Over my 40-year involvement with the performing arts in this country, I have watched the relationship between them and the education system develop from one of what I think one could describe as a mutually respectful distance to the rich, full-blown network of innovative partnerships that we have all over the country today. I do not think that there is a theatre company, orchestra or dance troupe in the land that does not regard education as a central part of its remit and there are few schools which do not benefit from that work.

In addition, there are many organisations, such as two with which I am proud to be associated—the Roundhouse and Artis Education—which have created, in very different ways, brilliant programmes to enhance and enrich the school curriculum. So much has been achieved. Therefore, how is it that we now have to defend those achievements against the reductive effect of a narrowly focused range of EBacc subjects?

The Secretary of State for Education has repeatedly asserted that culture and the arts are important for all young people and I am sure that he is sincere. He is, after all, as Mark Antony remarked of Brutus, “an honourable man”. Indeed, he recently made it possible for his department to fund the introduction into all maintained secondary schools of the RSC’s Shakespeare toolkit, which is a brilliant performance-based—noble Lords should note well, performance-based—programme for teachers. But at the same time, as we have heard, a recent Ipsos MORI report for the Department for Education shows that in 2012 27% of schools were already making reductions in the range of subjects offered at GCSE. Of that figure, 23% were in the performing arts. Does the Minister think that there might be a bit of a paradox here?

The Minister, for whom we all have a high regard, will no doubt do her best to persuade the House that schools are not being actively prevented from offering arts subjects. Of course, technically, she will be right. But when, in five years’ time, arts subjects in our schools have gone into the sort of decline that we saw with modern languages once they were no longer a compulsory element of the curriculum, that will be no defence. I have a sinking feeling that the battle to include arts subjects in the EBacc is lost for no reason other than a profound unwillingness on the part of the Government to admit an error. But what can the Minister now tell us about other means by which they might propose to ensure that young people in all our schools, not just those in the independent sector—which, by the way, seem to understand the argument about the importance of the arts rather better than the Government—are able to access the richness of their cultural inheritance? For certain it is that, without strong government intervention, the rot which has already set in will spread at a gallop.