Curriculum and Assessment Review

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, on a brilliant opening speech. I believe in two things with regard to school education. First, education is a good in itself. Secondly, a well-balanced education allows students to try out different things and see where their real interests lie. I am particularly grateful for the briefing from the Independent Society of Musicians. I want to make three points: one on accountability measures, the second on teachers and the third on higher education, on the basis that, in the context of this debate, what happens in higher education has a feedback effect on education in schools.

The EBacc shut out art subjects, so its demise is not mourned. Progress 8 is still with us, although the Government, backed up by their vocal support for art subjects, have pledged to reform Progress 8 further. But there is concern that in the new model, with two guaranteed slots in the science bucket, it is still too heavily weighted in favour of the sciences, while humanities, languages and creative subjects slug it out for slots five and six, so that creative subjects can still be ignored, as can languages. The idea of bringing in an extra science subject into the so-called breadth bucket would reinforce this bias even further. There is therefore the question whether some schools may not need to make any changes to the arts curriculum, as they should.

My questions to the Government are: first, what monitoring will be carried out to ensure that the changes that they would like to see in the arts offering in schools will come about? Secondly, will they address the severe shortage of arts teachers, because the arts curriculum that the Government would like to see will not be effective without the specialist teachers required? If the 6,500 more teachers are not subject-specific, how will this be achieved?

Finally, it is important to call out the truly unhelpful remarks made last month by the shadow Education Secretary, Laura Trott, on the programme “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”, when she described creative arts courses as “dead-end university courses”. She would like to see more apprenticeships, as many of us would, but she completely misunderstands two things. One is the nature of creative arts courses, which, whether we are talking about the visual arts, film or the performing arts, have always, by their nature, been college-framed courses. They cannot be turned into apprenticeships. Secondly, these are vocations, not dead ends. It is the vocation, not the salary, that is the purpose. If you remove these courses—and they are already vulnerable in the current higher education system—you effectively remove irreplaceable opportunities for a vast number of young people.

I should add that I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, said about the existing qualifications for the Brit School, which should not be changed0.