Education: Music and the Arts Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Education: Music and the Arts

Lord Bird Excerpts
Monday 25th October 2021

(2 years, 6 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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The Government do not accept that the EBacc has contributed to a decline in the adoption of creative subjects. The percentage of children doing an arts subject to GCSE has remained broadly stable over the last 10 years. The EBacc mandatory curriculum is intentionally focused to give space for other subjects.

Lord Bird Portrait Lord Bird (CB)
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Does the Minister agree that the creative minds of the future will need a synthesis of the arts and the sciences because that is the way the world is going? This division between arts and science will disappear in 50 or 100 years. That is where we need to go. We need to take the example of, for instance, the Bauhaus 100 years ago or even Professor JD Bernal, who was talking about this in the 1930s.

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran (Con)
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The creative industries are a great example, as a number of noble Lords have recognised today, of that fusion of artistic and other technical and scientific disciplines. That is why the Government are committed to having a range of arts subjects as a core part of the curriculum from early years to GCSEs.