Examination Reform

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Members on the Government Benches have said a number of times that there is space in the curriculum for these subjects. The problem, which none of them has yet addressed, is that since the introduction of the EBacc, school after school has reduced provision in those subjects. A tool is available, which the Government have chosen not to use. I do not think there is a respectable argument not to include in the EBacc at least one subject in which a young person’s creativity is what is assessed. I am arguing not for the exclusion of anything, but for the inclusion of assessment in subjects such as design and technology, music, art and drama.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

George Nicholson, a published composer and director of graduate studies at the university of Sheffield, makes precisely the point my hon. Friend has made about the degrading of creative subjects. Would she argue that, at the very least, a sixth pillar must be added to the EBacc, covering such subject areas, as the Henley review recommended?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

That is precisely the point I am seeking to make: there needs to be an additional pillar that includes these kinds of subjects.

I am worried about the Secretary of State, because in his response to my question about the achievements in Nobel prizes and so on, he said:

“The arts are mankind’s greatest achievement.”

We both share that view, but he went on to say:

“Every child should be able to enjoy and appreciate great literature, music, drama and visual art.”—[Official Report, 3 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 579.]

That is not enough; it is not sufficient for children just to be able to enjoy and appreciate, and one thing we have to do as part of education is to develop in children the ability to create. I welcome Henley’s report, but Robinson’s report on creativity in education, produced more than a decade earlier, rightly suggested that we should define creativity as

“Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value.”

This is one thing that children should learn in school. It is not sufficient to expect them to learn it outside school. Many of us ensure that our children are able to learn it outside school, but many children do not get that opportunity and it is those about whom I am most concerned.

I am also concerned about the effect on our country’s achievements. There is a reason why we are a world leader in creative industries: our tradition of creativity in education and of requiring these subjects to be part of every child’s entitlement. I am concerned—I have yet to hear an answer on this from Government Members—as to whether there is any tool that ensures what I believe the Secretary of State wants, which is that children should be able to learn the ability to create. The schools that he most admires—Eton, just next to my constituency, and others—provide outstanding creative education. They are not following a set of league tables that make them jump through hoops and be judged just against their EBacc levels.

On this issue, I am reminded of the bit in Dickens’ “Hard Times” where Thomas Gradgrind says to Sissy Jupe, who knows everything there is to know about horses, “Define a horse.” She sits there silent, not knowing how to do it, and then Bitzer says, “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth”. That is of course the right answer, because ours is a world determined by facts. The bit of the story that many of us have forgotten is where the inspector speaks later. Dickens has him saying:

“You are to be in all things regulated and governed…by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must”—[Interruption.]

Oh! Trust iPad!