Creative Education

Simon Opher Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that they may only make a speech with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered creative education in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I welcome the Government’s curriculum and assessment review, which recognises the need for a broad and balanced curriculum and recommends the removal of the English baccalaureate, allowing greater space for arts subjects. At present, far too many children do not have access to these opportunities. Research from the Arts and Minds Campaign reveals that participation in arts subjects at GCSE has fallen by 42% since 2010, even though 90% of young people want to study a creative subject. The decline is sharpest in the most disadvantaged communities. School leaders in socially deprived areas are almost 50% more likely to report being unable to find specialist arts teachers, and one in four schools does not have the funding to run creative GCSEs at all.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and sorry to intervene so early in the debate. I want to make a point about outdoor education, which is also about enrichment and helping young people to be resilient and to have better outcomes. Is he aware that among state schools in wealthier postcodes, 52% of young people get an outdoor education residential opportunity while at school, while in the poorer areas, only 18% have this opportunity? Does he think that the Government need to be aware of this and fund access to outdoor education experiences for children, wherever they are from?

[Dr Opher]

I totally agree. In fact, there is evidence that creativity outside is even more effective for people than inside. This is clearly about access to natural spaces.

I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on creative health. There is really strong evidence that creativity reduces mental health problems in children.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this debate; he is right to do so. Creative education is so important. Creative education will give thousands of children the opportunity to thrive, and will be the tool that gets them the careers for the future. Those children who have special educational needs must have additional opportunities so they are not left behind, and must have the opportunity also to succeed. Does he agree that helping those people who are less well-off educationally and at a disadvantage is important, and that the opportunity is here, in the creative industries, to do the best for them?

[Dr Opher]

It is interesting that creativity is particularly important for children with special educational needs. Indeed, there is some evidence that including creativity can actually make them attend school on a more regular basis.

I have visited loads of schools in Stroud over the last 18 months, and one common theme has been the rise in mental health problems in young people, who are under countless assessments and the pressure of living in a 24/7 social media world. I do feel that this is pushing a lot of children to the brink, and that creativity may be a way of repairing that. One in five young children has a probable mental health condition, and this figure is rising every year. As a GP, I have been using art to treat mental health in children and adults for about 26 years, quite often with really spectacular results. The lack of art subjects has contributed to this pandemic of mental health problems. The Southbank Centre just across the river is doing a project as we speak around introducing creativity to children who are on the child and adolescent mental health services waiting lists. It will be quite exciting to see whether that can make them better as well.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the role of community-based arts organisations is central to supporting our schools? I hope he will also support my campaign to turn Reading Gaol into an arts and heritage hub, which, one day, in showing the possibilities of an arts-based education, may be able to support local schools across the Reading area.

[Dr Opher]

I know that my hon. Friend is incredibly supportive of the developments in Reading. I commend him on that.

Because I am a scientist, I thought I could provide some reasoning on why the creative arts can help. They help on three different fronts. Biologically, they can influence physiological symptoms of anxiety—they reduce anxiety. Psychologically, they can improve self-expression, confidence and, probably most important, self-esteem. That is because often when we do a creative thing, we feel that it came out a little bit better than we anticipated. It is the same for children. There is good, strong evidence that the creative arts build self-esteem in children, and in social terms, they build connections and a sense of belonging.

I want the Minister to join me in a campaign to make teaching children how to play musical instruments available in every primary school. I shall talk a little bit more about music. In Stroud, schools such as Bussage primary school are leading the way by making sure that every key stage 2 child has exposure to musical education. Last week, we had a roundtable in the House of Lords with a group called Rocksteady, which takes rock music into local schools. I was really impressed by what I heard. Not only were the effects of the group’s work really impressive, but there was a measurable reduction in pupil absence rates. It had an effect on the whole school, and made everyone feel better.

In Gloucester, we have the Music Works, where quite deprived children can learn how to DJ, to play the drums or guitar, or to sing. That has been transformative for many children. There are other examples, such as the fantastic Big Noise in Scotland. Some big organisations, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the English National Opera and the Royal Opera House have big programmes that reach into schools. There is some evidence that they can teach the teachers, which is one of the problems I will explore.

[Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)]

SoundStorm is a multi-award winning lead partner in the music hub in my constituency. It has helped more than half a million young people since being founded in 2002, but like any publicly funded body, it is worried about future funding, so I welcome the Education Secretary’s commitment to working through music hubs. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must continue to support music hubs in their work to teach teachers and get music into schools, so that kids at all ages can have a great music education?

[Dr Opher]

My hon. Friend has made exactly the point I was coming to about the role of music hubs. There are 43 music hubs in the UK, delivering something like half a million lessons and interventions up and down the country. Their reach is incredible, taking in about 90% of schools, although there is an issue in that they sometimes charge for their lessons, which I shall come back to.

I welcome the upcoming launch of a new national centre for arts and music education, to support the delivery of high-quality arts education in schools and ensure that high-quality arts education is open to all. I would welcome further information from the Minister on the plans for that establishment.

Creativity in education does not just mean musical or visual arts. Recently, I met Tash Alexander, the inspirational director of Head Held High, which ran a comedy and performance workshop for teenage students in London schools; I also met one of the graduates, Ro. What really struck me about the programme is the way it uses creative expression to build confidence, especially among children who do not always thrive in more traditional learning environments. One aspect of creativity and the arts is that they often really suit people who do not get on very well at school. They are made to feel a failure, whereas actually they can make fantastic artworks or music. We must give them that opportunity. That is the real power of a creative education—it reaches young people differently and gives them a space to discover who they are. Despite Tash’s excellent work over the last 12 years, funding is a challenge all the time. I urge the Department for Education to meet her and discuss how we can continue to fund that programme.

One of the main barriers to creativity in education is that teachers are not qualified or do not have experience of teaching the creative arts. The less creativity there is at a school, the less likely the teachers are capable of teaching it. One third of school leaders cannot find specialist teachers, for example, so big national organisations may have a role to play in taking them under their wing, showing them how to teach and giving them the confidence to teach. That is one big problem.

Another problem is cost. Half of all parents cannot afford extracurricular arts activities. As a result, children’s creative futures are increasingly dictated by family income, not by talent or passion. It is already mandatory that looked-after children are provided with free musical instruments. Should that be extended to those on free school meals? Could we use the pupil premium for music lessons? Libraries can lend instruments easily and musical hubs provide the organisational ability to spread teaching through a school.

Groups such as the Ed Sheeran Foundation and the Nicola Benedetti Foundation are supporting music education, and we could perhaps use them more, particularly with less advantaged children. Creativity should never be a postcode lottery. It should not be a luxury for families who can afford instruments, lessons, dance shoes or even theatre trips. If we are serious about tackling inequality, we must rebuild creative opportunities into the heart of every child’s school experience.

[Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Every child deserves a broad curriculum that values creative subjects alongside the core skills, but financial education from an early age is also vital. In communities in rural coastal settings such as mine, we face specific barriers to allowing children to access these important subjects. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to examine the barriers and include these subjects as part of our offer to children across the whole of the UK?

[Dr Opher]

That is very true, and it comes back to the capabilities and confidence of the teachers, particularly in smaller schools. My children all went to smaller schools and they were lucky to have an inspirational music leader, but not every school has one. We can go further; we could have a world-class curriculum, but it cannot be world-class if we sideline the arts. All schools need the resources, staffing and flexibility to deliver meaningful creative education. I believe that the curriculum review provides that flexibility.

To finish off, I have requests of the Minister. I would like the Government to consider funding free music lessons for all less well-off children, and teacher training in the arts for all teachers. I would like them to expand the arts in the curriculum and offer all children in primary schools musical instrument teaching by the end of this Parliament. For the sake of our young people’s wellbeing and our future creative industries, we must restore creativity to its rightful place in our schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Opher Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for the concern she has expressed. The adoption and special guardianship support fund has not been cut. Demand is ever increasing, and we have chosen an approach to manage tight resources in the face of increasing demand for support. The adoption and special guardianship support fund still enables those eligible to access a significant package of therapeutic support tailored to meet their individual needs.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking to improve mental health support in schools.

[Olivia Bailey (Reading West and Mid Berkshire) (Lab)]

21. What steps she is taking to improve mental health support in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

This Government are committed to breaking down the barriers to opportunity, which is why we are providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every school and expanding mental health support teams so that every child can access early support before problems escalate.

[Dr Opher]

In the Stroud area, six schools are now teaching mental health first aid to 16-year-olds. Many students have received a form of qualification, which they can use for applications to jobs and university. At Rednock school, these students are wearing coloured lanyards so that other students can recognise them and ask them for help with their mental health. Would the Minister support and extend this innovative scheme?

[Stephen Morgan]

I am happy to hear about the successful project in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and I am interested to learn more as we share further details. Separately, to support education staff, the Department provides a range of guidance and practical resources on promoting and supporting pupils’ mental health and wellbeing.

Family Visas: Income Requirement

Simon Opher Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for introducing this debate. I would also like to thank the more than 300 petitioners from Stroud who have made this debate possible, and the Petitions Committee for allocating parliamentary time to this crucial debate.

As we have heard, the previous Conservative Government hiked the minimum income requirement to £29,000, and were seeking to raise it even further, to £38,000, all under the guise of controlling immigration. That does not seem to have worked, but let us be clear about this policy and what it has actually achieved: it has torn families apart and inflicted hardship on ordinary people. So I welcomed my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary commissioning the Migration Advisory Committee to conduct a review of this area as soon as we entered government.

In November, I, with 25 of my colleagues, wrote to the Migration Advisory Committee calling for the family visa income requirement to be lowered to the equivalent of the full-time national living wage. That adjustment would enable thousands of families to reunite, while still supporting financial stability; it would be a compassionate shift away from the previous Government’s harsh stance. I am hopeful that the committee will come to the same conclusion.

Some people have sought to misrepresent the truth about this matter when discussing immigration. It is our duty to bring the facts to this debate. In 2024, the UK issued 3.4 million visas; 87,000 were family visas, which accounted for 7%, and the spousal visas made up even less—less than 5%. Moreover, the narrative that foreign spouses are a burden to taxpayers is fundamentally misleading. The Home Office’s own guidelines explicitly state that foreign spouses have no recourse to public funds. In fact, they contribute through taxation, national insurance and an annual immigration health surcharge of £1,035.

I also worry that the cost of enforcing this policy is greater than the financial benefits. As we have heard, families forced into single-parent situations often require more Government support. As a GP, I have been seeing a patient and their family; the children are suffering because they cannot live with both parents, which has caused a lot of mental health difficulties. This policy is not only inhumane, but economically flawed.

This debate is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet and arbitrary thresholds; it is about real human lives and love, and the human cost is immeasurable. I will highlight the case of one of my constituents, Rebecca Gray, who played a pivotal role in securing the debate by rallying her social media followers to help to get this petition over the 100,000-signature line.

In 2023, Rebecca and her husband married in Turkey and began the spouse visa application process, knowing they had to meet a savings requirement of £88,500. To achieve that, they both worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week, while living in a high-risk earthquake zone in Turkey. Despite losing 250 extended family members in the February 2023 earthquake, Rebecca persevered, but because of the UK’s rigid financial rules, they remain separated, with no certainty about when they can reunite. The cost of applying for a spouse visa is now a staggering £14,256 and increasing regularly. Rebecca is essentially exiled from her own country because she does not meet an arbitrary financial threshold.

Rebecca’s case highlights further issues with the present policy. Rebecca is having to go through the cash savings route, which means she must hold £88,500 in savings. The average 25 to 34-year-old in the UK holds about £3,500 in savings. That just goes to show that the £88,000 figure is absolutely ludicrous.

The current policy means that family reunification is a luxury; as we have heard, it is only for the very richest. The £29,000 minimum income threshold is already the highest in the world, and 75% of applicants would not be able to meet the even greater figure of £38,700 proposed by the previous Government. It is deeply unjust that many British citizens working in our NHS, our police forces and other key public services now earn too little to live with their spouse in the UK. This is a matter of basic fairness. Families belong together. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister, when the review is published, to commit to a policy that will keep families together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katie Lam]

As I just explained, if the person has been here for five years and applies for indefinite leave to remain, and it is granted—as almost all indefinite leave to remain applications are—they are entitled to full welfare, social housing, NHS care and everything else the state provides to its citizens.

That point about indefinite leave to remain is especially relevant to family visas. Ten years after arrival, only 7%, or one in 14, of those who come here on student visas, and 21%, or one in five, of those who came on work visas, have ILR. For family visas, it is 83%, or five out of every six people. That is why the Migration Advisory Committee’s initial impact assessment of the policy found £500 million in welfare cost savings and £500 million more in public service savings from the introduction of the £18,000 minimum income requirement, and that was when far fewer people were using that route to come here.

But the cost-benefit analysis that counts is not that of the Migration Advisory Committee, but that of the British people. They want mass migration to end, and they are sick of broken promises. The numbers must come down across the whole system. The last Government were therefore right to introduce this reform, and it does not bode well that this Prime Minister, for all his talk, decided at the first opportunity to back out of it.

[Dr Opher]

Will the hon. Lady say whether the policy of punitively attacking families was successful in reducing migration? Will she also say what effect immigration has on GDP?

[Katie Lam]

As I have said, the policy was nothing like enough to reduce immigration. It was a step in the right direction, but it was deeply insufficient. Migration has the effect of increasing GDP in raw terms because more people are here but, on GDP per capita, most evidence indicates that it weakens our economy over the medium term.

On this reform and the many others required to our migration system, the Government must make difficult decisions. Those decisions may be painful, especially in the short term, for individual people, families or businesses, or the cost of the public service workforce. But that is the only way for any Government’s actions to match their words. The public have had enough.

Can the Minister confirm that the Government remain fully committed to bringing down migration? Can she confirm exactly what that means, by how much they will bring down the numbers and when, and that the Government understand that it must happen—indeed, can only happen—where it involves making hard and upsetting choices for the good of our country? With that in mind, can the Minister confirm whether it is the Government’s intention to maintain this policy? If they will not make that commitment today, can they at least commit to the fundamental principle behind it—that those who come here, or bring others here, should be able to support themselves financially and not represent a net cost to the state over the long term? Does the Minister therefore agree that the salary threshold should increase to whatever level is necessary to ensure that that is the case?

Finally, I am conscious that those who have been granted indefinite leave to remain are then able to sponsor a spouse. Can the Minister tell us how many migrants on skilled worker visas, care worker visas and shortage occupation lists—I believe that amounts to 2 million visas since the start of 2021—the Home Office expects to apply for ILR when eligible? How many spousal visa applications does the Department then expect to receive from those people? Further, based on demographic, level of income and number of dependants, what do the Government expect that to cost? What discussions are being held between the Home Secretary, the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions on how these pressures will be met?

Creative Arts Education

Simon Opher Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for bringing forward this essential debate.

I am a GP in Stroud and I have been championing arts in healthcare for over 30 years because creativity makes you better, and there is now a lot of evidence that that is the case. The Gloucestershire integrated care board—the health authority—under Ellen Rule, is investing £600,000 in creative and social prescriptions, which is incredibly exciting. I am helping to run a campaign to try to make music instrument tuition available in every primary school in the country. I co-chair the APPG for opera, which shares that aim, and the APPG for creative health. I also learned the flute at school. Recently I was asked to join the Stroud Red Band, which was one of the most fun things I did as part of my campaign to become an MP, so I thank those involved.

There are serious problems. As we have heard, there are a lot of issues due to the 30% fall in uptake of music GCSE at school. Playing music has a massive impact on children’s mental health. If we are trying to prevent mental health problems, teaching children music is one of the most effective things we can do, and it can also be used to treat mental health difficulties. Our Tory friends might be interested to know that it actually helps with academic maths as well, which is really important. As many hon. Members have said, there are massive inequalities in provision. The Government are now putting £79 million into music hubs and spending £5.8 million through the music opportunity pilot for people with special educational needs.

I shall finish by showcasing a number of local organisations. Strike a Light, which brings drama and music to young people, is really inspirational. The Music Works in Gloucester is also truly inspirational, particularly for children from deprived backgrounds. We have the Prema arts centre in my village of Uley. Gordon Scott, the director, has been teaching the piano to countless children over the past 20 to 30 years. Let us campaign to get music teaching in every primary school.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Opher Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

We remain committed to reforming the failing apprenticeship levy and turning it into a growth and skills levy with up to 50% flexibility for employers, driving new opportunities in growth areas across our country, alongside ensuring that we deliver many more apprenticeship starts for our young people. We inherited a situation where apprenticeship starts were falling at a time when we urgently need to invest in the skills of the next generation. We will work with business through Skills England to drive forward what is required for adult learners as well as young people.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

9. What steps she is taking to support creative education in schools.

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

All children deserve a rich and broad education so that they do not miss out on subjects, such as music, art and drama. As part of our opportunity mission, we have launched an independent, expert-led curriculum and assessment review, and we are committed to ensuring that young people are supported to study creative subjects.

[Dr Opher]

Over the past 14 years, the amount of creative education, particularly at primary level, has been reducing and reducing, so I welcome what the Minister said. There is evidence that doing creative things and learning creative subjects improves our wellbeing, mental health and academic learning. Would the Minister support my campaign to bring musical instrument teaching to every primary school in the country, not just the more well-off ones?

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend speaks with great wisdom. We have confirmed £79 million of funding for a national network of music hubs to give children and young people the opportunity to learn to sing or play an instrument, to create music and to progress their musical interests and talents. We have also launched the music opportunities pilot, with £5.8 million of funding over four years to support students with special educational needs and disabilities and those with less means to access the opportunities to do so.