Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of proposed changes to higher education funding on creative arts courses, and the potential consequences for the creative industries.

The government is committed to supporting creative arts subjects in higher education and acknowledges the importance of this provision to the creative industries. These subjects will benefit from further increases in tuition fee limits in line with forecast inflation that we have announced for the 2026/27 and 2027/28 academic years.

For this academic year, we have maintained the funding at £57 million for the 20 small and specialist providers previously identified by the Office for Students as world leading. Of these providers, 13 are focused on creative arts. These 20 providers will retain their world leading status for 2026/27.

Decisions around funding through the Strategic Priorities Grant for 2026/27 have not yet been made. We will prioritise subjects that are essential to delivery of our Plan for Growth, and the Industrial Strategy, and we will issue guidance to the OfS setting out our funding priorities for 2026/27 in due course.