CREATIVE AND ARTS EDUCATION DISAPPEARING FROM SCHOOLS

CREATIVE AND ARTS EDUCATION DISAPPEARING FROM SCHOOLS

The threat to creative and arts education has been exposed at the Annual Conference of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union in the UK.

Representatives at the Conference in Birmingham debated a motion calling for creative and arts-based subjects to be recognised as an essential element of a broad-based, balanced national curriculum entitlement for children and young people.

NASUWT research shows that curriculum time for creative and arts-based subjects has been reduced and specialist teaching posts lost in schools as a result of the introduction of the English Baccalaureate as an accountability measure for schools in England.

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said:

“It is becoming clear that increasingly more and more children and young people are being deprived of their entitlement to access educational opportunities provided by subjects such as art, music and drama.

“The ability of schools to determine their own curriculum, combined with certain subjects being prioritised as the ones against which schools will be judged, has led to a narrowing of the curriculum and to the reduction, or in some cases the complete removal, of creative and arts subjects.

“The problem is set to deepen as a result of the Government’s plans to make it compulsory for nearly all secondary pupils to study the English Baccalaureate subjects to GCSE.

“It is nothing short of disgraceful that for too many children their entitlement to access these subjects has been removed unless their parents are able to pay.”