Motion To Take Note

I apologise for not posting this when it first came out. It is a useful analysis of the divisions seen in parliament regarding the importance of Arts education. A lot of the points, although derived from rather lofty and perhaps limited personal experience, resonate with the battles we all face in our schools and classrooms. Personally I am not in agreement with some of the comments either, particularly in what I felt was a banal speech regarding the importance of Free Schools but as a document there is plenty of curious reading and perhaps a degree of optimism in the challenges raised.

The Unlesson Manifesto remains committed to challenging the neoliberal agenda of the current UK government in its reduction of an educational experience that removes holistic learning and relies on narrow performance measures. It is good to be back! Please read on and share with your friends and colleagues. 


"In the last two decades teaching practices, curriculum content and teacher education in England [and beyond*] have been subject as never before to centralised state control and intensive systems of regulation... [perhaps] the changes we have witnessed in education, which has become increasingly subjected to the hegemony of audit cultures, are a reactive but failing response to issues precipitated by social change"

Atkinson  2011

Lords Hansard text for 27th Nov 2014 (pt 0002) taken from www.parliament.uk

Schools: Arts Education
Motion to Take Note

Moved by The Earl of Clancarty That this House takes note of the case for arts education in schools.

The Earl of Clancarty (CB): My Lords, I am very pleased that we are having this debate today concerning arts education in schools. I welcome to this Chamber the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, and I very much look forward to hearing her maiden speech. I also look forward to hearing the speeches of all noble Lords, as we have represented in this debate a wide range of experience of the arts as well as expertise in education. I come to this debate as someone with two points of view: as an artist, and therefore with a particular concern for arts education—I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Art, Craft and Design in Education—but also, as is true for other noble Lords, as a parent.

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A week ago today my noble friend Lady Kidron led an important debate on children’s digital rights on the 25th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 31 of the convention, which is quoted at the top of the Cultural Learning Alliance’s manifesto, states that nation signatories shall,

“respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity”.

Comparable wording stressing a minimum level of arts education is expressed by Darren Henley in the first recommendation of his 2012 cultural education review, which has been fully endorsed by the current Government.

Implicit in the UN definition is that arts education is a good in itself. I would go further: education is a good in itself. It is not merely a preparation for work, nor even necessarily a preparation for life, if we consider that a good education will instil in the child a constant curiosity and questioning about the world —a love of lifelong learning. The arts are and should be an integral part of that vision.

The excellent Library briefing states the Department for Education’s definition of the arts as comprising art and design, music, drama, dance and the media arts. More particularly, we might also cite literature— English literature having a special place in the curriculum—the decorative arts, including craft, and architecture, as well as film and the digital arts. “The arts” is a traditional term, but the arts themselves are both old and brand new. Indeed, as we speak, artists in many media are making new work in new forms, reacting to the world as it is today and discovering new technologies. At the outset, then, I say that it is vital that schoolchildren are exposed to contemporary art and contemporary drama—for instance—as much as to Michelangelo or Shakespeare. The teaching of visual literacy in schools, which many, including Sir Nicholas Serota, see as an essential aspect of life in the 21st century, should involve a

critical understanding of new art as well as old.

However, when as a parent I ask myself what I want from a school education for my nine year-old child, I would say yes to access to the sciences, the arts, the humanities, to languages—I would love my child to learn a second language fluently—and access to sport. As a parent, then, I want to see a broad-based education where my child is exposed to a range of subjects. If we are thinking about the whole child, as I certainly am, we should be giving careful thought to what goes into the making of that whole child. As Clara Oswald in “Doctor Who” says:

“The soufflé isn’t the soufflé. The soufflé is the recipe”.

Eggs are good and milk is good, but it is that mix of ingredients, the interplay between contrasting subjects, that is the vital heartbeat of an excellent education.

That is why the Education Secretary is so wrong when in her recent speech at the launch of the “Your Life” campaign she stated that arts and humanities subjects will not give young people the skills that they need to pursue a career. She is wrong because she seems to understand education only through the narrow prism of the labour market. An attack on the arts is an

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attack on education as a whole and on the fundamental importance of a balanced education. Denigrating the arts means also devaluing the sciences, as would be true the other way round.

Her speech also contradicts what employers in the UK are beginning to understand. The CBI said last year that a significant number of firms needing employees with STEM skills and knowledge had difficulty recruiting because they were not rounded or grounded. The Royal Bank of Scotland said only last week that it now wanted to employ arts graduates because it believed that its economists and mathematicians showed too much so-called linear thinking, which the bank had the temerity to suggest was in part responsible for the financial crisis—and it might be right. For this kind of education to take place in schools, which is where it starts, the arts, sciences and humanities subjects need to maintain their integrity as identifiable subjects in their own right. That is why I am talking about arts subject, not about creativity. The arts need to be treated as significant equal elements within the school educational system.
It is a sad reflection on our educational system that the case for an arts education in schools needs to be made, because arts subjects are under threat in a number of significant ways. To be fair to this Government, although there are specific current issues which need to be addressed, this has been true for a while. Since 2003, the number of students taking art and design GCSEs has fallen by 13%, music by 10% and drama by 23%. Overall, the take-up of GCSE arts subjects has fallen by 28%.
Then there is the question of the national curriculum itself. It currently makes very little mention of either dance, which is only included in PE, or drama, which has been removed from English and, unforgivably, given no curriculum place from the ages of five to 14. Film and the media—and I have already mentioned one of the country's great broadcasting exports—now receive no mention at all. It is excellent that the Government are introducing computer coding into schools, but there is no mention in the curriculum of the digital world in relation to the arts, although in various ways this is already an important aspect of the arts and creative industries. The status of arts subjects is also plummeting in other ways. We are seeing the continuing development of an ever more layered hierarchy of subjects within the system of performance measures. This is already having a real effect on the take-up of exams and indeed on the choices on offer in schools.

The EBacc has not gone away. Early last year we had a full and public debate on the EBacc when it was rightly criticised from all sides for its proscribed bias against the arts. Its effect remains as insidious as if it had become a full-blown qualification. In the debate in your Lordships’ House on 14 January 2013, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones said:

“I have never seen the creative sector so united against what appears to be a two-tier approach by the Government to educational qualifications”. — [Official Report,14/1/13; col. 551.]

Now, with Progress 8 and the double weighting of maths and English, arts subjects will lie at the third and bottom tier of the new system. The University of the Arts London has said that this has damaged the

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perceived status of art and design in the eyes of parents and within some schools. In its 2014 Educator Survey report, the National Society for Education in Art and Design says that more than half the heads of departments agree that the EBacc has played an important role in the organisation of the art, craft and design curriculum. The take-up of arts GCSEs has declined by 13% since it was introduced in 2010. UAL, the NSEAD and the Cultural Learning Alliance all recommend that the Ebacc performance measure be dismantled. How can the Minister defend this hierarchical system now so hugely biased against the arts? In terms of accountability, are there any plans for Ofsted to recognise and comment on the quality of the arts in its reports?

There is also the effect of the amalgamation in 2013 of many arts subject discount codes, a further performance measure that is having a serious effect on options. For noble Lords who do not know, subjects given individual codes count individually, while those with joint codes do not. We are grateful to the Government for listening to the arts education community so that this year dance and drama and fine art and photography were separated, but it is a case of two steps forward following numerous steps back. UAL and the NSEAD point to the still unseparated GCSE and AS-level fine art, graphic communication, textile design and 3D design subjects. Comparing these and certain closely related but separated maths subjects, for instance, it is illogical that the maths subjects can often be taught by the same person while the arts subjects are distinct specialisms that may well need different teachers for those subjects to be taught to an adequate standard.

Over the past four years, there has been a decline of 7% in arts teachers and, crucially, a 6% decline in arts teaching hours. The last month showed an increase in the number of allocated places for arts teachers, but the significant flipside to this is that many of the teachers will taught within a school setting rather than coming through university PGCE courses. The Government talk about good teachers as though somehow they drop from heaven, but good professional specialised teachers provide a necessary value for teaching that would not otherwise occur. It will increase the possibility that teachers can teach more than one specialism in the arts when the need arises. They are more likely to provide a greater in-depth knowledge of the subject and an understanding of both the wider educational and arts professional frameworks.
I want to say something about the initiatives, programmes and partnerships that this Government are encouraging and/or funding. They vary in scale and scope from smaller ones, such as the BBC's partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation to bring real paintings into the classroom and the new partnership between the Tate and the popular computer game “Minecraft”, through to the Sorrell Foundation art and design Saturday clubs and the ambitious setting up of the 123 music hubs. Many of these programmes are imaginative and to be welcomed, as is the money that the Government are putting into them, but I argue that they should be the icing on the cake. They are in some cases very good icing but they are not the cake, and should not be the basis for a national school

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arts policy. As a means of solving the problems that exist in schools, they are inefficient because the money does not go directly to the schools themselves. None of these programmes addresses all schools, either in terms of the curriculum itself or in terms of the provision of resources. Some funding will be intentionally selective in its application, such as for the National Youth Dance Company, which will target

only the “brightest young dance talent”. The point then is not one of quality but, as UAL says,

“additional programmes ... do not have the capacity or reach to engage with young people across the country and should not be considered a substitute for a high quality art and design offer in schools”.

National Drama says that the RSC Learning Toolkit, while useful,

“is not an acceptable substitute for a national curriculum for drama, with a broad programme of study for Drama that needs to be arrived at through democratic consultation”.

In the excellent music debate led by my noble friend Lord Aberdare on 24 October, two major related themes emerged. One was a concern about the patchiness of the reach of music hubs and, secondly, that deprived areas in particular would not be sufficiently addressed. The problem is that music hubs will always be inherently patchy. They simply do not directly address the real concerns, which are the funding, provision and encouragement of music and the necessary resources, including costly instruments within schools themselves. A comparable problem, of course, exists for the provision of art materials and resources for art and design courses. As the Cultural Learning Alliance points out, the money put into these programmes does not replace the funding that in other ways is being removed, with education funding in real terms dropping by 13% between 2010 and 2014. There are also the knock-on effects of cuts to the arts themselves and the reduction in Arts Council portfolio organisations, the reduction in outreach and the inevitable isolation of some schools as a result.
The DfE states that 21% of schools with a high proportion of free school meals withdrew arts subjects in 2012. The Child Poverty Action Group said in a report earlier this year that, for poorer children, cost— that is to say, the increasing hidden costs now occurring within state schools—was a factor when deciding whether to study subjects such as photography, art, music and design and technology. There is a real danger, highlighted recently by the acting profession, that the arts will become a province only of the rich. We need to get the emphasis back to schools and the funding and provision for arts subjects within them so that there can be universal access to arts education, replacing a current policy based on piecemeal initiatives. We need to reform performance measures so that arts subjects have a proper place again within the school curriculum. This will be healthy for education, for society and for the labour market. I beg to move.

4.04 pm
Lord Cashman (Lab): My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his eloquence in introducing the debate. I, too, look forward to the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park. I declare an interest as a member of British Actors’ Equity; I have held that membership for some 50 years.

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I want to make the moral case for arts in education—first, by giving a personal perspective. Growing up in the East End of London, the son of a docker, from the very day I was born my life was set out before me. I failed my 11-plus and I went off to my secondary modern school as a rebel in search of any cause. It was then that I discovered drama—or, rather, a drama teacher discovered me. Then there was the wonderful experience of going to see “Oliver!” in the West End of London when I was 11 years old, leaning forward in those cheap seats that we used to call the gods, and thinking, “I never, ever want this to end”. The irony was that I was discovered in a secondary modern school singing in the end-of-term school show, and within three months I was playing Oliver in that very same West End production.

That changed my life for ever. Before that I had no concept of theatre, performance arts or even of drama as a subject. Suddenly there was a focus for the energy that made my father boast—at least, I think it was a boast—that if I had not gone on the stage I would have ended up in prison. I began a career as an actor that lasted 37 years. It taught me so many things. This is why the arts, drama, music, film and media

studies—everything that the noble Earl outlined—are so important in education, because they affect every single thing that we do.

I am talking not only about communication skills, which some of us have and some of us do not, but about confidence skills. At how many moments during the day do we stand up thinking, “I can’t do this”? Somehow, though, we have learnt to masquerade and pretend that we can, and we carry it off because we have the ability to imagine that there is another idea, another option. The team-building and discipline that come from the arts in education last for the rest of people’s lives.

The idea that we have to choose between arts and sciences is utter nonsense. The two are married together. Indeed, it was learning the disciplines as a young actor that allowed me, in my mid-20s, to study science and to achieve, in 11 months, my O-levels and A-levels. I could never have done that if I had not had the courage, the confidence and the ability to imagine.

I am going on far too long about me, though, and it is vital that I say some of the things that I have properly prepared to say. What I have said so far explains why I believe that all students should have access to drama as a subject in schools, taught by specialist trained drama teachers with qualified teacher status. Drama is a distinct art form and should have its own subject status, separate from that of English, in both primary and secondary schools. If drama is to be engaged in before GCSE level, that requires trained and qualified drama teachers in secondary schools, and in primary schools it requires high quality in-service drama training as a minimum.

Currently there is a significant and deepening inequality of drama provision in schools, and some schools provide none. There should be equality of national curriculum status for at least the five main art forms in schools: art and design, music, dance, drama, and film. The Department for Education has never given any reason why the different art forms are given differential

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status and attention. It is vital that we be told why it has that opinion, because it affects not only us but generations to come.

Children and young people can now go through education and receive no direct or specialist drama teaching at all. There is a real concern that drama could get parcelled out as “vocational”, to the financial benefit of theatres. We could see only children whose parents can afford it being able to study and engage in drama and the creative arts. That is why my right honourable friend Harriet Harman has said so often that creative and cultural learning supports attainment in all subjects, including literacy and maths. Research has shown that taking part in arts activities at school can make up for an early disadvantage in terms of likelihood to progress to further education as well as in employment outcomes.

I say with due respect to the Minister that I believe the Government are going in the wrong direction on art and culture, and the arts are in danger of becoming more remote from children from working-class backgrounds, such as me, and children in disadvantaged communities, as well as remote from young people in our regions. The whole government narrative around the English baccalaureate, as the noble Earl has said, which the arts community fought so valiantly against, sent a damaging signal to downgrade the arts in education. The number of children sitting arts GCSEs is declining—music is down 9%, drama is down 13% and film is excluded from the curriculum altogether. Teacher training places in arts education have been cut by 35% and the number of specialist arts teachers has fallen. This makes no sense in terms of the creative industries and the arts. It makes no sense in wider educational terms.
We do not want the children being educated now to live in silos. We want them to imagine and to connect. We want them to imagine that there are other ways and other approaches. In the end, it is art that defines us as human beings. Therefore, we underinvest in these subjects, and in this generation and future generations, at our cultural, moral and economic peril.

4.11 pm

Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD): My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for introducing this timely and interesting debate on the arts in education. I declare an interest as a patron of Creative Skillset, the creative industries’ sector skills council.
On Tuesday this week, I had the privilege of attending a service at St Margaret’s for the Girls’ Schools Association where the school local to me in Guildford, St Catherine’s School, provided the choir for the service. It sang among other things an especially commissioned motet taken from excerpts from poems of Maya Angelou. It was both moving and beautiful. As the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said, the children of those parents who can afford it have a very broad education. They often have a longer school day and highly specialist facilities, which provide them with an excellent and outstanding education in all areas, including the areas of the arts.

As far as state schools are concerned, I was cheered by reading the foreword provided by Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey to Cultural Education: ASummary of

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Programmes and Opportunities, published in July 2013—a very recent statement of the Government’s ambition is for arts education. It states:

“The arts are the highest form of human achievement. Through art we not only make sense of ourselves and the world, we also make our lives enchanted. Art allows us to celebrate our common humanity and communicate across boundaries. Artistic endeavour marks us out from the rest of nature as creators and celebrators of beauty. That is why no education can be complete, indeed no programme of education can even begin, without making the arts and creativity central to a child’s life ... England’s many successful schools put culture at the heart of their curriculum and we want all schools to be able to emulate, indeed surpass, those which are currently outstanding ... We will encourage more schools to offer a wider spread of creative subjects with a new accountability framework for secondary schools”.

Why, then, have we now had two speeches pointing out the drop in the number of GCSE arts subjects being taken, the very substantial fall in the number of teachers being trained in arts subjects, and the real decline in drama, dance and the graphic arts in our schools? It is not necessarily down to the national curriculum. As far as the national curriculum is concerned, the briefing paper we have received tells us very firmly:

“Arts subjects are compulsory in maintained schools in England until the age of 14. They are not compulsory national curriculum subjects after the age of 14, but all pupils in maintained schools in England have a statutory entitlement to be able to study an arts subject as part of their key stage 4 education”.

It is not the lack of the arts in the national curriculum, or even the lack of concern for the arts. It is, I think, an unintended consequence of the accountability measures that we now impose upon our schools.

Mention has already been made of the EBacc. The subjects that fall within the EBacc are English and maths, two sciences, history, geography and a modern foreign language or a classical language. I, for one, am very pleased, in some senses, that there is a broader education within the EBacc, but it is sad that the arts have been downgraded and not given the same status. I have to confess that I am very concerned indeed about what is happening with the arts in our primary schools, where emphasis on SATS in year 6 often drives the curriculum. Lots of very good primary schools get over it, but some that are less good are absolutely terrified by the need to get good SATS results and have narrowed down the primary school curriculum to the three Rs to too great an extent. We want to expand it but at the moment it is not expanding.

As we all know, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a dull girl. It is vital that we feed a love of creativity in to our young people. The development of their imaginations in primary schools comes from play, but too much of that play has gone out due to the emphasis on phonics and achieving the required standards in phonics at the age of five or six. There is too much testing and too much teaching to the test, pushing out the creative parts of the curriculum.

As everybody emphasises, the creative industries are now expanding faster than other industries. For many years people poured scorn on media studies, yet actually, as the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, mentioned, with the bringing together of computerisation and digital technologies and the arts technologies, institutes such as Arts University Bournemouth and Bath Spa University, which concentrate on these things, are finding

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it very easy to find jobs for their graduates. It is graduates in geography and history who often have difficulty in finding jobs.

Many times from these Benches I have called for more emphasis on maths and science education. I have been very much a champion of the STEM subjects because I have been very worried about the drop in the numbers of young people taking STEM subjects. However, I have also been somewhat critical of the narrowness of British, and particularly English, education, and the fact that at age 16 we have to narrow things down to three A-levels. This has led to a divide between the arts and the sciences. I would have liked to have seen us move in the direction of a broader curriculum for 16 to 18 year-olds—something equivalent to the international baccalaureate.

I therefore end with a plea not for STEM but for STEAM—science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. We want them all together. We want to provide a broad education for our young people— one which gives them the best foundation for moving forward in life.

4.20 pm
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB): My Lords, I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has said. I regard this subject, the provision of arts—and, in my case, music in particular—in schools as vital. Thus I am much indebted to my noble friend Lord Clancarty for securing this debate. I cannot endorse more warmly his plea for the appreciation of contemporary arts, because it is not just in Shakespeare that we find out about ourselves and the society we live in; it is in the contemporary arts as well, and Shakespeare would have been the first to say so.

I take this opportunity, since it is the first I have had, to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, to our midst. It is great to have another member of the artistic community, and one who has done so much for the gay community through the auspices of Stonewall, which I have long supported. It is also wonderful to be able to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park. I look forward to her maiden speech with anticipation.

Why do I see this debate as so important? It is because I have seen the quite magical effect that music and the arts can have on young developing minds. Furthermore, objective research supports the fact that music, in particular, often gets through where other things fail. Yet, as we have heard, we have to set against that the fact that in the period from 2010 to 2013 there was a drop in the number of GCSE students taking art and, in particular, music and drama, according to the Department for Education’s figures. I wonder whether this is something that causes the Government concern. I very much hope that it does.

There are schools in which children get no exposure to music or theatre or to singing in a choir—that quintessential activity that many noble Lords still partake of in the Parliament Choir. Singing collegiately is a quite wonderful way of developing the ability to be a team player, to listen to others, to blend in and to communicate. Singing a great choral work with a lot of your friends can be a completely overpowering and binding experience.

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Not all children conform, thank goodness, to stereotyping, and it is in the arts and music that many find nourishment and a natural home. Let me give my own experience as a somewhat unusual child. I did not initially thrive academically—I am clearly a late developer—but the music master, a Mr Lambert, saw something in me and encouraged my composition and my playing of the organ in the school chapel. At the same time, I took part in drama productions, and there I learnt to speak in public with a degree of confidence and even extemporisation—a quality that some noble Lords may have cause to regret on occasion—so when I presented the Proms on BBC television, for example, I was not so afraid of the camera. Indeed, I rather relished it. My point is that the faith that two schoolmasters involved in the arts showed in my potential saved me from a possible scrapheap—perhaps not, like the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, prison. The number of successful people who have appeared on my Radio 3 programme “Private Passions” who have ascribed their chance in life to visionary arts and music teachers is quite staggering.

I know the Government are receptive to wide educational remits, but there are real gaps where theatre and music, in particular, are concerned, so here are three definite and distinct questions for the Minister which he might be able to help me with. Will the Government aim to make singing a weekly event in every school? Will they aim to make music and drama part of the curriculum in every school? Will they aim to help disadvantaged children to get musical tuition, currently the privilege of the rich? It is true that the hubs have begun to have some patchy success in this area. The Government have rightly saluted the income which the creative industries bring to the economy of this country. However, to secure that income for the future it is essential that the children who will be the performers of tomorrow—string players, for example—are able to start young. We have to get to young minds, young fingers, and young, still- developing muscles.

Beyond these practical points, there is the aesthetic, spiritual, transcending outlet that music and the arts afford young, and sometimes turbulent, minds. There are, of course, many calls on the Government for funds in different directions, but I passionately believe that they discard this particular call at their peril.

4.26 pm
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con) (Maiden Speech): My Lords, it is a privilege to make my maiden speech on the important subject of education. I declare an interest as the director of New Schools Network, an educational charity that helps groups set up new, independent state schools. I begin by thanking all noble Lords and the staff of this House for the warm welcome they have given me. In the few weeks that I have been here, I have experienced the genuine kindness and tremendous assistance for which the House has such a well deserved reputation. I particularly thank my two supporters, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness.

My first challenge on being given this honour was to select my title; not something I ever expected to do. I chose Bowes Park, the area in Haringey in which I have lived for over 10 years. The heart of Bowes Park

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is Myddleton Road, named after the constructor of the New River, which flows through the area and was built in 1613, providing London with fresh drinking water ever since. Once a bustling high street, Myddleton Road fell into decline for many years but it is now showing encouraging signs of regeneration, thanks to a passionate local community. A new open-air gym—part of our Olympic legacy—a regular street market and, most excitingly, the opening of a café and gallery by two local entrepreneurs, are all playing their part in helping to revitalise the area.

I am delighted to become the youngest female member of the House, an honour passed on to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. In doing so, I am also delighted to have doubled the number of noble Lords sitting in this House under the age of 40. In the 1984 presidential election campaign, a 73 year-old Ronald Reagan said that he would not make age an issue and exploit 56 year-old Walter Mondale’s youth and inexperience. I hope your Lordships will show me a similar indulgence.
I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating this debate. I was fortunate enough to go to Henrietta Barnett, an excellent state school, and am well aware of the advantages it gave me. I already know from this debate that your Lordships will agree that all children are entitled to a good education. Because of this, it has been a privilege for me to be involved with free schools: first at Policy Exchange, helping to develop the programme, and most recently at New Schools Network, supporting teachers, parents, charities and community groups in actually setting them up. I am all too well aware of, and have seen at first hand, the passion and dedication of those committed to improving education in their local communities. Across the state education system we are seeing the real, positive impact that giving freedom to our best teachers is having on raising standards, particularly for some of our most deprived pupils. There is exciting innovation: to name just a few of these, we are seeing the first bilingual schools; new approaches to teaching maths, drawing inspiration from the Far East; and schools that have a no-excuses culture, which helps raise the aspirations of their students.

On the subject of this debate, Britain has an unparalleled cultural heritage. Today, as has already been mentioned, our creative industries are worth more than £70 billion a year to our economy. It is imperative that our education system equips young people with the skills and knowledge to take advantage of the opportunities in this dynamic sector. At New Schools Network we have been delighted to support a number of new schools which have taken an innovative approach to arts education.

East London Arts & Music is a school that has direct involvement from some of the biggest names in the music industry. Its mission is to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed in that industry, be it as technicians, producers or artists. The world class Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts has opened a primary school whose creative curriculum draws on that city’s rich heritage. Wac Arts uses the performing arts to re-engage young people who have struggled in mainstream education. As has already been made

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clear in this debate, a well rounded education is fundamental to ensuring that young people make the best possible start in life. It should be available to all, regardless of their background, and must not become a luxury for those who can afford it.
In this globally competitive world, young people need to develop confidence and resilience. They need to be able to communicate effectively and think creatively. Research demonstrates that participation in the arts can help pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, develop those characteristics. The importance of arts education across the state sector must not be underestimated. I hope that my short contribution today shows my commitment to ensuring that all young people get the best opportunities in life. I look forward to contributing to the work of the House in this and many other areas.

4.31 pm
Baroness Kidron (CB): My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park. Her absorbing maiden speech was dignified by her commitment to education and her history in public policy and both will be of great benefit to this House. I was particularly glad to hear her speak of the value of arts to those young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. I join all Members from all sides of the Chamber in welcoming her to this debate and more broadly to the work of the House, in which I am sure she will play a formidable role.

I also must thank my noble friend Lord Clancarty for making such an excellent introduction. I want to associate myself with absolutely everything he said. He is tireless in bringing this subject to the House and admirable in the way and the seriousness with which he does so. I have many interests in this area, which are all recorded on the register.

I have considerable sympathy for the Secretary of State for Education, the right honourable Nicky Morgan MP, who earlier this month made a clarion call for girls to take up science and maths at school. As a camerawoman and film director of 35 years’ standing, I am familiar with the obstacles inherent in stepping outside traditional gender roles. However, in valorising the sciences she chose to pit art and science against each other. Her given reason was that the, “world is changing beyond recognition, at a pace unmatched by any other point in history”. In that explanation, I felt that she was mistaken. Rather than requiring this binary opposition, the new world demands a mix of skills. A world with infinite information requires us to filter what is useful and to imagine the content and source of that information. A world delivered digitally not only requires digital literacy but visual literacy in order to understand and to contribute to its predominantly visual language. A world in which user-generated content is a primary economic driver demands one to be one’s own photographer, publisher, graphic artist and computer programmer, whether one is a hotelier, an academic or a journalist.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a world designed as a network of networks, there is an emphasis on teamwork. Global companies which invent “disruptive” businesses with their flatter, leaner hierarchies work across projects

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deliberately in cross-functional and multidisciplinary teams. In schools, young people learn to work together in drama, sport, dance and film, all of which are disciplines in which a common objective and not just individual attainment is key. In the GCSE drama course, one’s grade actually depends to some degree on the performance and discipline of one’s peers. For our new world, that is indeed a precious lesson.
At school, the young learn visual literacy from graphics, design, art, photography and film, though, as other noble Lords have said, film is no longer mentioned in the national curriculum for the first time in almost two decades. In school, critical thinking is developed across all of the humanities and the arts, as well as science and maths. In short, the skills necessary for our world are present right across the curriculum.
This text from the home page of the MIT Media Lab embodies the culture of the rapidly-changing world to which the Education Secretary refers:

“The MIT Media Lab goes beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas”,
working,

“in more than 25 research groups on more than 350 projects that range from digital approaches for treating neurological disorders, to a stackable electric car for sustainable cities, to advanced imaging technologies than can ‘see around the corner’”.

On a visit to the Media Lab last year, I met musicians, philosophers, social scientists, mathematicians, medics and linguists. There was one woman whose entire research trajectory was about the colour of words. This is the world into which schoolchildren of today will emerge.

However, the narrative from Her Majesty’s Government appears to be that the arts are not central pillars in their vision of education. The EBacc, the emphasis on STEM subjects, discount codes and the new Progress 8 all structurally devalue and destabilise the place of arts in the curriculum. As a result, we are witnessing the inevitable gravitation, even in good schools, towards those subjects against which their performance is judged. The Department for Education’s own figures indicate a disproportionate fall in the hours of arts teaching and the number of arts teachers since 2010.

I am not arguing for the arts alone; I am, as the Minister knows, a passionate advocate of digital literacy across the entire curriculum and have argued for greater investment in teachers’ professional development to deliver the Government’s excellent computing curriculum. As I have said, I support wholeheartedly the Secretary of State’s call for girls to do science and maths, but it is simply the case that many, if not most, of the new workforce will have to have a complex matrix of skills and the fluidity to move between them.

I hope that other noble Lords will refer in details to the extensive evidence on the role of arts in supporting social mobility, but I will briefly make this point: if we deprive disadvantaged young people of access to the arts on a measurable basis in school, we will create a situation where cultural capital will be the preserve of the already privileged. This will, in the future, decimate the pool of talent that we now enjoy right across all the art forms.

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I also put on the record the value of the arts in and of themselves: they are transformative and life enhancing and reflect what it means to be human. In their own right, moreover, they are a major contributor to GDP. Like top independent schools that see no reason to privilege one discipline over the other, the Government should not present a binary choice, but promote arts and science as single virtuous circle.
I therefore ask the Minister: given that our new world requires young people to have multiple skills, should not an arts subject be explicitly included in the Progress 8 measure? Should not the EBacc be dropped as a supplementary accountability measure? Should not the Government narrative be “STEAM not STEM”, because it is this narrative that determines funding, training and infrastructure, and ultimately the provision of arts in our schools?

4.40 pm
Baroness Nye (Lab): My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl for securing this important debate, congratulate the noble Baroness on her maiden speech and thank other speakers for their contribution. I, too, am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Art, Craft and Design in Education, which is so well served by the noble Earl and our chair, Sharon Hodgson. The APPG was set up to champion high- quality and inclusive arts education in our schools in the belief that art, craft and design are essential not only to our economy but to the cultural, creative and social well-being of everyone.

The Labour Party has always recognised that the arts are for everyone, for each and every individual and all our communities. However, I think that we all share a vision of every child having the chance to learn about the value and thrill of culture. I look forward to the speech of my noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury because, under his stewardship, the previous Labour Government were able to ensure free admission to all our national museums and galleries which, I am pleased to say, the present Government have continued to support—although it is sad that museum visits by schoolchildren have decreased by one-third.

As has been said, the Government’s thinking in this area has been a little muddled, to say the least. The previous Culture Secretary supported STEM to STEAM, but that was at the same time as the then Education Secretary was busy devaluing creative education through the introduction of the EBacc. The new Education Secretary has waded in and compounded the problem by announcing that the best way to get a job is to drop arts and humanities, although the Culture Select Committee said in a recent report, “that the crucial role of arts subjects ... should be recognised and that art subjects should be added to the STEM subjects”.

Surely no one wants our young people to be denied fulfilling their unique potential, nor do we want the creative industries’ success story to stall. The Select Committee also recommended that a Minister from the Department for Education should attend the Creative Industries Council. Will the Minister say whether that has happened or will happen?

A quarter of schools withdrew non-EBacc subjects from their curriculum this academic year, and art was one of the most commonly withdrawn, according to

27 Nov 2014 : Column 1078
Ipsos-MORI. Figures from the National Society for Education in Art and Design show that, since the introduction of the EBacc and changes to the discounting codes, the number of young people sitting arts GCSEs is in decline. The reduction in arts training places has resulted in fewer specialist arts teachers, and fewer hours are taught. The number of design and technology teachers has also been hit.

As the noble Baroness just said, it should not be a binary choice between STEM and art and design: both are important. For example, the Royal College of Art is running highly sought-after joint masters degrees with Imperial College London. According to Steve Jobs, “technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”

In that regard, I welcome the Government’s introduction of coding into the curriculum, but the video games industry needs artists as much as computer experts. That is why the Labour Party has commissioned an independent review, led by John Woodward, the former head of the UK Film Council, to consider, among other things, how better to link up education and training with the needs of the creative industries and the digital sector.

Literacy, numeracy and creativity are what the modern global economy demands, and I am sure that we have all enjoyed the excellent book, The Virtuous Circle, by John Sorrell, Paul Roberts and Darren Hanley, which has been sent to all of us for this debate. Sir John and Lady Frances Sorrell’s work on education, particularly in the area of design, have helped successive Governments, and I welcome their support for the newly formed Creative Industries Federation, because design is the bridge between arts, science, technology and business. Design has been defined as the,
“specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints”—

I apologise, because the last clause could have been written by the Treasury. However, it shows that design is relevant in almost every situation or environment.
For many years, I have been visiting the New Designers exhibition. It is the UK’s largest graduate design exhibition, showcasing the work of more than 3,000 of the very best graduates across a host of disciplines from 200 of the UK’s top art and design universities and colleges. It helped launch the careers of Thomas Heatherwick, Bethan Gray and Matthew Williamson, to name a few. I strongly recommend that your Lordships take the opportunity to visit the exhibition next year. You cannot walk away from that exhibition

without a smile on your face after being enthused by the talent, potential and enthusiasm in the hall. A poll of this year’s students showed that almost half of them see themselves setting up their own creative businesses in the next five years, thereby adding to the creative capital in the UK. However, if the trend for young people at key stage 4 not to be able to access art and design courses continues, where will the new designers of the future come from? This year the New Designers exhibition hosted two “creative Saturdays”, which offered children and young people their first taste of the professional design world.

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This was part of the Sorrell Foundation’s National Art and Design Saturday Club, which offers young people aged 14 to 16 the opportunity to study art and design every Saturday morning at their local college or university—free of charge, with half of them located in the most disadvantaged areas. They hope that 2,500 youngsters will be taking part by 2018. However, this is a programme aimed at complementing the curriculum, and it is not a substitute for one.

As Europe’s largest specialist art and design university, UAL, has said, the additional programmes funded by the Department for Education, like Saturday clubs, do not have the reach or capacity to engage with young people across the breadth of the country. Those young people need teachers who have had access to professional development. Ofsted has recommended that the Department for Education should explore how teachers could, “improve the teaching of drawing and widen the impact of contemporary crafts-based initiatives”.

Craft skills generate over £3 billion for the UK economy and it is exceptionally worrying that GCSE craft courses have fallen by a quarter and higher education courses by a half. Will the Minister say whether the department is taking up the Ofsted recommendations and whether he is in favour of an annual subsidised entitlement to professional development programmes in art, craft and design?

Michael Gove said that he wanted state schools to be indistinguishable from the best fee-paying schools. The Cultural Learning Alliance interviewed the heads of some of the leading fee-paying schools in the country. All were of the view that cultural learning improves children’s attainment and that it is a duty to their children and their parents. Tony Little, of Eton College, told the Cultural Learning Alliance:

“By limiting the subjects that are valued, the EBacc is downgrading and reducing the potential for achievement”.

Does the Minister think that by not adding art to the stem subjects we are on course for making state schools indistinguishable from fee-paying schools? Is it not strange that parents who pay for education expect a cultural offer but there are different expectations for the education provided through taxation? Unless art and design education is supported and encouraged at the very beginning of a child’s journey, there will be untapped potential for that child and for our country.

4.47 pm
Lord Bichard (CB): My Lords, this is a very timely debate and I too thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating it, and I certainly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for a maiden speech full of passion and commitment for education—which I very much applaud.

I am not an artist. I am not a designer. I am certainly not an actor. In fact my art teacher described me as the most boring pupil he had ever encountered. I thought this was a touch overstated, but it was a setback to my creative ambitions and left me with few options but to become a bureaucrat—which I did. I subsequently sought to rehabilitate myself and have been vice-chancellor of the University of the Arts London,

27 Nov 2014 : Column 1080

which has already been mentioned, the chair of the Design Council, the chair of FILMCLUB, with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, helping me, and I am now vice-chairman of Shakespeare’s Globe—an organisation which, without public money, works with more than 120,000 young people every year, creating productions with and for students. In those various capacities, I think I have come to understand the power of arts education, as well as its importance to young people, to society and to our economy. I want to give some specific reasons why we should champion the cause of arts education.

For a start, it enables young people with talent for the arts to develop their potential. Not everyone excels in the traditional academic subjects—as we have heard—but education must be about ensuring that every child fulfils their potential. We have a responsibility to ensure that our young creative talent has that opportunity, too. As the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said, it also develops confidence. It develops the capacity to communicate and to present effectively. These are essential social and employability skills, which we know that many school leavers lack. As a result they struggle to engage, to find work and to assert themselves in society.

Arts education often helps children with learning difficulties to participate on a level playing field. I have seen countless moving examples of pupils who generally find school difficult coming alive in drama classes, in dance classes and in the arts generally. They are excited by the chance to play a full part in class activities, at last feeling a true equal. It also builds our creative engine for the future. Our creative industries fuel our economy, not least in London. They not only produce GDP, from a sector which is growing three times as fast as the rest of the economy, but provide the UK with a major international profile. That does not happen by accident. We have to develop the creative skills that we need, and we have to do that early. We cannot leave it to further and higher education.

Arts education helps to develop an understanding and an appreciation of the creative arts, which will enrich lives throughout the adult years, not only improving immeasurably people’s quality of life but building in our society a demand for the arts. In effect, arts education builds tomorrow’s appreciative and discerning audience. It teaches pupils the importance of resilience, determination and, yes, the need for courage. People used to be surprised when I spoke about courage at the university. However, what struck me quickly upon taking up that job was that arts students needed to have not only application and sustained effort but the courage to expose their work to criticism, some of it ill informed. That may, after all, be very good training for the next generation of politicians.

It helps pupils to work effectively in teams because art is rarely an isolated experience. Drama, dance, music and design are examples of where you need to work together to be successful, and that equips young people with another key life skill. It helps people to develop the ability to innovate and be creative beyond the boundaries of the creative arts. Our businesses need people who can be creative and think laterally. They need people capable of using their initiative—with the possible exception of the banking sector. They need

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people who have learnt the importance of challenging the accepted wisdom. Exposure to the arts and to the mindset of artists at an early age begins to build those invaluable capabilities. It also teaches you how to solve practical, not theoretical, problems. There is a danger that education can, too often, become concentrated on theories and not on practices.

Finally, your Lordships will be glad to hear, it provides the sheer joy of creative achievement. What can compare, for example, with being involved in a successful performance after weeks or months of rehearsals, setbacks, challenges and learning? That is a unique feeling, and one which will stay with you for the rest of your life.

I do not think that there is another subject which provides the same return on investment but it is essential that government recognise that, and recognise the arts as a core exam subject, as others have said, if that subject is not to become seen as second-class. If it is seen as second-class, teachers and students will walk away from it. They will vote with their feet. We have already had some statistics but it is worrying that GCSE drama students have fallen by 25% in the last six years. Equally, it is important that Ofsted gives due regard to arts education in its inspections and more clearly defines what cultural development means, within the Ofsted guidance for inspectors, because we all know how significant Ofsted inspections are to schools. At present it is just one part of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and that is not good enough. We need to do better than that.

But I am in danger of proving my art teacher right and I do not want to detain the House unnecessarily; I want to end on a slightly lighter note. One of the things that people often tell you is that the arts cannot really cope with complex and difficult issues. Let me tell you that the arts are a way of helping young people to address the really complex and difficult issues. I have always loved the story, told by Sir Ken Robinson, of his going into a drawing class one day, sitting down alongside a young lad and saying, “And what are you drawing?” The young lad said, “I am drawing a picture of God”. Ken said, “But no one knows what God looks like”. The young lad responded, “Well, they will do in a few minutes’ time”. Never underestimate the power of the arts.

4.55 pm
Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD): My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for a most informative speech. He gave us a lot of statistics about the decline in the teaching of the arts in recent years. I do not want to repeat what he has said, but the points that he made were very forceful and I hope that they will be noticed and taken into account by the Government in considering what their policy towards education in the arts should be.

Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, I was a very privileged schoolboy. I should like to speak about that and how it has affected me and my outlook. Before I do so I want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for a most passionate and informative speech. I look forward to hearing her in the future.

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The privilege that I enjoyed was to be educated as a schoolboy at a private school in the west of Scotland, the Glasgow Academy, which at the time was the sole private school. The interest in the arts in that school was enormous. We had a school choir and when I started in it, it was led by the organist of Glasgow Cathedral. Subsequently we had another man who went to the University of Aberdeen and focused greatly on outreach, bringing in people who otherwise would not have the opportunities of the wider possibilities of the arts. I was entranced by the possibility of acting, but, with it being an all-boys’ school, as a young boy I was given largely female parts. I have acted as queen to King Richard II, Olivia in Twelfth Night and, in my last year, as Cinderella; but I also had the good fortune to be cast as Hamlet in my last year at school. I believe that this whole experience over the years gave me a greater degree of confidence than otherwise I would have had.

On the musical side, the head music teacher gave us all a big surprise when we came in on the first day of the first term, saying, “Under your desks there are 25 violins. I want you all to take them out and we will try to engage you in this”. The result was that a great many people went on to learn stringed instruments. I was lucky enough to become the leader of the school orchestra. I was very conscious of how privileged I was, and having heard this debate, which has been unanimously supportive of the arts in education, I would like to hear from the Minister in his reply how the Government will systematically restore the arts to their proper place in wider schooling and education.
We have had indications of the importance of creativity and the creative industries to the economy. It is not only true that this subject occupies many people and that there is a risk that this will decline if we do not stimulate education at the beginning, there is also another aspect: the arts bring in visitors from abroad and are hugely advantageous to our tourism. There is no city in the world like London in respect of its broad spectrum of arts, which cater for all visiting interests.

The extraordinary decline in professional arts teaching is something we must seriously regret. There are Ministers within the Government who are helpful in this. Edward Vaizey constantly talks about it and was reported earlier in the context of an article he had written with Michael Gove. However, the present Secretary of State for Education seems to be opposing the arts in favour of science. That is a great mistake. They are not exclusive. Indeed, music is highly mathematical. I cannot understand why the Secretary of State is indicating that if you do one, you cannot do the other. It is not inevitable that someone advantaged by education in the arts will be tied into an artistic career. For my part, I thought about it but decided to become a public international lawyer. Such a career was not excluded because I had spent a lot of time being involved in the arts. Even so, it is possible for people to proliferate their interests by becoming public international lawyers but also writing librettos and operas.
I commend that renaissance attitude to the Government and look forward greatly to hearing how the Minister believes that they should stimulate arts in education.
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5.04 pm
Baroness Warnock (CB): My Lords, I join in thanking my noble friend for introducing this debate. I also join in congratulating our youngest Member on her maiden speech. We hope to hear much more from her, especially on the subject of teaching and the freedom that teachers in free schools may have to adapt and improve the balance that they can introduce into their schools. 

Within the national notion of education-  creativity sometimes seems to be  valued only in terms quantifiable and measurable  outcomes. Unless it is useful in its  aesthetic  it is held with the same regard  and affection of a weed trying to push through the  black tarmacadam of the playground. Beautiful to look at but ultimately doomed -chanced upon by the overseer tasked with maintaining that space of practice. Enclosed  in its own concrete framed  flower bed it remains apart from the purely  functional

as this flyer from LESOCO illustrates the arts must be commodified and sold to prospective learners in language like this: (the Creative Industries) are the most exciting – and fastest growing – sector of the British economy. If people tell you there aren’t jobs in the Creative Industries – they’re wrong! Did you know that the creative sector makes more than £8m an hour, and employs nearly 1.7m people? And 35.5% of the UK’s creative businesses are based in London.

Bob And Roberta Smith-Why I am Standing Against Michael Gove?

http://bobandrobertasmith.co.uk/why-im-standing-against-michael-gove/

Taking a break

The Unlesson Manifesto is taking a break until the new year. There may be odd posts and links to other excellent sites so do please keep returning. We deeply value your interest in our writings and ramblings and we hope there is currently enough material here to keep you busy making defences for less prescribed pedagogies. Keep learning, keep teaching, keep reflecting and keep challenging the neoliberal educational agenda. Keep making a difference. 

As Deleuze & Guattari say:

'Always follow the rhizome by rupture; lengthen, prolong, and relay the line of flight; make it vary, until you have produced the most abstract and tortuous of lines of dimensions and broken directions. Conjugate deterritorialized flows. Follow the plants: you start by delimiting a first line consisting of circles of convergence around successive singularities; then you see whether inside that line new circles of convergence establish themselves, with new points located outside the limits and in other directions. Write, form a rhizome, increase your territory by deterritorialization, extend the line of flight to the point where it becomes an abstract machine covering the entire plane of consistency'

Here's to 2015. 

The Case for a PISA Alternative? Exploring the Global Educational Reform Movement

Part Three: Shifting the Focus

The PISA Results Summary 2012 state on page 9 that ‘Countries with large numbers of students who struggle to master basic reading skills at age 15 are likely to be held back in the future’. This is an obvious statement and certainly not new - in 1696 the Scottish Parliament passed its ‘Act for Setting Schools’ with the very purpose to generate a literate society, but by stating the obvious PISA is leading governments to respond in kind, with little sensitivity or invention. Governments see the data stating that there must be more opportunity for literacy in schools, increase the provision of English lessons, which then in turn diminishes the wider experiences available to students, as there has to be a cut in curriculum provision elsewhere to accommodate the increase in literacy. An example of this can be seen with the launch of the English Baccalaureate by the United Kingdom’s coalition government, which was a direct response to the country falling behind others in PISA league tables and in it’s demand for students to study the 5 GCSE qualification it reduced the subject options available to students. So what then occurs? Interestingly it’s PISA again that:

reveals that in most countries and economies, far too many students do not make the most of the learning opportunities available to them because they are not engaged with school and learning 

PISA Results Summary 2012, 20

The apparent contradiction of the types of issue PISA state to be problematic in students’ successful development and how then policy applies the solution is interesting. It results in a discrepancy of the PISA analysis. Currently there is a paradox between policy implementation on the very professional bodies that are contesting the effects as reality as a result of the:

new ideological element… [where] the response of public opinion, as economic crisis has accentuated a long-standing crisis of education, worsening both the conditions of student life and the conditions of teachers’ work

Dreux et al. 2013, 24

The simple answer is perhaps to allow students to select subjects that interest them and deliver the importance of reading, mathematics, and scientific literacy through these lessons of choice. A study carried out by James Catterall in the United States of over 25,000 students found that secondary school students who ‘report consistent high levels of involvement in instrumental music… show significantly higher levels of mathematics proficiency’ whilst ‘[s]ustained student involvement in theatre arts [show] gains in reading proficiency, gains in self-concept and motivation’ (Catterall 2009, 2). Thus providing an answer to the concerns raised by PISA data without diminishing a student’s holistic learning and perhaps begins to answer, in reality, some of Schleicher’s earlier radical concepts regarding individualised educational experiences.

When the coalition government of Great Britain announced its white paper, ‘The importance of Teaching’ in 2010, it turned its back on the previous government’s Creative Partnerships programme. Instead it set out to ‘devolve as much power as possible to the front line, while retaining high levels of accountability’. It’s reasoning as set out by the Prime Minister in its Forward stated:

The OECD has shown that countries which give the most autonomy to head teachers and teachers are the ones that do best. Finland and South Korea – the highest performing countries in PISA – have clearly defined and challenging universal standards, along with individual school autonomy

Yet when the new draft programmes of study were published in 2012 a joint statement by academics, teachers’ unions, professional associations and children’s authors found that:

too many of the proposals would inhibit progress for large numbers of children and would label others as failures… [T]he proposed curriculum was over-prescriptive and left little or no room for teacher or school flexibility. There was concern that the principal emphasis on just three core subjects would lead to loss of breadth and balance in the curriculum 

 Steers 2014, 11

This curriculum bears little resemblance to the Finnish model of schooling, cited by David Cameron in the white paper, where its teachers have the main role in the planning of their curriculum and ‘mutual responsibility’ takes the place of accountability as they design an approach to aid student development. 

Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator cites the current reforms to the English education system, amongst others, in his ‘Conversation On Lessons From Finland’ found on his website, in an analysis of how PISA is being used by governments:

Unfortunately PISA is often like a box of matches in the hands of a child. PISA certainly has had negative consequences in some places where it has taken the driver’s seat in determining priorities in national education policies… I have been very disappointed by how poorly people in general understand what PISA is actually able to reveal. Most people, educators included, seem to perceive PISA as a global league table that is like a thermometer showing how good or poor the health of your schools system is.

Sahlberg has created a name for this distortion of PISA application on national education policy and calls it the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM).

In researching the impact of PISA on global education it seems that the findings are regularly applied subjectively by governments and therefore distorted significantly enough to generate an entire new set of reforms. These reforms are often

the promotion of 'new' policies spun out of attacks on 'old' ideas, an example of the marketplace in which the contemporary global education model has been placed aimed at furthering economic interests in the 'knowledge-based economy'.

C Lonsdale 2014

Or as Stephen Ball puts it in Big Policies/Small World:

[O]ne key facet of the policy process and the formulation of new orthodoxies is critique. New policies feed off and gain legitimacy from the deriding and demolition of previous policies (see Ball, 1990) which are thus rendered `unthinkable’. The `new’ are marked out by and gain credence from their qualities of difference and contrast. In education in particular, part of the attraction of a new policy often rests on the specific allocation of `blame’ from which its logic derives. Blame may either be located in the malfunctions or heresies embedded in the policies it replaces and/or is redistributed by the new policy within the education system itself and is often personified - currently in the UK in the `incompetent teacher’ and `failing school'.

Alexander, 2012, 10 puts this down to policy makers deliberately using the ‘wrong’ type of research into comparative education where studies are designed to inform specific policy through the provision of evidence relevant to the particular policies of those in power. ‘In this sense the problem isn’t so much PISA as what, faced by the resulting league tables and the surrounding media noise, policymakers and their advisors do with what PISA provides’. The ‘Type II’ studies used, with its superficial interpretation of the PISA evidence provided, seems to enhance the methodology of GERM, ‘are acutely vulnerable to the charge of methodological and/or ideological bias’ and are notable for a high degree of selectivity and arbitrariness.

Coffield, 2008, 44 sums up the problems that face education systems in a world of type II analyses where the ‘gap between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of practice has become a chasm’. According to Coffield the most significant problem with policy makers relying on these type II studies is that the information collated is remote from the every day complexities of teaching and learning, as such simplifying the politics involved in aiming to make a quick transformation of a school system to meet the needs of, say an international league table position. He summarises his extensive research into several key policy papers with the insight that:

The sector is now busily responding to this avalanche of policies, with SMTs throughout the country [in this instance the UK] being distracted from meeting the needs of learners, local communities and employers to meeting the needs of Ministers and policy-makers. p48

These responses are designed to ensure that student knowledge is treated as a commodity and therefore sees them directly aligned to a competitive global market with what they learn, leading to the conclusion that they attain quickly measurable economically viable skills over a slower development towards a deeper culture of learning.

This analysis, whilst focusing on the personal application of GERM as opposed to the broader objectivity of PISA, does not exclude the dangers of over-reliance on cross-nationalist analysis. The promising statements regarding individualised learning shared by Schleicher earlier in this essay are certainly part of the problem when aligning education systems to global league tables and can often lead to an under-educational individualisation, or marginalisation, particularly with students who find it hard to achieve in the new narrow core curricula. The contradiction created between strictly adhering to large data systems that measure a certain type of progress, and being encouraged towards autonomy and invention in the successful delivery of policy reforms driven by global analysis places front line educators in a paradox. Coffield 2008, 17 explains this paradox particularly well and it is another example of the aforementioned chasm between policy and practice:

[T]he exhortation from government appears to be: ‘You must innovate, even if you have no evidence to support your innovation; but if you fail, we shall close you down or place you in special measures.

The OECD has such a monopoly on statistical data comparisons between education systems that it quickly becomes impossible to ignore their findings once a government has signed up to the league tables. In turn this enforces the problematical paradox as discussed by Coffield and quickly leads to the neoliberal demands of measuring teacher ability and performance to student test scores. The result is a workforce low in morale as they see the rich curricula and craft of pedagogy reduced to a colourless classroom where:

[e]quating good teaching with good test scores reduces a complex, human process, and the teacher-student relationship, to a cold data point, bereft of nuance. Gude 2013 

This essay has focused on how education systems, all over the world, have developed into a global community with a heavy reliance on a particular form of statistical data designed to improve ones national standing in an international competition. The findings are that, unless a national education system is doing particularly well, they will quickly manipulate the PISA evidence, creating policy to suit a sense of personal political achievement over and above a culture of learning grounded in personal independence, creativity, innovation and social and cultural experiences. The alternative to such an educational straightjacket appears to be simple; to listen to the teachers and educators who are on the front-line or researching the educational processes in different cultural backgrounds and national contexts with the aim to further understand what makes education good and what makes learners learn. These experienced professionals are in the education sector of each individual country with the intention to develop the next generation of workers, parents, politicians and policy-makers into lifelong learners. A good example of this approach in action occurred under the Labour government in the United Kingdom with the aforementioned Creative Partnerships programme. This committee saw the importance of developing learners for the job market but intended on addressing this through ‘a rounded education’ that ‘equipped young people for the future world of work [with] a desire to supplement the focus on basic literacy and numeracy with other areas’ (Education and Skills Committee 2007, 9). The programme saw a need to equip students with creativity in education with the aim to support economic growth in a ‘flexible job market where creative skills and aptitudes were required for survival’.

The purpose of stakeholders such as the OECD and PISA should be to support national educational systems such as this and provide data that can then be used as a tool to develop curricula where the responsibility for content is mutually beneficial for all involved; teachers, students and governments and not used as ‘a box of matches in the hands of a child’, where top down political enforcement and corporate reform creates a reactionary workforce. One in which students ultimately bear the burden of failure and teachers become human shields as they try to deflect these political and economic demands whilst shouldering the stress that standardised testing and league-table positions place onto learners. As Gude 2013 puts it:

The anti-reform fight should not be understood as an anti-progressive, hidebound resistance to inexorable technological and historical advancement. Anti-corporate reform educators aren’t hostile to educational progress. They’re fighting a neoliberal model in which teachers as agents – subjects teaching subjects – are reduced to objects constrained and acted upon, told what to do and how to do it.

Education will always remain a political battleground for governments and parties in opposition, there is, in essence, nothing wrong with this. It shows its importance to a country’s wealth and success. It is important however that the wealth and success is shared within the education system of a country through the rich curricula of holistic, experiential learning that encompasses any cultural and social history and a personal pedagogy that understands it. This is the approach that will ensure countries meet the demands of PISA and see the results, however narrow in their outlook, they crave.

The Case for a PISA Alternative? Exploring the Global Educational Reform Movement

Part Two: The Economy of Performance vs Ecologies of Practice

The knowledge economy and the targeting of particular educational objectives to economic focused outcomes is currently in conflict with a profession that has a history of social, moral and cultural approaches to education where:

The professional is motivated by service to the community rather than by the anticipation of an immediate material reward; altruistic values predominate over egoistic inclinations (Turner 1993 p14 cited in Stronach & Corbin 2002 p2)

In early 2014 an open letter written by Heinz-Dieter Meyer and signed by many educationalists challenged some of the perceived problems posed to education by OECD and PISA with some significant arguments that oppose the types of comments shared by Schleicher and others seen earlier in this essay. I would like to share three statements from the letter here:

1. PISA results are anxiously awaited by governments, education ministers, and the editorial boards of newspapers, and are cited authoritatively in countless policy reports. They have begun to deeply influence educational practices in many countries. As a result of PISA, countries are overhauling their education systems in the hopes of improving their rankings. Lack of progress on PISA has led to declarations of crisis and “PISA shock” in many countries, followed by calls for resignations, and far-reaching reforms according to PISA precepts
2. PISA, with its three-year assessment cycle, has caused a shift of attention to short-term fixes designed to help a country quickly climb the rankings, despite research showing that enduring changes in education practice take decades, not a few years to come to fruition.
3. PISA takes attention away from the less measurable or immeasurable educational objectives like physical, moral, civic, and artistic development, thereby dangerously narrowing our collective imagination regarding what education is and ought to be about.

These three statements raise important educational concerns about how governments are applying reforms in connection with PISA and I will now analyse them in reverse order by providing three directly contrasting statements that intend to highlight the conflict between the profession and its policy makers. Point three is raised by the new UK Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who justifies the coalition government reforms as necessary by criticising previous government policy, in the Telegraph on the 11^th August 2014:

England’s performance in international studies stagnated… This wasn’t the fault of hard working teachers, but of a system which prized all the wrong outcomes… as schools were encouraged to push… young people towards poor quality qualifications [which have] little or no labour market value

This statement clearly emphasises a government focus on a particular form of educational attainment as being more important than the less measurable objectives outlined by both Grek and Meyer. 

The issue raised in point 2 above is that under the current reformation this focus is also short-term in its gaze, demanding education systems to apply strategies that are historically expected in the world of corporate business. Subsequently a government’s investment in human capital now demands immediate results and is at odds with the historical approach to the profession that cultivates successful educational content where ‘all good and true education is an expression of national life and character’ (Sadler 1900 cited in Alexander 2001, 27). Sellar and Lingard cite Feher 2009 on this matter and explain that:

[I]n the neoliberal world of globalized and unregulated financial markets, corporate governance is concerned less with optimizing returns on investment over time than with maximizing the distribution of dividends in the short run.

When applied to the education sector of a nation, governments become preoccupied with the perpetual appreciation of the international value of the sector rather than the original investment in training which waits for productive future returns. 

The initial point made by Meyer that I selected is the one that currently causes most conflict within the profession where:

The political conflict relocates the centre of debate outside the profession itself, leaving the professionals mere spectators. Accordingly, one rescue strategy (amongst many others) in such embattled professions is of course to change sides, ‘to abandon the professional mode’ in favour of more successful and dominant contributors to the discourse (Stronach and Corbin 2002, 7)

This significant external influence on the methodology of delivery is seeing the divisive application of approaches such as performance related pay, free schools and academies in England, the compulsory teaching of English in Chinese schools, the Race to the Top contest in the United States and forms of policy borrowing between nations which is resulting in an:

intolerable contradiction between what teachers are expected to do and what they want to do as individuals [longing] for meaningful ways to maintain their self-esteem in new personal and professional identities and to deal with the conflicts between the new roles established by the new curriculum and their ‘old’ identities (S. Guo et al. 2013, 250)

Competition between teachers regarding performance is particularly contentious. Governments feel that they can legitimise attacks on the profession and undermine cultural pedagogical approaches by raising issues found in other countries that are deemed to be successful. It therefore implies that one’s pedagogical strategy has no personalised context for delivery but is universal to any other educational system where other teachers can understand and use the narrative constructed for a particular cultural environment. It could be considered part of an educators professional skill set to be able to manipulate others pedagogical approaches and indeed this is possible, but it does cause confusion within the identity created by each individual, nurtured and developed over time through repetition, trial and error. (Alexander 2001, 30) questions the validity of this interchangeable transnational approach to education:

in countries that are as culturally different as the UK and Japan, treating culture as an independent variable in a statistical calculation encourages the assumption that an educational strategy can be detached from the values and conditions which give it meaning and ensure its success, transpose it to a context where these may be diametrically opposed, and yet expect it to deliver the same results.

Since referring to Meyer’s open letter I have explored areas of tension between policy makers and those who deliver it. But is PISA to blame for how policy makers are using the evidence they provide? Certainly it can be stated at the outset that the focus of PISA on such a narrow band of educational achievement, as discussed in some detail so far, is not particularly helpful. However the data in itself is quite useful and shortly I will explore some possible interpretations that go beyond simply regurgitating the stats in the form of policy before looking at viable alternatives to the pressures of the PISA bubble.

A Lesson(in)Action - Preparation for the new academic year

"The ideological project embodied in educational policies since the ERA [Education Reform Act] has introduced increased regulation of primary [and secondary] education and rapid changes that have contributed to a climate of uncertainty for schools. The threat of failure: for children, teachers, schools and education departments in universities, maintained by the government through policing by Ofsted, reductive league tables and a policy of public naming and shaming, is ever present. The current climate constrains risk-taking and experimentation and obstructs creative approaches to learning and teaching that could result in innovation and originality."

Clare Kelly, 2013

To begin the new academic year you are invited to prepare and take part in A Lesson(in)Action 

The Unlesson Manifesto demands that you actively avoid:

Lesson Aims

Lesson Objectives

The 3-Part Lesson

Assessment for Learning

Pace

Differentiation

Measurable Progress

Learning Outcomes

Interactive Whiteboards

Seating Plans

Prior Learning

By removing the prescribed scaffolding of lesson planning, you are required to recalibrate your delivery. Your education system is working hard to ration every child's comprehensive educational experience and this is an opportunity to work creatively and actively avoid an approach that currently takes place every day across the globe. Through the avoidance of the structures listed above you will need to prepare a minimum of one lesson that encourages you as the teacher and your students to take risks. For some of you it may be a challenge to work outside of these parameters whilst for others it may be a simple reinforcement of how you already deliver in the classroom. Either way it is an attempt at a more conscious approach to how you work. We want to hear about your inventive approaches and conclusions - tweet comments to @BoHetherington and @LessonInAction or share via the comments box on the blog. All the best for the new term, stay strong and believe in your own professionalism.