#SAVEOURSUBJECTS:

By Nansi Ellis

Sir James Dyson told the Times Education Commission in January 2022: ‘Children are creative, they love building and making things but as they get closer to GCSEs and A-levels all that is squashed out of them. It’s all about rote learning, not using your imagination.’[1]

This is the perhaps inevitable result of education policies over the past twelve years that have focused on a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’, which prioritises the recall of facts over the acquisition of skills and competencies. In addition, the introduction of two secondary accountability measures, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) and Progress 8, has encouraged schools to focus on ‘core’ academic subjects at the expense of subjects such as music, drama, art, dance, and design and technology This narrowing of the curriculum has had a dramatic impact on arts and technology subjects at secondary school level:

GCSE entries in arts and technical subjects are falling - The number of young people studying arts and technical subjects at secondary school continues to fall. Between 2010 and 2022, there was a fall of 40% in GCSE arts entries.[2] Design and technology

GCSE had 71% fewer entries in 2022 than 2010, while music saw a fall of 27%

There are fewer teachers teaching creative subjects - There has been a 23% drop between 2010 and 2021 of teachers teaching arts, and a 49% drop in design and technology teachers.[3]

A skew towards academic subjects - According to the workforce census for 2021, three in five teaching hours in secondary schools were for EBacc subjects, leaving two in five for arts, PE, RE or relevant vocational subjects. As a result, recent surveys have found that less than half of secondary school teachers think the curriculum is ‘broad and balanced’, with 82% highlighting that the accountability system is overly concerned with academic achievement [4]

Low funding - According to Labour, specific funding for music, arts and cultural programmes equated to just £9.40 per pupil in 2021.[5]

The Institute for Fiscal Studies[6] reported a 9% drop in funding per student between 2010 and 2020, forcing state schools to prioritise funds towards the delivery of EBacc subjects in order to comply with performance metrics.

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