Our children in need of a wider curriculum

✒ “UNCREATIVE Education Policy” should be seen as a contradiction in terms.

However, this is emerging as a widely held judgement on the consequences of the former Education Secretary’s English baccalaureate policy.

Mr Gove may have had commendable motives for the decision to encourage schools to concentrate more on “core subjects”, but the effects of this over the whole range of “creative subjects” have been very damaging.

This was discussed in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, Front Row Special (November 14). The Government was invited to send a representative from the Department of Education and Science, but declined to do so.

All the contributors had wide practical experience of the issues in question.

They expressed a mixture of alarm and intense dissatisfaction at the steep decline in the creative subjects of music, art, drama and design and technology in the vast majority of state schools.

The Government’s attitude to criticism in this field has been dismissive.

It has pointed to the theoretical freedom of heads and principals to construct whatever curriculum they see fit around the core subjects.

This is a disingenuous response as it overlooks the stark reality facing schools generally.

They feel under great pressure to concentrate limited resources on achieving the targets in the perceived key subjects.

The result is that much previous excellent work in the creative subjects is being squeezed out and effectively down-graded by the narrow target culture.

Music, art, design and drama are not unimportant extras to be tacked-on to the serious business of three Rs.

These subjects present many pupils and students with unique life-enriching opportunities.

But creative subjects offer an essential ingredient in the education of all young people.

These subjects not only benefit their general mental performance, but also have a calming effect in teaching situations and help improve social skills and individual motivation.

Contributors to the BBC programme invited listeners to engage in campaigning for urgent measures to be taken to slow and then reverse this decline, before it is too late.

Independent schools have no doubts about the importance of creative subjects in their pupils’ experience of school life.

Why should we accept far less for pupils in state schools?

Nine-year-olds don’t need to know the difference at that age between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions (as is now required, amongst other irrelevant pieces of “academic” information); they need more time and opportunities for sport, making music, making models and enjoying “doing their own thing” (creatively of course!).

An optimist on the radio programme referred to indications of a change of heart in Ofsted.

It may now be starting to move cautiously in the direction of supporting a wider educational experience for pupils.

May I appeal to readers to take up this issue with their MPS and their children’s schools and call for such a hoped-for development to be embraced wholeheartedly. drilling the