Contribution
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in support of the Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, which would ensure that all our children can benefit from a creative education. The Bill puts a deliberately ambitious proposition before us: that creative education should be an entitlement, not an optional extra, including a minimum expectation for creative learning and stronger partnerships between schools and the creative sector.
It is also a great pleasure to welcome my noble friend Lady Mackenzie of Sherwood to the Front Bench. She brings to the House immense experience from a range of cultural leadership roles, as we have heard, not least from her role in the Cultural Olympiad. We are very lucky to have her. Indeed, having worked with her when we were both special advisers in the Blair Government, I know that I can confidently praise what will be an impressive maiden speech ahead of her actually making it later on in this debate.
We are all here today because of our passion for the arts and the creative industries, and because we know that access to the opportunities that the arts provide is all too often determined by class, geography and money. There are welcome initiatives that are happening today to try to make up for this. James Graham, one of our great playwrights, is doing phenomenal work to try to bring more schoolchildren into theatre productions, and theatres are doing great work; for example, the Royal Shakespeare Company is working with Harriet Walter at the moment to take theatre into schools.
I was lucky to be at a state school at a time when I could benefit from a great arts education, both in core hours and with after-school clubs. Playing the trumpet brought me great joy, even if the same might not have always been true for my audience.
Sadly, under the previous Government, the arts were completely devalued as part of state education. Not only were they excluded from all important performance measures, such as the EBacc and Progress 8 for secondary schools, they were squeezed out of the primary school day. This Labour Government are committed to delivering a curriculum that is rich, broad, inclusive and innovative, with creative subjects studied for both their intrinsic value and their ability to build confidence in essential skills, such as critical thinking, oracy, creative problem-solving and teamwork.
I will give just one example of the benefits. The Cultural Policy Unit, whose work in this area I commend, has written about the “superpower of looking”—that is, getting children to look at paintings and develop their critical thinking skills. At a time when children will increasingly encounter AI-generated images and information, the ability to look closely, interrogate what they see and exercise independent judgment is becoming an increasingly important skill. This shows how creative education is fundamentally civic education. You will find it harder to participate in democratic life and society more widely when you lack the skills that a creative education provides.
To that end, I very much welcome the creation by the Government of the National Centre for Arts and Music Education. It has a mandate to provide national leadership on arts education, a new continuing professional development offer for teachers, and better co-ordination between schools and cultural organisations, promoting routes into creative careers, and taking over oversight of music hubs from 2027. The centre was due to start this month, as already been mentioned in the debate. Can my noble friend the Minister update the House on how this is progressing, who the delivery partner is and when we will be able to see a detailed plan on what it will deliver and when; for example, on the core priorities of creating necessary partnerships between schools and cultural organisations, identifying areas with poor arts provision and preparing schools for the revised curriculum? Concern has been expressed about whether this will genuinely be an arts and music education centre that gives proper weight to drama, dance, art and design alongside music, rather than being led predominantly by its role in overseeing music hubs.
It would be wonderful to think that we do not need to legislate to ensure the level of arts and creative provision we want to see for our children. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister being able to reaffirm the Government’s commitment in that regard. I do not doubt that we have a Prime Minister and a Government who are champions of the creative industries. I hope my noble friend will understand that any anxiety that is being expressed, across the whole House, is because we want to pin down how the honourable intentions are being translated into practice, and that is motivated only by our ambition for our children and our creative industries. I look forward to supporting my noble friend the Minister to deliver on this vital work.