School, Leeds [1980-96] and then peripatetic steel pan teacher and also Steel Pan Development Officer and Head of Steel Pans [1996-2023] for the Leeds Music Service, I have lived through and observed the decline of the status of arts in the English Education System. Along with this came several devastating government "initiatives":
1.The Private Finance Initiative [PFI] and 2. Building Schools for the Future [BSF] in which school buildings were given away to demolition and construction companies to destroy and rebuild smaller, with now no music rooms in primary schools and high schools without enough space to house all their bigger instruments.
All now belonged to private business owners and shareholders, and schools who used to pay nothing now had to pay rent for 30 years to said owners. Also all non-teaching staff were employed and answerable to the company who owned the building. If your computer needed mending you had to ring IT Services and get permission for your school technician to fix it.
The Association of Architects described BSF as "an opportunity lost" [article to be inserted].
2. Literacy hours; Maths became Numeracy. STEM, EBACC, Ofsted, SATs; The Arts didn't and still don't feature in assessments. Culture is the preserve of the private schools.
Here is the main motion, then my speech printed, and mine and Ralph's speeches from youtube:
The Importance of the Arts and Music in Education
Proposer: Victoria Jaquiss, Leeds
Conference
believes that
1. All our children need, and all schools should provide a
broad and balanced curriculum which fully includes a mixture of science,
humanities, arts and sports.
2. This should be truly inclusive; the arts,including music should not be geared solely towards children deemed to be talented, or whose parents can afford music tuition.
Conference
notes that since the introduction of private finance initiative building
schools in the future
1. Schools no longer have enough space to house all acoustic,
especially world instruments
2. Primary Schools no longer have purpose-built music rooms,
but they use “flexible spaces” i.e. the hall, which they are sports, dinners,
parents evenings, assemblies and the rest.
3. All the arts are marginalised, often taught in rotations and dropped by most students for KS4
Conference
further notes that
1. Of all the arts, music suffers most from being the most
expensive in terms of money and space
2. Primary teacher training varies widely, and can include less
than a week on training to teach music. In fact in primary training students
are taught to teach every subject except music. With many younger teachers not
confident musically it is now up to Music Services is to provide specialist
music provision. Music services can provide excellent national curriculum music
lessons, but their staff may be at the school for as little as one hour a week,
and don’t always get the chance to know their students well enough to support
them properly in this most important of disciplines.
3. There is an arts crisis in our schools. More and more
children suffer from mental health issues or are deeply dissatisfied with their
school’s ability to cater to their own personal and spiritual needs.
4. There runs a risk of the music industry, both classical and
pop, becoming the preserve of the wealthy especially those who can afford and
choose to send their children to private schools (which, in general, understand
the importance of the arts to fully develop the rounded child). For mainstream
schools access to music remains a lottery in the hands of the headteacher.
Conference
instructions the Executive to
1. to campaign for music and the arts to take their proper and
equal place in the school curriculum.
2. To work with sister Union, the MU to develop this campaign
to promote the arts to government, to all educators and to parents.
Speech for Harrogate NEU 2023: The Importance of the Arts and Music
Victoria Jaquiss
My speech https://youtu.be/cEixGCclS_M
"The
man on the radio said there were talented children already missing out in our
primary schools.
I
replied, though he couldn’t hear me, that there were untalented children in our
schools also missing out.
Yes, The Arts are in crisis in our
education system
But
as the adjudicator said last month at our regional festival “Well, Lady Muriel
School [not her real name] must be doing something right!”
Yes
it was. They were spending shedloads of money on music! Private school! Durr!
I
have list of some of the things that are wrong.
1. The
Arts in general don’t survive compulsorily past KS3. And it not that students
aren’t choosing them; they are being deliberately steered away from them.
At one school, in a city near here, they
call them the Purple Group. They turned up last week to Yr 9 Parents’ Evening
with faces like death because they were top of the year academically. They knew
that meant they had to give up the subjects they had been loving for three
years. Which had made them feel complete.
2. STORAGE
Primary schools
rarely have dedicated music rooms, and never have adequate storage. High
schools, especially PFI new builds have inadequate music suites. I call them
suites. Two rooms and a cupboard, and a
mini recording studio with a glass wall!
3. OfSTED,
SATs, EBACC.
They should be abolished anyway as they do nothing but
harm. Amongst their many crimes, they don’t measure the arts, therefore they lower
their importance in public’s eyes
4. STATUS
If, according to
this same radio presenter, 54% parents always want to know about the arts in their children’s
prospective school, that means that nearly half of all parents don’t ask, and
there was no olden age when they did, not in my 40 years teaching music. Music:
the lesson is seen too often by them as a leisure activity.
This
leads onto the kids thinking the arts are pointless, and then Yr9 can be a
tricky year. They see that no one measures them, no one cares what they do,
their motivation collapses, their behaviour deteriorates.
5.
HIT
and MISS
The
pockets of excellence that do exist are enabled by supportive headteachers and
determined staff. And nearly always validated by how they improve academic
results. [And just throwing this in: two of the academies that I have been
working in recently do have thriving music departments, and one has the best
art department in the world! IMO. Have they been talking to the private
schools?].
6. WHY
DO WE STUDY ANYTHING
Children don’t learn football, or study maths so that
some of them can become professional footballers or mathematicians. And children don’t study music so that some “talented” individuals can become
musicians.
We watch a play or a dance, listen to
music, or look at art, with a deeper enjoyment when we have an understanding of
how it is created.
7.
WHY
SINGLE OUT MUSIC
All arts suffer in the same way but Music
is most at risk as it is most expensive in terms of space, sound, equipment and
specialist teachers. Because while 25 students can be in the same room
painting, for example, quite different pictures, the same can’t be said for 25
music students. I am simplifying wildly here.
All our students need and deserve the
arts. Just for themselves. Just for culture. Just for life. [Not for industry.]
So much damage done. So much to rebuild.
We must start now.
Let’s
have ARTS for ALL and ARTS for ARTS’ sake!
Ralph's speech:
https://youtu.be/kuFVmdcYDDY
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