News

This is our brief annual round-up of the last year of collective CLA activity.

It was great to hear on the 18 November that the Department for Education has confirmed £300m investment into arts education initiatives over the next four years.

This month we bring you education annoucements and consultations, debates in the House of Lords, best practice guides, a survey and a job opportunity.

Over the last few weeks we have seen a great deal of press about the decision by Examination Board AQA to close the History of Art A-level. This post aims to give you some the facts and figures behind it all.

Department for Education figures published in June 2016 show that between 2010 and 2015 the number of hours the arts were taught in secondary schools and the number of arts teachers both fell by 15%.

This month we bring you news from Westminster including consultations, speeches and CLA pledges in the Labour Arts policy, plus new guidance for school governors and news on the All-Wales Arts and Education Programme

As we had feared there has been a significant decline in the number of Arts GCSE entries in England in 2016. Entries are down 21% since 2010 and down 8% since 2015. This is the largest year on year decline for over a decade.

On the 9 August our new Culture Secretary Karen Bradley, made her maiden speech at Liverpool Philharmonic on the arts, culture and civil society. You can read the speech in full here. This post gives you the headlines.

Despite the seismic implications of the European referendum, there has still been a great deal of activity in the cultural learning world over the last month. We bring you news of; the new Ofsted Chief and the outgoing words of current boss Michael Wilshaw; some new evidence, blogs and arguments for Cultural Learning from Arts Council England; new PISA plans for tests on cultural awareness; the opening of the new Tate Modern extension; great case studies from the RSC and from Yorkshire Dance; good news for cultural learning in Scotland; and the TES School Award winners.

There has been much discussion about the provision, take up and status of arts in schools across England since 2010 with conflicting statistics being offered by different groups. In this post we attempt to untangle some of the discussion.