We were pleased to publish our 2025 Report Card this month, highlighting new key findings based on our analysis of the socioeconomic determinants affecting whether or not a child pursues Expressive Arts subjects from the age of 14.
In other news for our April edition at the start of the summer term, we cover the multiple consultations and calls for evidence which are closing over the next few days, including important points to include in your the Ofsted consultation responses, and the government’s call for evidence on inclusive practice; new research by the Sutton Trust (commissioned from NFER) which reveals sharp cuts in schools, including for school trips; responses to the Spring Statement in relation to education funding; unfilled teacher vacancies hitting a record high; comments from the Chair of the Oracy Education Commission on how the Curriculum and Assessment Review will be addressing oracy; more NFER research revealing that young people in England have poorer socio-emotional skills than most of their peers in other countries; and coverage of mounting pressures in the university sector.
Thank you to the National Foundation for Educational Research and to the Sutton Trust for their invaluable work in providing contextual data which is helpful for our evidence base.
Government consultations and surveys galore …
As you’d expect a few months into a new government’s term of office, there have been a number of open consultations and calls for evidence in recent weeks. The Arts Council England survey closed on 24 April and CLA submitted a detailed response focused on ACE’s work with children and young people. The Education All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) call for evidence on the topic of ‘Love of Learning’ also closed on 22 April.
We will be working with Professor Pat Thomson, our Senior Evidence Associate, on turning our recent consultation work into a series of short position papers or evidence reports, as some of the consultations have been very useful for evidence gathering. So watch this space!
We are just finalising our responses to the Ofsted consultation and the Inclusion in Practice consultation (see news items below) – these close on 28 April and 1 May respectively. Again we would encourage you to respond. Align with your organisation where needed, but do not miss the chance to contribute.
We go back to our CLA Blueprint for an Arts-rich education, the findings for our 2025 Report Card, and the Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future report when we consider our responses to any consultation. And we also look at our emerging Capabilities Framework when we need to state how to Arts learning delivers seven personal and societal capabilities that are important in meeting the needs of children and young people. But our fundamental starting point remains the same: the needs of children and young people.
Ofsted consultation
We have taken a close look at the Ofsted consultation document (‘Improving the way Ofsted inspects education’) and the School Inspection Toolkit (draft for consultation).
The inspectorate proposes replacing its current four-point grading system with five grades across up to 11 judgement areas. Of these the first ten are divided into five colour-coded grades (ranging from dark green to red): Causing Concern; Attention needed; Secure; Strong and Exemplary. The last one – Safeguarding – is a straight met/not met. Schoolsweek is already reporting that Ofsted is considering renaming the ‘secure’ grade in its proposed new report cards
with another word of phrase, amid concerns it won’t be clear to families where it sits on the new scale.
ASCL has urged Ofsted to reconsider its five-point system, arguing it would introduce more anxiety for school staff. Instead it has put forward its own proposal for a three-point system – featuring just the ‘secure’, ‘attention needed’, and ‘causing concern’ grades.
It is worth noting what is changing in relation to arts and culture. When the Ofsted framework required schools to develop their pupils’ cultural capital in 2019 we created a summary of some of the history, academic thinking and definitions of this term. This CLA blog had 20,000 views at the time, indicating how few educators fully understood what the term meant. It was always a complicated, flawed and reductive directive, and we will not be sorry to see it go, but there must be ways built into the inspection framework to ensure that the inspection process examines and values a school’s provision of an Arts-rich education. Some suggestions for ways this might be incorporated are set out below.
How arts and culture are addressed in the new approach
A number of subjects get no specific mention. Much of the reference to skills and knowledge is very generic and non-subject specific although there is quite an emphasis on language skills and on Maths. References to culture, arts and music appear specifically in Personal Development and Wellbeing – a ‘secure’ school:
- develops pupils’ character, motivation, confidence and resilience
- teaches the importance of equality of opportunity and respect for diversity
- prepares pupils for the opportunities, decisions, responsibilities and experiences of later life
- broadens pupils’ experiences and provides opportunities for them to develop their talents and interests in areas such as the arts, music and sport
- allows pupils to develop spiritually, morally, socially and culturally
In a ‘strong’ school: “Pupils participate enthusiastically in a wide range of artistic, musical, sporting and cultural activities. They are proud to represent their school and community.”
The emerging CLA Capabilities Framework sets out the ways in which Expressive Arts subjects contributes to these important capabilities.
Although it is good to see the specific reference to the arts and music – and this can be seen as a strong positive in that arts subjects are specifically identified – there is also a risk that this gives the impression that these are seen as extra-curricular add-ons and not core to curriculum (where they are not specifically mentioned). We do want to highlight this risk as a possible unintended consequence of this directive.
We would also stress that music is patently an art form. There is therefore never a need to separate ‘arts’ and ‘music’.
There are other sections around skills, empathy, communication, ideas, and emotions, and around the importance of a broad and balanced curriculum and teacher development where the Expressive Arts could fit particularly well. ‘Strong’ would mean that “Children can articulate their thoughts, ideas, emotions and needs clearly and confidently to their peers and to an increasingly wide range of adults.”
‘Secure’ would mean that “Children are aware of their emotions. They are beginning to learn how to manage them to support the foundations of positive mental health and well-being.” Causing concern would mean that “A significant minority of pupils do not receive a wide, rich set of experiences. Disadvantaged pupils or those with SEND miss out on aspects of the school’s wider offer.”
It would be helpful to see “cultural and arts” specifically mentioned in curriculum as an indicator of a genuinely broad and balanced curriculum and it would be helpful to have “arts rich” as an indicator for “Strong and exemplary”. There is a need to replace “cultural capital” – now removed – from the inspection framework introduced in 2019. Ensuring that the arts and culture are also referenced in the curriculum section would address this.
The Inspection Toolkit
For the curriculum and teaching sections of the Inspection Toolkit, much depends on the National Curriculum upon which the toolkit rests, and the quality of that in relation to Expressive Arts subjects. It is hard to respond to this consultation without understanding what the final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review will say about curriculum change.
In the Curriculum section of the Toolkit we are pleased to see recognition of the need for a wide range of subjects to prepare young people for life and work and would stress that this must include the Expressive Arts. ‘Causing concern’ would mean that ‘The narrow range of subjects does not prepare pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in Britain.’
We are pleased to see a call for breadth, depth and ambition, and on the need for subject expertise and we are pleased to see reference to skills alongside knowledge. We are also pleased to see a positive emphasis on SEND and on inclusive teaching.
In the Developing Teaching section of the Toolkit we are pleased to see a focus on non-generic approaches to professional development, i.e. wanting to see subject specificity in CPD and would agree that this is essential for Expressive Arts subjects. Confidence, expertise and subject knowledge are all important for Expressive Arts subjects.
In the Personal Development and Wellbeing section of the Toolkit we are pleased to see an emphasis on wellbeing and to see the arts recognised here as important for personal development and wellbeing, alongside sport. But our concern is as above in relation to a risk that the arts might be seen as existing outside the curriculum.
What next
Do get your responses in by 28 April. After the consultation closes, Ofsted plans to publish a consultation report in the summer, before implementing the new framework from November. Final agreed reforms “will then be piloted again across all education remits”. The watchdog has insisted “nothing is set in stone” and that it will listen to consultation responses. It has also said it has “clear plans to introduce changes in November 2025”.
SEND call for evidence on inclusive practice
Tom Rees, DfE’s Inclusion Chair, is leading a programme, Inclusion in Practice, which is calling for examples of schools running resource provision and SEN units, and using specialist learning assistants. The government is launching a call for evidence to find examples of inclusive practice in schools as part of its planned reforms for pupils with SEND.
The programme aims to draw on the experiences of teachers and school leaders who have a proven track record of effective inclusion in mainstream schools. The call for evidence was launched by the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson at the recent ASCL conference in March.
Tom Rees said: “Inclusion in Practice will allow us to gather evidence to help improve experiences and outcomes for children, young people, families and providers. We are urging schools and stakeholders leading the way to share their approaches – by telling their stories, they will help shape a national resource that ensures every child, in every school, has the best opportunity to succeed.”
The closing date for submission of evidence is 1 May 2025 and we would encourage you to submit responses as we know that Arts education (and youth work) can provide brilliant examples of inclusive practice.
Number of schools making budget cuts increases according to the Sutton Trust
New research by the Sutton Trust has found a rise in the number of school leaders laying off staff and cutting the curriculum. More school leaders are cutting back on teaching staff, teaching assistants and support staff compared to last year due to a squeeze on their finances, according to new polling. Secondary schools appear to be the worst affected.
The survey of 1,208 teachers, conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) for the Sutton Trust as part of their Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey, reveals sharper cuts than in 2024, with growing staff reductions, along with cuts in spending for a range of courses, and school trips. Top line points from the research are:
- 51% of secondary school senior leaders reported making cuts in teaching staff, up from 38% last year, while 50% reported cuts to teaching assistants, up from 41% last year. 55% reported further cuts to support staff, up from 51%. These figures are the highest since 2020, and cuts in primary schools are at their highest since the Sutton Trust began polling this issue in 2017.
- Ahead of the upcoming report from the Curriculum and Assessment Review, there has been a marked increase in the number of secondary school senior leaders having to reduce the choices they offer at GCSE (33%, up from 29% last year) and A level (29%, up from 23%). (We already know from our 2025 Report Card how this has affected Arts subjects.)
- A staggering 88% of senior leaders across all schools said the pupil premium is less than they need to serve those pupils. Most concerning of all, there has been a 13 percentage points increase in the proportion of secondary school leaders reporting using the pupil premium to plug gaps elsewhere in their school’s budget since 2024, from 32% to 45%. This is the highest result since the polling question was first asked in 2017.
- 53% of all school leaders are cutting spending on trips and outings, up from 50% last year, while 33% of school leaders have reported cuts to sports and other extracurricular activities, up from 27%. This is the highest level since 2017, indicating mounting funding pressures across the school system.
- There has been a substantial increase in secondary school leaders reporting cuts to IT equipment, up from 36% to 48%, although primary school leaders are still cutting more (56%). This is at odds with the Government’s intentions to increase the use of AI in schools.
- 37% of senior leaders across both secondary and primary schools have also stopped offering tutoring to pupils since 2024, after the previous Government’s National Tutoring Programme (NTP) ended last summer. Last year, 51% of senior leaders were still using this scheme.
We already know from our 2025 Report Card how this has affected Arts subjects and we note the further decline in cuts to school trips and outings, which will undoubtedly be limiting access to Arts experiences and opportunities. These are cuts that are likely to hit lower income students and pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) the hardest. It is particularly disheartening to see that the pupil premium is not touching the sides of the needs of schools in serving their most disadvantaged pupils.
As the Sutton Trust notes in this report, pupils from lower income families are less likely than their wealthier peers to go on cultural or trips with their families and are less likely to participate in commercial extra-curricular activities like music or dance lessons. If they can’t access these in school, then they will never access them.
This annual survey provides a helpful if bleak snapshot of the reality in schools today, making clear just how hard it is going be for the government to make curriculum changes and for any policy changes to start to turn around Arts provision after a decade and a half of decline.
The Spring Statement and the reaction of the teaching unions
Still on the topic of funding for education, our last newsletter went out just before last month’s Spring Statement so we promised we’d update on it in this issue. While there were no direct policy decisions on schools, the Spring Statement confirmed an extremely tight fiscal situation. The assumption is that spending per pupil will be frozen in real terms, with spending falling as the number of pupils drops. In last year’s budget the government provided an extra £2.3 billion in school funding. This allowed for a 1.5 per cent real-terms increase in funding per pupil, taking it back to just above its 2010 level.
The chancellor set out plans for a 1.2 per cent per year real-terms increase in day-to-day spending on public services between 2025-26 and 2028-29, the three years covered by the upcoming spending review. This is only very slightly down from 1.3 per cent per year set out in the autumn budget. After accounting for commitments on the early years, defence and likely settlements for the NHS, this is likely to translate into 1 per cent real-terms cuts per year in all other areas of public services, which includes education.
Tables provided with the Spring Statement show the DfE’s capital budget will increase by £100 million in 2025-26, compared to the forecast at the autumn budget. But this funding is for ten new “technical excellence colleges”.
The autumn budget did raise capital spending from £5.5 billion this year to £6.7 billion in 2025-26, but leaders had argued they needed more. The documents also show the core schools budget will rise to £64.8 billion next financial year. Again, this is around £900 million higher than when the budget was issued in the autumn.
Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, said “The Spring Statement will cause deep anger among education staff because it does not address the key issue preventing schools and colleges from supporting children and young people – a lack of funding.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT leaders’ union, added that the “Chancellor’s emphasis on how cuts to capital spending under the previous government left school roofs crumbling will raise hopes of desperately-needed further investment in buildings which are no longer fit for purpose.”
Julia Harnden, ASCL’s funding specialist, said: “Nothing in the Spring Statement changes the bleak financial situation being faced by schools and colleges. The reality is that many will have to make further cuts to their budgets and thus the educational provision they are able to provide to children and young people.”
6,500 new teacher target as unfilled teacher vacancies hit record high
The NFER’s 2025 Teacher Labour Market in England Annual Report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has revealed that teacher unfilled vacancy levels are at their highest rates since records began in 2010. It concludes that June’s Spending Review is the Government’s last chance to hit its target to recruit 6,500 new teachers. The study shows teacher leaving rates have not improved since before the pandemic and more leavers are of working age rather than retiring.
This, coupled with persistently low levels of recruitment into initial teacher training, is leading to widespread teacher shortages, with unfilled vacancies reaching six per thousand teachers in 2023/24 – double the pre-pandemic rate and six times higher than 2010/11.
The report explains that teacher supply policy actions, such as pay rises or workload reductions, typically take a year or two to improve staffing levels, and another year or two to show up in reporting data. It adds that the severity of the teacher supply crisis therefore means the Spending Review is the Government’s “now or never” opportunity to meet its recruitment pledge of 6,500 new teachers during its five-year term.
See our CLA 2025 Report Card for specific information about Arts teacher recruitment levels, including into Initial Teacher Training, where we describe a dramatic picture of falls averaging 66% across Expressive Arts subjects since 2020/21 (the first pandemic year, when recruitment was highest) – and significant falls averaging 30% across Initial Teacher Training recruitment for Expressive Arts subjects since 2022/23.
Oracy and the Curriculum and Assessment review
Geoff Barton CBE, Chair of the Oracy Commission, has said he is “reassured” the issue will be “woven into” the curriculum review’s final report, after the interim document failed to mention it. Labour announced in 2023 that its curriculum and assessment review would embed “digital, oracy and life skills” in children’s learning.
We were surprised to see oracy omitted in the Curriculum and Assessment Review’s interim report back in March – see our response which picked up on this omission here.
Barton, former head of the school leaders’ union ASCL and chair of last year’s Commission, has reported that he has spoken to the Review’s Chair, Professor Becky Francis. His remarks were made at the Speaking Summit 2025, hosted by Voice 21, the national charity that supports schools to build speaking and listening into the curriculum and wider school life.
He said he was “very reassured” that oracy would be “woven into the final report”. “What she reminds me is that this is an interim report. “It’s high level. So it’s starting to say: ‘Here are the things that we’re now going to focus on’, and it takes us into the more granular bits of what I think will be in the final report. “Oracy is a priority. She believes in it, but also the government has articulated the belief in it. The question is, how does it show up in the report? And that’s something which we would want to talk about.”
Teacher Tapp polling suggests 44 per cent of teachers do not know if they have met statutory spoken language requirements. Only 35 per cent said they met the requirement. The survey also found just 13 per cent of schools had a named oracy lead, a dedicated leader to promote the development of pupils’ spoken language skills.
Oracy is one of the key and vital capabilities we talk about in our emerging CLA Capabitiles Framework, under the category of ‘communication’, together with developing language, non-verbal communication, artistic expression, storytelling, and articulacy. We link them to listening and to relationship-building.
Research finds young people in England have poorer socio-emotional skills than most of their peers in other countries
A new report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) reveals that the socio-emotional skills of young people aged 15/16 in England are significantly weaker than many of their peers in comparator countries.
The NFER report examines the socio-emotional skills of young people in England (based on scores of assertiveness, co-operation, curiosity, emotional control, empathy, persistence and stress resistance) compared to those of other countries that were part of the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2022). The report also compares young people’s skills in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving at age 15/16 to those in other PISA participating countries, to identify areas where England might be able to draw lessons from.
The study posits that socio-emotional and cognitive skills are precursors to the Essential Employment Skills (EES) that young adults develop. These EES are communication, collaboration, problem-solving, organising, planning and prioritising work, creative thinking and information literacy, and they are expected to be vital for young people to thrive in the future labour market.
The report, which uses data from International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs), shows that while the UK has made progress in supporting young people’s literacy and numeracy skill development between the age of 15/16 and their early 20s, inequalities in cognitive skills amongst 15/16-year-olds have not seen the same improvement.
The report also finds:
- Inequalities in socio-emotional skills are worse in England than any of the other 30 countries that gathered this data as part of PISA 2022.
- 15/16-year-olds in the UK generally perform better in maths, reading and science skills compared to their peers across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). However, inequalities in these skills (based on differences between percentiles of the distribution) are slightly wider in the UK and have not narrowed over time.
- While England previously lagged behind in post-16 numeracy and literacy skills, compared to countries participating in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), significant improvements have been made over the past 10-15 years.
Jude Hillary, the programme’s Principal Investigator and NFER’s Co-Head of UK Policy and Practice, said: “Socio-emotional skills are very important for young people’s employment prospects as well as their life satisfaction and general wellbeing. This research suggests we need to do more, earlier in children’s lives to support their social and emotional development and give them the best possible start.
“If we fail to prioritise these skills, we are potentially not just limiting individual wellbeing and potential – we are weakening the future workforce and economy of the UK.”
Once again we would direct you to CLA’s emerging Capabilities Framework, which stresses the evidenced value of communication, empathy and collaboration – as well as agency, wellbeing, creativity and critical thinking – for young people in relation to their lives and work. We are glad to see the value narrative building in public discourse around these capabilities, and hope that the Curriculum and Assessment Review team will be considering their importance as they consider changes to the curriculum and accountability system.
We hope too that either the Review or DfE is actively considering the purposes of education, as it would be helpful to have these vital capabilities mapped on onto new purposes for schooling – and each subject considered in relation to the ways in which it delivers these capabilities.
The number of universities facing financial challenges continues to grow
In what is becoming a regular newsletter item for CLA, a number of universities are being added to the list of Higher Education (HE) institutions with financial issues. Recently the University and College Union has warned of up to 10,000 academic posts being lost in 2025 and launched a national campaign of awareness.
Edinburgh University has plans to make cuts of £140m and cannot rule out compulsory redundancies. In their 2023-24 annual report published in April, the Coventry University Group has made a loss of £59.3m with auditors saying that uncertainty exists over its ability to continue and 60 fulltime job cuts have initially been proposed.
At Leeds Beckett University, a recent announcement has proposed cuts of £45m for 2026 on top of cuts of £25m announced earlier this year. The University of Nottingham is proposing to make 258 job cuts, most of which are non-academic. Keele University has plans to merge the School of Humanities and the School of Social Sciences with a loss of 24 full-time academic posts.
As ever we are on alert for cuts to Arts courses, and Indictor 2 in our 2025 Report Card examines not only progression to HE, but the erosion of Arts courses in HE after a decade and a half of previous governments prioritising non-Arts subjects throughout England’s education system.
IN BRIEF
National Theatre concerns over drama cuts at school
The National Theatre is highlighting the knock-on effect of the decline of drama as a school subject in relation to the live entertainment business, as well as the impact of the decline in arts take-up in schools on theatre skills such as costume design, set creation and stage computer tech. They are calling for a national training drive to address the issue. Read more here and see page 6 of our long-form Blueprint for an Arts-rich education on how the education, skills and cultural sectors can work together on education for employment in the creative industries.
Children’s Commissioner on mobile phone ban
England’s Children’s Commissioner has said that banning phones in schools should be a decision for head teachers and not “imposed nationally by the government”. Nine in ten secondary schools restrict the use of smartphones, according to a survey of 19,000 schools and colleges commissioned by Dame Rachel de Souza who said that children were racking up hours of screen time at home instead, and that “the people with the real power here are the parents”. Read more here.
Survey of teachers reporting misogyny
A survey commissioned by BBC News suggests that more than a third of secondary teachers have reported misogynistic behaviour from pupils at their school. The BBC asked 6,000 secondary teachers about their experiences of misogyny in the classroom, using the survey tool Teacher Tapp. It comes as teachers and parents say they are increasingly worried about the misogynistic and violent content that children, especially boys, are being exposed to online. Read more here. And see a CLA article from 2024 on how the arts can counter hate here.
National Centre for Arts Education – what do we want it to be?
We don’t have a further update on the National Centre for Arts and Music Education as yet, although we will be running CLA consultation workshops soon to establish what we all want the Centre to be and we will share our findings with the DfE. On 23 April Baroness Keeley, former Shadow Arts Minister, asked a question in the House of Lords about the Centre. There was confirmation from Baroness Blake that the delivery partner will be appointed through competitive procurement, as we knew. There were further questions from Baroness Bull – on technology and AI – and from Baroness Fraser about whether Dance would be included within the Centre’s remit. Baroness Blake confirmed that the potential of technology would be embraced by the Centre but there was no clarity on the inclusion of Dance, just that it was an “area of active consideration” with an acknowledgement that there was a need to “give dance the status that it feels it does not have at this time”. There was confirmation that “there will be future opportunities to feed into the process.” We hope to learn more soon.
