This month we bring you an update on the Curriculum and Assessment Review; news of the end of the National Citizenship Service and a new national youth strategy; news that private and state school GCSE results are now the same (when results are adjusted for socioeconomic background), with only creative subjects performing worse at state schools; research that reveals stark class inequalities in access to the creative industries; a summary of the autumn budget implications for children, schools and families; new data that reveals one in five disadvantaged pupils are suspended; and news about children’s use of generative AI.
In January we will share our review of 2024 and look ahead to 2025. Meanwhile, all of us at the Cultural Learning Alliance would like to wish you a happy and peaceful festive period. Heartfelt thanks for all your hard work this year in bringing the arts and cultural learning into the lives of young people, and for turning up the volume on expressive arts subjects in your important responses to the Curriculum and Assessment Review. We hope that 2025 brings us some new reasons to be cheerful …
Early signals of what the Curriculum and Assessment Review expert panel members have been hearing in their call for evidence
CLA was pleased to submit its detailed response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review call for evidence last month. We hope that many of you were able to respond using our evidence and your own, and look forward to seeing the panel’s interim report early next year.
Meanwhile, panel Chair Professor Becky Francis, and panel member Dr Vanessa Ogden responded to questions at the final consultation roadshow event on 28 November, and we were pleased to hear a strong emphasis on applying a social justice lens, on establishing purposes for schooling, and the need for a clearly articulated vision. It was clear that the panel had heard “strongly” – from adults and from young people – about the need for arts and cultural experiences to be taken seriously, and it was good to hear the term “expressive arts subjects” being referenced. There were also strong calls for representation in the curriculum; for less curriculum content; and an emphasis on social and emotional learning, on wellbeing, and the need for schooling to help children to understand themselves and the people around them.
All of this feedback chimes both with our Blueprint for an arts-rich education but also – importantly – with our evolving Capabilities Framework as shared in our Curriculum and Assessment Review newsletter. We look forward to sharing more detail on this soon.
The Arts in Schools report quotes Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters asking (in their book, About our Schools) what sort of climate we want for teachers to make the best ‘weather’ in order to raise the “competence, learning and horizons of all their students”. Nick Gibb, former schools minister, is described in the report as having been the ‘weather maker’ in schools for years. This new Review is definitely indicating a shift in the weather for schools and for learners, and we look forward to seeing some real change being signalled in 2025.
National Citizen Service ends with new National Youth Strategy announced
Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, has announced that the National Citizenship Service, first set up in 2011, will come to an end in 2025. This is the first step as part of the development of a new National Youth Strategy. Nandy said that more than a million young people had gone through the scheme since 2011, but that it was “no longer relevant”.
She added that she had been shocked on taking up office that there was no central strategy for young people and said “While talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. Despite this, this generation is ambitious for themselves, their families and their communities as much as any other before and they deserve a plan to match.”
The Strategy will prioritise delivering better coordinated youth services and policy at a local, regional and national level. It will make sure decision-making moves away from a one-size-fits all approach, handing power back to young people and their communities, and aiming to rebuild a thriving and sustainable sector.
To kickstart the process, the government is inviting young people to take part in a series of face-to-face engagements to ensure their perspectives and aspirations are at the heart of decision making. They will then be asked to share their views as part of a ‘Today’s Youth, Tomorrow’s Nation’ conversation on how best to help the next generation of young people.
A youth advisory board will be established to work with the government throughout the development process, alongside in-depth engagement with youth organisations, industry leaders and academics specialising in youth issues.
More than £85 million will be allocated in recognition of the urgent need for more youth facilities. This will include £26 million of new funding for youth clubs to buy new equipment and undertake renovations via the Better Youth Spaces programme. Existing youth centre projects already underway via the Youth Investment Fund will also be completed as part of the Government’s commitment to young people.
The Culture Secretary has also announced that £100 million from the next tranche of dormant assets funding will be used to deliver youth outcomes between 2024 and 2028, supporting services, facilities and opportunities for young people across the country.
The Arts in Schools scene-setting think piece (published in 2022, prior to The Arts in Schools report) described cuts in Local Authority funding having eroded youth services provision in the years since 2010, with many youth centres closed and jobs lost. Unison research published in 2019 highlighted the sweeping losses. We hope that this new approach will help to restore a new vision and commitment to youth provision but also that the expressive arts can be fully embraced within this vision. We know that Onside’s Youth Zones, for example, have an arts offer, as was covered in our Latest Thinking back in September, but sometimes in the wider youth sector the arts can get overlooked through an over-emphasis on sport and outdoor activities.
As part of our call for a national arts entitlement in our Blueprint for an arts-rich education, we have called for all national/government-funded youth provision to embrace a range of quality expressive arts activities as a key enrichment strand. We believe that building opportunities for progression is important, alongside building partnerships with the cultural sector. We hope that this new National Youth Strategy can fully embrace the arts. As Tina Ramdeen concluded in her CLA article, “There is an urgent need to increase opportunities for young people to access high-quality creative opportunities outside of school … Youth work in creative settings changes lives, increasing a sense of wellbeing and positive mental health, whilst also promoting aspiration.”
Private and state school GCSE results are now the same – only creative subjects perform worse at state schools
Pupils in England who attend fee-paying schools no longer outperform their state school peers in core GCSE subjects once results are adjusted for socioeconomic background, according to a new study.
Researchers from University College London say the findings indicate state school students are making strong progress in science, maths and English, reflecting the curriculum priorities of recent years, but they still lag behind in the creative arts.
When it comes to music, drama and art, private school pupils remain ahead, achieving better GCSE results than their state school counterparts, even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors. The researchers say the findings could have implications for parents deciding on the best education for their child, and raise questions about the relative strength of creative education in state-funded schools, and the long-term effects of this disparity.
Lead author Professor Jake Anders (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities) said: “It has long been assumed that the private sector outperforms the state sector at GCSE level and raw data indicates just that. However, this doesn’t allow for the vast socioeconomic differences between private and state”.
“Over the last two decades state schools have increased their focus on the core subjects to deliver results, which is reflected here. There could also be several additional reasons why they have outperformed private schools, including a shift in focus for private schools at GCSE level. Private schools also have the resources to expose pupils to a rich variety of cultural experiences, which could go some way to explain why they produce stronger results in the creative subjects.”
As we state in our 2024 Report Card, education accountability measures introduced in 2010 have prioritised core subjects to the detriment of arts subjects, leading to an “enrichment gap,” with young people from wealthier backgrounds having much greater access to arts provision and opportunities compared to their peers from lower-income backgrounds. We believe that creating an arts entitlement will help to redress this situation, together with mapping the expressive arts, as an equal curriculum area, onto new and ambitious purposes for schooling. See our Blueprint for an arts-rich education for more detail on how the balance can be redressed. In light of the government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review, we would hope to see some policy change signalled during 2025 which re-prioritises the expressive arts in schooling.
Research shows stark class inequalities in access to creative industries
New research from the Sutton Trust, published in its ‘Class Act’ report, has revealed the extent to which the creative industries remain elite professions, and reinforces the inequalities revealed in our 2024 Report Card coverage of an ‘enrichment gap’.
There are stark overrepresentations for those from the most affluent backgrounds (defined in this research as those from ‘upper-middle-class’ backgrounds), and those who were privately-educated also disproportionally occupy top roles in this sector. Key points are:
- Younger adults from working-class backgrounds are four times less likely to work in the creative industries compared to their middle-class peers
- Top selling musicians are six times more likely than the public to have attended private schools (43% vs 7%) – and BAFTA-nominated actors are five times more likely to have done so (35% vs 7%)
- Privately-educated students represent over half of music students at the most prestigious conservatoires
- At four institutions – Oxford, Cambridge, Kings College London and Bath – more than half of creative students come from ‘upper middle class’ backgrounds.
The report reveals that amongst those aged 35 and under, there are around four times as many individuals from middle class backgrounds as working-class backgrounds in creative occupations. Yet while just 20% of the UK’s working-class individuals in employment have a degree, three times as many working-class people in creative jobs have one. This underscores the importance of equal access to higher education for all young people.
The report finds that education and class background have a huge impact on people’s ability to reach the top of their creative profession. Across television, film and music, high-profile figures in the creative industries are much more likely to have attended private school than the UK population. BAFTA-nominated actors are five times more likely to have attended a private school, at 35% compared to the national average of just 7%.
Classical music is a particularly elitist profession. 43% of top classical musicians have attended an independent school (over 6 times higher than average). Additionally, 58% of classical musicians have attended an arts specialist university or conservatoire, and 1 in 4 attended the Royal Academy of Music for undergraduate study. These institutions are dominated by students from the most affluent backgrounds. 12% attended Oxbridge.
However, pop stars appear to better reflect the education backgrounds of the UK population as a whole. Only 8% were privately-educated, and 20% attended university, both close to the national averages.
64% of top actors have attended university, with 29% attending specialist arts institutions (including conservatoires). 9% attended Oxbridge and a further 6% attended other Russell Group institutions.
Access to creative degrees in subjects such as music and art is skewed towards those from upper-middle-class backgrounds at the most prestigious institutions. At four universities – Oxford, Cambridge, King’s College London and Bath – more than half of students on creative courses come from the most elite ‘upper-middle-class’ backgrounds. The universities with the lowest proportions of creative students from working-class backgrounds are Cambridge and Bath (4%), Oxford and Bristol (5%), and Manchester (7%). At each of these universities, the percentage of creative students from working-class backgrounds is lower than for students on all other degrees (6% at Oxford and Cambridge, 7% at Bath and Bristol, and 19% at Manchester).
There is also a stark class divide in specialist institutions such as conservatoires and higher education institutions specialising in music and the performing arts. The Royal Academy of Music (60%), Royal College of Music (56%), Durham (48%), Kings College London (46%) and Bath (42%) all have very high proportions of privately educated students studying creative subjects. All of these institutions have higher proportions of privately educated creative students than Oxbridge (32%).
More than 50% of Oxford, Cambridge and Kings College London’s music students come from ‘upper-middle-class’ households, and for six Russell Group institutions this proportion is between 40-49%.
To tackle this inequality, the Sutton Trust is calling for a range of measures to improve access to the arts, such as introducing an ‘arts premium’ so schools can pay for arts opportunities including music lessons; ensuring that conservatoires and creative arts institutions that receive state funding are banned from charging for auditions; and adding socio-economic inclusion as a condition of employers receiving arts funding.
We highlight the reasons for this inequality in our 2024 Report Card, which reveals the extent to which arts subjects have been devalued in state schools through government policies for the past 15 years and yet remain prioritised and valued in the independent sector for all the benefits that they bring. We believe, as set out in our Blueprint for an arts-rich education, that the real levers for change lie in revaluing the arts within our schooling system, through changes to accountability measures, mapping a new Expressive Arts curriculum area onto new purposes for schooling, and creating a national entitlement to expressive arts subjects. We hope that the government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review will be addressing this when it reports early next year.
Autumn budget education summary
On 30 October, Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled the Government’s Autumn Budget, the first delivered by a Labour Government in 14 years. The Chancellor positioned the announcements as “fixing the foundations to deliver change”.
Key announcements included a £6.7 billion capital investment for the education system in England for 2025-2026 to support initiatives such as capital funding for schools; expanding the previous Government’s funded childcare programme; the planned rollout of school breakfast clubs; and funding for special education needs.
Among announcements across early years and childcare, £1.8 billion was allocated for the expansion of Government-funded childcare entitlement, to fund the September 2025 entitlement rollout of 30 hours of Government-funded childcare. There was an allocation of £15 million to the School-Based Nurseries Capital Grant which can be used to support building new nurseries at primary schools. Primary schools can apply for a £150,000 grant to support the implementation of a nursery on school grounds. Funding is expected to support up to 300 new or expanded nurseries across England.
School commitments were as follows:
- A £2.3 billion increase to the core education budget to support the recruitment of 6,500 new teachers in England.
- £1 billion of this funding will go towards supporting the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system and alternative provision, representing a 6% increase in funding from this year.
- £1.4 billion allocated to ensure the delivery of the school rebuilding programme, originally announced in 2020, which aims to rebuild or refurbish about 500 schools over a decade. This is a £500 million increase from last year’s funding for the programme.
- £30 million allocated to support free breakfast clubs in English schools for the 2025-26 school year. This represents an increase from the £7 million announced in September, which was to fund a trial in up to 750 schools starting in April 2025. This allocation aligns with the Labour manifesto commitment to spend £315 million on breakfast clubs by 2028-29.
- Introducing 20% VAT on the fees that parents pay if they choose an independent school for their child (from January 2025), and legislation to remove private school business rates relief from April 2025. The Chancellor says this will raise £1.8 billion per year by 2029-30, or more than £9 billion in total to fund public services.
- Local authorities and devolved governments funding places for pupils with special educational needs in independent schools will be compensated for the VAT on those parents’ fees.
- Independent schools that are “wholly or mainly” focused on providing full-time education to pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan will remain eligible for business rates charitable relief.
- £2.1 billion will be invested in school maintenance to address issues in schools affected by RAAC (aerated concrete) – an increase of £300 million from last year.
There were commitments to further education and skills:
- £300 million additional funding for further education to ensure young people develop the skills needed to succeed, and a £40 million investment to transform the Apprenticeship Levy into a Growth and Skills Levy to help deliver commitments on shorter and foundation apprenticeships in key sectors.
- This funding will also support the previously established Skills England and deliver the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), with a revised launch date of January 2027, to expand access to high-quality, flexible education and training for adults throughout their working lives.
- £950 million investment for skills capital, with £300 million allocated to support colleges, helping maintain, improve, and ensure the suitability of their estates.
- An increase in the National Minimum Wage for apprentices, raising hourly pay from £6.40 to £7.55.
There were also a number of commitments to families and young people, including an allocation of £44 million to help kinship and foster carers; an increase in carer allowance; a new fair repayment rate that will reduce the level of debt repayments that can be taken from a household’s Universal Credit payment each month; and an increase in the National Minimum Wage for people aged between 18 and 20-years old, from £8.60 to £10 per hour.
There was also support for the creative arts and culture in the form of a £2.3bn funding settlement for DCMs (an increase of 2.6%), and £3m of funding allocated for the expansion of the Creative Careers Programme, to raise awareness of career routes and tackle skills gaps in the sector and providing children with the opportunity to learn more about career routes.
All of this amounts to a picture of considered support for schools and families within a challenging economic context, and against a backdrop of planned changes to the schooling system in England. CLA was pleased to see a focus on SEND and hopes that school rebuilding/refurbishing programme will embrace high-quality performance and art spaces within schools.
One in five disadvantaged pupils suspended 2023/24 data shows
DFE data published on 21 November shows a worrying set of figures for suspensions and exclusions with both the total numbers and rates for each increasing. Of particular concern is the fact that one in five disadvantage pupils has been suspended in 2023/4, the majority being in years 8, 9 and 10.
Suspensions increased compared to previous autumn terms
There were 346,300 suspensions in the autumn term of 2023/24. This represents an increase of 98,900 compared to the previous autumn term, which had 247,400 suspensions. It is also higher than the pre-pandemic autumn term (2019/20), when there were 178,400 suspensions.
The rate of suspensions was 4.13, equivalent to 413 suspensions for every 10,000 pupils. This is higher than the previous autumn term when it was 2.96, and higher than autumn term 2019/20 rate of 2.17.
Permanent exclusions have also increased compared to previous autumn terms
In autumn term 2023/24 there were 4,200 permanent exclusions, this is an increase of 1,100 compared to autumn term 2022/23 when there were 3,100. It is also higher than the pre-pandemic autumn term (2019/20) when there were 3,200 permanent exclusions.
The rate of permanent exclusions was 0.05, equivalent to 5 permanent exclusions for every 10,000 pupils. This is an increase of 0.01 compared to both 2022/23 and 2019/20 autumn terms when the rate was 0.04.
The most common reason for both suspensions and permanent exclusions was persistent disruptive behaviour
In autumn term 2023/24, persistent disruptive behaviour accounted for 50% of all reasons given for suspensions and 36% of reasons given for permanent exclusions (Up to 3 reasons can be given for each suspension and permanent exclusion). This reason was also the most common in previous terms and years.
CLA’s view
This data could suggest many things, but might also be seen to suggest a curriculum and pedagogical problem. While we cannot suggest the arts will fix it, they might well be part of making school better for at least some of these children and young people. As we reported in January, a report from the Centre for Social Justice argued that improved access extra-curricular activities, including arts enrichment, could be part of the solution to the current crisis of persistent pupil absence. We would assert that this also applies within the curriculum: arts activities can be the most attractive part of school life for many young people, and important for developing agency, and wellbeing. CLA’s new evidence work and Capabilities Framework, as presented in our Curriculum and Assessment Review newsletter in October, makes clear the role of expressive arts subjects in building agency and wellbeing for children and young people – as two of the personal and societal benefits of studying expressive arts subjects.
OFCOM’s Online Nation Report tracks young peoples use of generative AI
This is an annual publication that looks at what people are doing online, how they are served by online content providers and platforms, and their attitudes to and experiences of using the internet. While much of the content relates to adults, this year’s report looked at children and young people and their use of generative artificial intelligence.
An Ofcom survey conducted in June 2024 revealed that more than half (54%) of British online 8-15s said they had used a generative AI tool in the past year. ChatGPT was the most popular tool, with 37% of British online 8-15yr olds saying they had used it in the last year
The most popular reason for using a generative AI tool in the past year was to find information or content, reported by 31% of British online 8 to 15-year-olds. A third of 8-15-year-olds said they were confident in using the information and that generative AI was reliable.
Over half of 8-15-year-olds in Britain who use generative AI said they used it to help with schoolwork
Sixty-three per cent of online children in Britain aged 8-15 said they had used a generative AI tool in the past year ‘for fun’ and over half (53%) had used AI to help with schoolwork. Older children aged 13-15 were more likely than the 8-12s to have used a generative AI tool to help with schoolwork (59% vs 48%), while children aged 8-12 were more likely than those aged 13-15 to have used it for fun (67% vs 58%). ‘Finding information or content’ was also a popular use case (31%) among online children in Britain aged 8-15. ‘Creating images’ was the second most popular activity, with 30% of children citing this, while it was the fifth most popular activity among online users aged 16+. As in the 16+ age group, boys were more likely than girls to have used a generative AI tool in the past year to explore the technology (33% vs 22%) or to create new text/words (for example, writing a poem) (23% vs 16%).
Unlike UK internet users aged 16+, children had higher levels of trust; a third (34%) of generative AI users in Britain aged 8-15 said they trusted the information from these tools to be reliable. Nevertheless, the majority expressed a ‘neutral’ confidence level (48%). Boys were more likely than girls to say they trusted the information (40% vs 28%), particularly boys aged 8-12 in comparison to girls in the same age group (40% vs 24%).
Young children who do not use generative AI are most likely to say they do not know what it is, while teenagers are most likely to say they are not interested
A third (32%) of internet users aged 8-15 said they had not used a generative AI tool. Among those aged 8-15 who had not used a generative AI tool, the younger children (aged 8-12) were less likely to know what generative AI was, compared to children aged 13-15 (29% vs 16%). But the older children (aged 13-15) were more likely than the 8-12s to say that they were not interested in using generative AI (38% vs 12%), that they did not need to use it currently (30% vs 19%), and that they did not trust it (11% vs 4%). Unlike those aged 16+, trust and concerns about generative AI were less of a factor in children’s decision not to use generative AI (6% cited ‘I don’t trust generative AI’, 2% were concerned about using it). There were some gender differences: online girls aged 8-15 were less likely to know what generative AI was, compared to boys in the same age group (31% vs 19%). Specifically, girls aged 8-12 were less likely than boys in the same age group to know what generative AI was (38% vs 19%). Interestingly, boys aged 13-15 who did not use generative AI were less interested in using it than girls in the same age group (47% vs 31%).
Conclusion
In our newsletter back in May 2024, Baz Ramaiah, CLA Policy Associate, reflected on the rapid expansion of AI and what it means for the arts in schools, observing that the greater role of AI in civic and economic life poses many questions and challenges. However, it also poses several opportunities. For CLA, Baz wrote that it suggests new pathways for restoring the central role for the expressive arts within school life that young people need and deserve.
With the demands of industry changing, Baz observed in his article that there are at least three reasons why the Expressive Arts must be given a renewed and greater prominence in education. Firstly, the expansion of AI places a greater premium on what AI technologies cannot do, but what humans can do extremely well – be authentically creative. Also, as AI will require lifelong upskilling and reskilling, it is important to ensure that young people enter the workforce with a readiness to engage in this lifelong learning. The government’s own research highlights that one of the main determinants of whether an adult chooses to pursue mid-career learning opportunities is their experience of education in general. In particular, if they have had a positive experience of education (including associating education with stimulation, challenge and joy) then they are more likely to decide to pursue lifelong learning opportunities. As a consequence, it is vital that we make school a positive experience for young people. Surveys of young people highlight that the expressive arts are a key source of joy in schools, with the diminishing role of the arts in education perhaps associated with falls in young people’s enjoyment of school. As such, Baz argues that a greater role for the arts in schools could be a vital means of supporting the lifelong learning mindset that the workforce of the future will require. Finally, once the expressive arts have the place and prominence in school that the economy demands, there might need to be some consideration of the creative skills that young people acquire. For example, The Harvard Business Review notes that young people may have to develop skills in working with AI-based technologies for creative purposes – such as “prompt engineering” – to understand how best to feed information into AI engines. You can re-read Baz’s article here. It is interesting to consider Baz’s arguments in relation to this new evidence around young people’s use of AI and we will keep reporting on this issue in relation to arts and cultural learning as thinking develops and as new findings emerge.
