Henley holds back on EBacc

The Department for Education (DfE) has made a £15m commitment over the next three years to “pump prime initiatives that will inspire children and young people and schools to take part in cultural activities”. The funding announcement follows the publication of the Henley Review of Cultural Education which has made 24 recommendations for improving the quality of cultural education in England. A National Plan for Cultural Education, led by a cross-Whitehall ministerial group and working with sponsored bodies including Arts Council England, British Film Institute, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund will now be drawn up to progress the vision outlined in the Review, which was conducted by Darren Henley, Managing Director of Classic FM. His report has been widely welcomed across the arts sector and recognised as a key step towards broadening and deepening engagement with cultural education in England, but several commentators have warned that it fails to respond to some of the issues that the arts and education sectors have been pressing for in recent years, and questioned how some of the proposed initiatives could be implemented.

The prospect of arts subjects being included in the English Baccalaureate appears to be no further forward. Despite encouraging the Government to consider including arts subjects when it next reviews the content of the EBacc, Henley did not include this among his recommendations and the Government’s response to his report makes no mention of it. Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, warned: “The interminable focus on league tables, Ofsted inspections and Michael Gove’s favoured EBacc leaves many schools with little or no choice but to focus on a few subjects against which they are tested. Without the funding and the space in the curriculum, talk about the necessity for all children to have a cultural experience as part of their education will become nothing more than rhetoric.”

Jeremy Newton, Chief Executive of Children & the Arts, sees insufficient attention being paid to access and participatory opportunities for the most disadvantaged children in society. In his view an important opportunity has been missed in the Review to claim DfE funding for closing the ‘attainment gap’ between disadvantaged young people and their peers, such as the Pupil Premium and the Education Endowment Fund. Whilst welcoming the call for a new structure of partnership between cultural organisations and their local schools he is also sceptical about the role of the recently created Arts Council Bridge organisations being extended: “A great deal more progress would need to be made in clarifying, and demonstrating the achievability of their current role before substantially expanding it in this way.” His concerns are echoed by the Cultural Learning Alliance, which stresses the need to “robustly address the ways that Music Hubs, Bridge Organisations, Local Authorities, schools, Ofsted and practitioners will work together effectively” and to “clarify the funding, roles, responsibilities and reporting structures that are needed to make this strategy work”.

Read AP’s coverage of the Henley Review here

Arts leaders comment on the Henley Review here