Britain fails on children?s rights

Changes in the attitudes of government, local authorities, schools, political parties, the Arts Council, arts organisations and the media are required before Britain can fulfil its obligations to children under the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child, according to Action for Children’s Arts (ACA). Launching the organisation’s ‘Manifesto for Children’s Arts’ at London’s Unicorn Theatre on 21 July, Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen said, “It’s absolutely vital that we see that the one way to investigate the world is through arts – they are vital to all of us but most especially to children.” Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child “has the right… to participate freely in cultural life and the arts”, and that “member governments shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity”. [[the Government should adopt consistent, long-term policies with regard to Article 31]]

ACA believes that this is not happening in many areas of the UK and has created its manifesto in consultation with children and adults in order to “raise awareness of the key role that the arts play in children’s lives”. The manifesto urges the UK Government to “adopt consistent, long-term policies with regard to Article 31 and make financial provision to support those policies” and makes recommendations for actions by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and for schools themselves. Its recommendations for the DCMS include providing long-term funding and support for children’s arts, ensuring high-quality radio and television for children and to “commission a report into international models of support for children’s arts”. The four arts councils should give work for children and families “equal status with work for adult audiences”, develop “specific policies for the arts for children”, “make children’s arts a key focus of their partnerships with local authorities” and provide higher funding to ensure the quality of the product and maintain low ticket prices. As well as aiming for high standards, arts organisations of all kinds should give higher status to both work for children and families and to their education departments, ensuring “that the interests of children and families are represented at board level”.

Beverley Hughes, the Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families speaking at the conference, said that she was “fully behind the Children’s Arts manifesto”, and accepted “the challenge it sets the Government”. While defending the current curriculum, she acknowledged that “there are concerns that sometimes culture doesn’t play a big enough part in school life” and pointed to the commissioning of a review of the primary curriculum by Sir Jim Rose “to give teachers more freedom to be creative and embed the arts into all lessons”. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that literacy improvement rates had reached a plateau and suggested that “schools should not just concentrate on literacy without making the arts an equally important part of their timetable”. Don Foster, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport, also called for the “tight, exam-orientated curriculum” to be relaxed to liberate children’s and teachers’ creativity.