“The arts enable us to investigate and relate to the world” - Michael Rosen
Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states the rights of all to have access to the arts and implicit in that is the right of children to high-quality arts education. There has been concern for many years amongst primary educators about the marginalisation of the arts. The National Curriculum (NC) prescribes what a child should be “taught”, often leading to a template and repetitive approach to 2D art, where creativity and individuality are missing. This totally ignores the entitlement of primary school children to a wide-ranging arts education which builds confidence, fires the imagination, encourages engagement, focus and experimentation, whilst allowing the growth of creativity and the exploration of media and ideas.
Visual and performing arts allow children to share their feelings, emotions, experiences and aspects of their cultural and ethnic heritage, which in turn lower stress levels, support mental health and allow for self-expression. This view is supported by both the British Association of Art Therapists and the National Centre for Creative Health. Children involved in the visual arts and music develop the ability to focus and pay attention to detail.
A wealth of learning and child development is provided through lessons in the arts. Through them, children learn to test new ideas and work together as a team, thinking creatively to find answers and solve problems – working towards a shared goal or performance. This promotes resilience, respect, self-esteem and inclusion, plus develops empathy. They also aid in the development of physical abilities like fine motor skills, coordination and spatial awareness, alongside the abilities to think critically, observe, evaluate and analyse. These aspects of learning and of child development need to be valued as part of a balanced and rounded education.
Yet it is clear that the arts have become increasingly marginalised by the introduction of high-stakes assessments and Ofsted’s demand for data related to achievements in core subjects. This has resulted in many primary schools focusing disproportionally on maths and English in the misguided belief that time spent on the arts will diminish results in these core subjects. But, a study conducted by the Education Endowment Foundation show that arts programs can boost reading, writing, and mathematics skills. This is supported in research completed by Cambridge International, which shows that arts education enhances a child's overall academic development by building focus and critical thinking. Sadly, whilst we have high-stakes testing as THE way of measuring the success of primary schools, the arts will never take their rightful place as equal partners to "academic" subjects because they cannot be tested and categorised in a simple way that allows for measured data collection. This mindset must change if schools are to be enabled to offer an expansive arts curriculum and to use the power of such learning to benefit all children.
We also need to be clear what the arts in primary schools are. The National Curriculum says that they are art and design and music. Drama is subsumed into English and dance into PE. Dance legally became a physical discipline rather than an artistic one in the 1988 Education Reform Act, and this was reaffirmed in the 1999 Blunkett reforms to raise the profile of the health benefits of movement-based learning. However, the NC focusses on movement and performance and omits choreography, historical context and critical appreciation. The Arts Professional reports that because most PE or classroom teachers lack dance training, 33% of primary schools fail to teach it at all. The Ofsted report of 2023 said that in two thirds of primary schools, dance is not taught to all pupils or that dance content is not well organised. Dance to School conducted a survey and found that “83% of teachers lack the confidence, subject knowledge and resources to deliver dance as part of the curriculum”.
The scene is similar with drama. While other artistic subjects maintain separate status, the NC currently lumps drama together with English, based on a common use of texts and oral work. The reality is that provided a class sits and reads a play script or similar together in class, then the drama box can be ticked and lessons deemed more relevant to SATs can continue. Performances, improvisation and specific drama lessons rely on interested, confident teachers, school resources and ethos.
We must realise that in the case of dance and drama, our primary school teachers have been de-skilled and there needs to be a focus which brings both these areas of the arts back into the artistic realm, with teacher training and CPD moving us towards redressing the balance and understanding their value.
As regards to the visual arts, we need to give teachers the confidence of their Early Years colleagues to allow children time to experiment, explore and be brave in trying out new things alongside the children, rather than relying on desk-based activities and controlled, specific outcomes. That will give teachers more freedom to think about the curriculum creatively and how elements blend together allowing them to be less tied to restrictive practices and timetabling.
Benefits, Progress, Evidence
The arts deserve a more prominent position in the National Curriculum. Cambridge International points to research which finds that arts education enhances a child's overall academic development by building focus and critical thinking.
The arts can also help deepen understanding across subjects. Pupils use drama techniques like hot-seating to explore characters in English, or create physical dance movements to understand scientific processes. This is supported by the belief of Dance Educates that the wider curriculum can be used as a stimulus for dance and that this multi-sensory approach to learning promotes student and teacher creativity, and establishes dance as a relevant subject on the curriculum, and so has parity with the core subjects it supports. They can support mathematical thinking as well. Activities involving sizing, scaling, patterns, and proportions directly boost practical spatial awareness and mathematics skills. They cultivate perseverance. Learning to handle a craft tool or master a musical rhythm teaches children to accept mistakes and try again until they succeed.
Many organisations beyond schools recognise the need for arts-based education. Trinity Arts Awards offer experiences in a wide range of arts to both primary and secondary school children and have completed research into the impact of such experiences, citing life skills such as communication, collaboration, and organisation as being paramount in their outcomes. With a focus on process and collaboration, leadership and research skills these awards are open to everyone and the assessments could well inform how we assess arts in our schools with an emphasis on personal growth and development.
Arts and Minds Campaign is actively working to hold the government to its promise to ‘revitalise arts education’. They cite years of funding cuts creating a crisis in arts provision and in schools struggling to recruit specialist arts teachers and make space in the curriculum for arts subjects. With the latest curriculum review underway we have a unique opportunity to change things for the better.
To conclude, there is a crisis in arts education. The arts are treated as second-class subjects, but are vital to children’s development and wellbeing and to supporting core curriculum. Organisations beyond education have highlighted these concerns.
In order to address them and restore the arts to their rightful position in education, several measures will be necessary. Reframing dance and drama as artistic subjects is a critical first step. Focusing on process, creativity and exploration, rather than outcomes is vital at the primary level. Taking inspiration from the early years framework will enable children’s development and time to explore, work together and create at this key stage of their life. Revisiting initial teacher training will ensure new teachers are given the confidence, knowledge and skills to develop the arts and to use them to develop skills, emotional intelligence, empathy and to support core subjects. Providing high quality CPD for serving teachers will ensure they can continue to support children through arts education and its benefits.
The United Nations states that creativity is a human right. Therefore, we must ensure our teachers have the skills, knowledge and time to be able to offer children continual and developmentally appropriate activities to enable them to fulfil their creative potential.
“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status” - Sir Ken Robinson
Publications of Interest
Embracing art education in primary schools:
https://blog.cambridgeinternational.org/embracing-art-education-in-primary-schools/
The impact of arts-inclusive programs on young children’s mental health and wellbeing: a rapid review:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17533015.2024.2319032
Art therapy with children:
https://baat.org/art-therapy/evidence/art-therapy-for-supporting-children-in-primary-school/
The National Centre for Creative Health:
The Importance of Art:
https://www.primarytimes.co.uk/news/2022/06/the-importance-of-art
Why embedding the arts across the curriculum is important, given the decline in arts participation in schools:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT2Y25mCFFc
Why Drama and Theatre Are An Essential Part of A Child’s Education:
The importance of arts education for students:
https://www.artsaward.org.uk/resource/?id=4716
Blanket reforms:
https://education-uk.org/history/chapter17.html
Arts council framework:
Swann, A. (2020) ‘Dance as a Multi-sensory Approach to Learning’ in Danmeri, F. (ed.) A Year of Making and Learning. UK: Learning Connected, pp. 51-58
Organisations of Interest
Education Endowment Foundation: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk
Arts Professional: https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/
One Dance UK: https://www.onedanceuk.org
Dance to School: https://dancetoschool.com/
Dance Educates: https://www.danceeducates.co.uk/about
The Arts and Minds Campaign: https://theartsandmindscampaign.org.uk/