WHY THE ARTS MATTER IN OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM!

"An arts rich education contributes to the development of all aspects of a child's powers and personality; a school that is rich the arts enhances the life chances of a child."

Cultural Alliance Briefing Paper 'The Arts in Schools' Why the arts matter in our education system

THE ARTS IN SCHOOLS MATTER!

I have been reading the Cultural Learning Alliance briefing paper on 'The Arts in Schools'... it has a  wonderful introduction by Geoff Barton, General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders, which every headteacher should read...

"I can’t imagine a truly great school that hasn’t got a vibrant culture of the arts at its core. Drama, music, art, dance: these have long been subjects at the beating heart of the UK’s education system, much envied internationally, much cherished nationally. And now they are under threat.

The arts in schools aren’t just an extra-curricular embellishment. They are where pupils from all backgrounds find new ways of expressing themselves and of understanding the world. The arts are what distinguish human beings from robots. And now is precisely the time when we need to be giving them more, not less, emphasis.

Yet a combination of factors are placing the arts under threat. There’s a general narrowing of the curriculum, driven in too many cases by accountability measures which don’t exactly dismiss arts subjects but do appear to shift them to the less significant margins of a school’s curriculum offer.

And then there’s funding, where – if you’re a head or chair of governors needing to make drastic savings – you’ll do the only thing you can do: cut courses and increase class sizes. That makes arts subjects vulnerable, and ASCL’s survey with the BBC in December 2017 showed bleakly that 90% of school leaders had reduced arts provision in their schools over the past two years.

This matters, because it’s not simply a funding issue: much more significantly, it’s about social mobility.

Many young people come to music or dance or drama or art because of what happens in their school. A teacher spots a spark of talent. They chivvy and nudge and quietly inspire. This matters especially to the child from a background where such activities rarely feature – where classical music, challenging drama, ambitious dance, unorthodox art and design would never otherwise be encountered.

These are the children who most need schools with a commitment to the arts. They need teachers who create opportunities for that heady mix of self-expression, creativity, rigour and self-discipline that come from the creative arts.

These aren’t woolly soft subjects. They are what make us distinctively human. And they should be a birthright for every child from every background. We must make the case for the arts in schools, show that they go way beyond extra-curricular activities, and do all we can to fight to retain them in our classrooms."

A WHOLE NEW MIND!

"The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind... computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind - creators and empathisers, pattern recognisers and meaning makers. These people - artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers - will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys." 

Dan Pink 'A Whole New Mind'

We are living in digital times and change is happening at an exponential rate. What is encouraging in these chaotic times, is meeting and working with young people. They are creative, imaginative and passionate about the arts and sports and culture and many are developing the skills that matter; the skills that will give them the edge. The scary thing is that there are more top grade students in China and in India than there are people in this country and, it is more than likely that, someone in China or India can do your work more cheaply than you can. And increasingly, if your work is routine and systematic and organised, a computer can do your work faster, cheaper and better than you can. Drawing on research from around the advanced world, Dan Pink, in his wonderful book 'A Whole New Mind' outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that will be essential for professional success and personal fulfilment in the future and reveals how to master them. He has identified the six things we need to do to thrive and succeed in this new world:

• We need to be designers, 
• We need to be storytellers, 
• We need to be team-players,
• We need empathy,
• We need to explore and play,
• We need to create meaning in our lives.

In the past bright young people were encouraged to become lawyers, doctors, accountants and to work in the city moving money around but the age of left-brain dominance is coming to an end. The future belongs to a different kind of young person; someone with a different kind of mind. The future will belong to designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers... creative and emphatic right-brain thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between those who get ahead and those who don't.

YORK CULTURAL EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP

I have recently been appointed as Chair of the York Cultural Education Partnership and I am really pleased to be working again in York with schools, colleges and universities and the arts and cultural sector! Our goal as a partnership is to work together to provide every young person in the city with access to a rich, vibrant and exciting arts and cultural offer. This is so important because the arts are part of what should be a cultural entitlement for all and also provide our young people with the skills and attributes needed to succeed in life, at school and in work!

I am also delighted to be working with colleagues from IVE again. IVE is a not-for-profit creative development agency that places creativity at the heart of learning, thinking and doing. Their mission is to find, nurture and grow creative potential by exciting children and young people through inspirational access to the arts and culture and importantly equipping life long learners with the skills and attributes they need to thrive and succeed in life, at school and in the world of work.

We have a rich cultural and artistic heritage here in York and a huge number of arts and cultural partners who can link with children and young people in schools to release the magic. As well as a thriving community sector, the city has over 60 professional arts and heritage organisations, as well as over 400 businesses in the arts, heritage and creative industries field. The city also has a wide range of music and theatre venues as well as 17 museum sites, 11 galleries and 5 other venues for arts and heritage activity and 27 regular festival programmes operate in the area of arts and heritage. The city is also home to around 1,500 students studying arts and heritage related programmes at world class universities. York is also the only UK city with UNESCO City of Media Arts status.

Working with this rich cultural landscape, we need to work with every school in York to encourage them to maintain a broad and balanced curriculum offer that promotes and delivers access to the arts and culture and make York the first UK city to promise and deliver a cultural entitlement for all its children and young people. We can start by developing some projects and opportunities which will draw creative partners and schools together to help them see what can be achieved through the arts and culture and the impact this can have on GCSE outcomes. My starters for ten are as follows...

1. We need to build on the hugely successful 'Light//moves' project at Park Grove Primary School to involve more schools and more young people;
2. We need to develop and fund an artists in residence programme to take dancers, musicians, storytellers, performers, designers, makers and media-artists into schools to excite and inspire young people;
3. We need to develop a creative partnership programme linking as many York based cultural and arts organisations with schools for a term/year;
4. We need to develop a cultural profile/passport to develop a progressive skills based pathway to help guide young people through school, college and university and into apprenticeships and the world of work and and on to create happy, healthy, creative and successful adults, families and communities.
5. We need to develop a portfolio of research, case studies and stories about the impact of the arts and culture on standards and outcomes;
6. We need to have an annual celebration of our children's and young people creative ideas and magic. 

The York Cultural Education Partnership is happy to share, connect, and work with anyone and everyone who shares our passion and belief in the magic that exists in each and every child and young person and the power of the arts and culture to release that magic.... whatever it takes!

WHAT WOULD YOUR LIFE BE LIKE WITHOUT MUSIC AND THE ARTS!

"The arts are a central part of the human experience and young people cannot participate or understand our history without engaging in the arts..."

It's funny but thinking about learning and realising the importance of coaching, practice and hard work inevitable leads me back to the arts. My experiences in York and Leeds where we developed powerful arts services, and working with some brilliant colleagues, musicians and artists, have shown me that the arts provide languages and opportunities for shaping and expressing our understandings and can powerfully engage learners and provide them with opportunities to share, develop and learn from what they know.

The arts, like sport, help develop capacities and attitudes central to learning and to life and uniquely help develop imagination and empathy. The arts are a rich context for learning and developing the skills that matter. Young people are required to listen, think critically, problem solve and make decisions, things that lie at the heart of all learning. The arts help young people develop self-confidence, self-discipline and self-esteem and come to understand what it means to achieve high standards and to work as part of a team. And of course the arts bring us joy and bring joy to learning and make schools happier and more vibrant and exciting places. What would your life be like without music and the arts?

THE ARTS MATTER!

There are so many of us who passionately believe that every child matters, and that those who are the hardest to reach and the hardest to teach matter more. Increasingly experience tells us that for young people generally, and for those harder to reach young people, the arts matter...

We know that at-risk teenagers or young adults with a history of intensive arts experiences show achievement levels closer to, and in some cases exceeding, the levels shown by the general population studied,” a team of scholars writes in a new National Endowment for the Arts Research Report. “These findings suggest that in-school or extracurricular programs offering deep arts involvement may help to narrow the gap in achievement levels. We need to create a curriculum and an offer for young people that is rich in the arts because all the evidence suggest that, like sport, the arts can create passionate learners with the skills and competencies they need to be successful and get work.

We need to understand that the arts, like teaching and learning, is co-operative and collaborative; a passionate enterprise involving teamwork, communication, listening and discipline. We all know that we must ensure that every child is a reader, writer and is numerate by the time they are eight and that we need to build challenge, enterprise, innovation and creativity into our learning programmes and we need to make young people love the hard stuff; maths, science, physics and languages, from the earliest age. But vitally, we need to build character, respect and self-discipline through everything we do with mentoring, coaching, volunteering and the world of work as part of an entitlement for all. This is where the arts and sport can make an enormous difference and listening to young people who are increasingly disengaged from traditional learning and schooling and simply bored with the offer we make in a digital world full of music, games and sport the arts really do matter... because "when young people are involved with the arts, something changes in their lives."

TOMORROW’S SCHOOLS!

“Tomorrow’s schools will need to help students think for themselves and join others, with empathy, in work and citizenship. They will need to help students develop a strong sense of right and wrong, a sensitivity to the claims that others make on us, and a grasp of the limits on individual and collective action. At work, at home and in the community, people will need a deep understanding of how others live, in different cultures and traditions, and how others think, whether as scientists or artists. Whatever tasks machines may be taking over from humans at work, the demands on our knowledge and skills to contribute meaningfully to social and civic life will keep rising.
For those with the right knowledge and skills, digitalisation and globalisation have been liberating and exciting; but for those who are insufficiently prepared, they can mean vulnerable and insecure work, and a life without prospects. Our economies are shifting towards regional hubs of production, linked together by global chains of information and goods, but concentrated where comparative advantage can be built and renewed. This makes the distribution of knowledge and wealth crucial, and that is intimately tied to the distribution of education opportunities.“
ANDREAS SCHLEICHER ‘WORLD CLASS How to build a 21st-century school system’

BEING WORLD CLASS MATTERS!

“In 2015, almost one in two students – representing around 12 million 15-year-olds – was not able to complete even basic reading, mathematics or science tasks1 in the global test known as PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment) – and these were students living in 70 high- and middle-income countries that participated in the test. Over the past decade, there has been virtually no improvement in the learning outcomes of students in the Western world, even though expenditure on schooling rose by almost 20% during this period. In many countries, the quality of the education a student acquires can best be predicted by the student’s or his or her school’s postal code....  change can be an uphill struggle. Young people are less likely to invest their time and energy in better education if that education seems irrelevant to the demands of the “real” world. Businesses are less likely to invest in their employees’ lifelong learning if those workers might move away for a better job. And policy makers are more likely to prioritise the urgent over the important – even if the latter includes education, an investment in the future well-being of society.... in most countries we can find excellence in education in some of the most disadvantaged schools. And consider that many of today’s leading education systems have only recently attained these top positions. So it can be done.
And it must be done. Without the right education, people will languish on the margins of society, countries will not be able to benefit from technological advances, and those advances will not translate into social progress. We simply cannot develop fair and inclusive policies and engage all citizens if a lack of education prevents people from fully participating in society.”
ANDREAS SCHLEICHER ‘WORLD CLASS How to build a 21st-century school system’

PUBLIC SERVICE!

"Public service is a combination of 2 things. The small, routine, mundane, but reliable processes & actions that bind us together. And the big picture, the vision of a better future & the values that drive those who deliver public services" - @CEisenhart

NESTA: Linking skills to occupations: Using big data to build a new occupational taxonomy for the UK

Nesta says that "the skills we need for work are changing" and don't we know it...
"From automation to climate change and from globalisation to our ageing population, there are a myriad of factors changing the nature of work in the UK. These factors mean the majority of workers are in occupations with highly uncertain futures (Bakhshi, Downing, Osborne and Schneider, 2017).
Amidst this changing landscape, policymakers, educators, businesses and individuals need timely information on how occupations are changing and how they can help workers to transition out of at-risk occupations where skills are becoming redundant. To generate these insights we need a framework that links skills to occupations."

Jyldyz Djumaliev, Antonio Lima and Cath Sleeman have been doing some interesting research to group occupations on the basis of skill requirements contained in 37 million UK job adverts. The resulting occupational classification captures both the skill specialisations and skill levels of occupations. Over the next six months, Nesta will be working to show how this work, which links occupations to skills, can be applied to learn more about skill needs in the UK. 

Watch this space!

'BETTER LEARNERS, BETTER WORKERS' COMES TO THE SHEFFIELD INCLUSION CENTRE!

I was at the Sheffield Inclusion Centre this morning with my colleague Andy Ireland who is the headteacher at the Centre. 

Andy and his team, at the Centre aim to provide a dynamic and supportive learning environment for young people who have found school challenging for a number of reasons. A team of, I counted 61 on the noticeboard in the reception area, experienced and committed staff who understand the youngsters individual needs, deliver a curriculum which promotes both their academic achievement and their personal development and prepares them for a return to mainstream/special school or, full time further education, an apprenticeship or a job with training.

Andy and I discussed having a group of their Year 10 students on a Cutlers' 'Better Learners, Better Workers' programme starting in September. This could connect to post-16 vocational pathway provision at Sheffield College linked to areas like engineering, catering, construction and health and social care. Interesting times.... watch this space!

WESTFIELD SCHOOL CELEBRATION EVENT!

I was at Westfield School last night to celebrate the achievements of their Year 11 students who had completed the Cutlers' 'Better Learners, Better Workers' programmes.

We know that BLBW is one of the most successful employability and world of work programmes in the country and the wonderful young people receiving their passport certificates last night demonstrate why it is so successful and why it is important to extend and further develop it to reach even more young people.

SCR VISION: A BETTER FUTURE TOGETHER NEWSLETTER

Last year, the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University and the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust brought together colleagues from across the region to present how, with determination and collective endeavour, we can maximise the economic and social potential of the Sheffield City Region (SCR).

The launch was the start of a journey towards an SCR Vision. The group have now produced a newsletter, describing some of the positive developments there have been in some of the six areas highlighted as critical, including the Cutlers' 'Better Learners, Better Workers' programmes. These individual initiatives and strengths, as well as the collaborations across our anchor institutions and with other partners, all combine towards achieving the collaborative shared vision.

"As we said in our report, we care deeply about our region and hence we remain keen to help and support our elected leaders, businesses and other organisations, as they drive the region forward to be a truly great place for all its citizens."

Tony Pedder OBE
On behalf of the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University and the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

"Better Learners Better Workers
The Better Learners Better Workers programme - launched in 2010 when the Company of Cutlers, which represents top engineering and manufacturing employers in Sheffield City Region, undertook a study with Sheffield City Council into what employers needed from school leavers - now reaches across South Yorkshire, with programmes running in Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield. At the heart of the programme is embedding of work skills into the curriculum through real-life industry projects and training sessions, work placements, internships, and greater engagement between employers and schools. There are now programmes in 30 schools training 500 Ambassadors and reaching over 6000 young people across the Sheffield City Region."