ITS A START: Multi-million-pound culture boost for children in schools!

School Standards Minister Nick Gibb announced a multi-million-pound package on Friday 3 January alongside a manifesto commitment to offer an ‘arts premium’ to secondary schools to allow young people to learn creative skills and widen their horizons. Asa usual music gets the biggest share of the funding and we need much more for creativity and the arts and to develop that critical skill set which sets children and young people up to thrive and succeed at school, at work and in life!!

The curriculum schemes that will receive a total of £85 million for 2020/21 are as follows:

• Music Education Hubs
• In Harmony
• National Youth Music Organisations (NYMOs) and Music for Youth; and
• Cultural education (Heritage Schools, BFI Film Academy, Museums and Schools, ACE Bridge Network, National Youth Dance Company, Saturday Art and Design Clubs).

SKILLS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE!

A colleague sent me  link to the The Centre for Youth Impact and Local Government Association document, 'A Framework of Outcomes for Young People 2.0' which affirms the work we had been doing in Sheffield with the Cutlers Company to develop programmes to help young people develop the skills required to thrive and succeed at school, in work and in life!!

The Catalyst Framework of Outcomes 2012 took as its starting point the emerging evidence that social and emotional skills play a key part in young people’s ability to make successful transitions to adulthood and achieve positive life outcomes including educational attainment, employment, and good health. It was an attempt to make clear connections between what are often considered to be the short-termor ‘soft’ outcomes of provision for young people and the longer-term impacts. The framework was well-received by the youth sector initially, and many practitioners started to use it as the basis for defining and measuring the outcomes they hoped to achieve with young people, assisted by the matrix of measurement tools included with the framework. However, the Catalyst Framework ultimately failed to make as great an impact on the sector as had been hoped, emerging as it did into an environment of severe reductions in resources available for youth work and other forms of developmental work with young people. As well as reducing the actual offer available to young people, budget reductions led to a significant decline in leadership roles within the youth sector, both locally and nationally. As a result, the Catalyst Framework lacked advocates in senior roles in local authorities and national organisations, and has lost traction in the last five years.

THE ARTS MATTER!

I have been reading some research in the British Medical Journal. 'The art of life and death: 14 year follow-up analyses of associations between arts engagement and mortality in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing' which looked at impact of the arts on longevity. The study is very clear about the importance of arts engagement... "it could be linked to longevity by alleviating chronic stress and depression, and providing emotional, cognitive, and social coping resources that support biological regulatory systems and behavioural choices. Arts engagement is also known to enhance social capital, which builds individual and collective resources, and to reduce loneliness, which is associated with mortality. Arts engagement can support cognitive reserve, and promotes empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, which are all linked to a greater chance of survival. Arts engagement could help to reduce sedentary behaviours, which are well established predictors of cardiovascular health and immune function, and might also reduce risk taking behaviours. Arts engagement is linked to a greater sense of purpose in life, which is itself associated with better immune function and healthier behaviours. Further, creativity and imagination, which are an intrinsic part of artistic engagement, have been linked to increased chance of survival across the evolution of our species. So there is a strong theoretical rationale that underlies the hypothesis that arts engagement could be linked to people’s chance of survival."

This study explored whether arts engagement could help us live longer, happier lives. "We analysed the longitudinal relation between receptive arts engagement and mortality across a 14 year follow-up period in a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50 and older. Results showed a dose-response relation: risk of dying at any point during the follow-up period among people who engaged with cultural activities on an infrequent basis (once or twice a year) was 14% lower than in those with no engagement; for those who engaged on a frequent basis (every few months or more), the risk was 31% lower. The association was independent of all identified confounders, was found across all major causes of death, and was robust to a wide range of sensitivity analyses."

HOW TO LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

Another blooming Christmas and as I have said for a long time we simply need stay connected with friends and colleagues and volunteer and give to others whenever and whatever we can. Interestingly, I was re-reading some research gathered on more than 1,500 children who were about 10 years old when they were first studied in 1921. This study has been used to create the most comprehensive longitudinal evidence for how to live long and prosper.

CLIFTON GREEN PRIMARY SCHOOL, 'FEVERED SLEEP' AND 'THE INSTITUTE OF EVERYTHING'!

I visited Clifton Green Primary School this morning. I love visiting primary schools who are doing such important work in some of the most interesting communities we have here in York. The team are very obviously 'releasing a very special Clifton Green magic'! I really enjoyed briefly looking around the school and hearing about their partnership with 'Fevered Sleep' and the work they have been doing with the children and the school team as part of 'The Institute of Everything'.

NEW EEF GUIDE

“It doesn’t matter how great an educational idea or intervention is in principle; what really matters is how it manifests itself in the day-to-day work of people in schools.”

The NEW EEF Guidance Report 'Putting Evidence to Work' is well worth reading

PISA 2018 RESULTS!

PISA RESULTS AND WORLD CLASS SKILLS!!

Our children are no different to children anywhere in the world and I was looking at the latest PISA results and they make interesting reading. The UK has made "positive" progress in international school rankings, based on tests taken by 15-year-olds in 79 countries and regions. The tests, run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, show the UK results improving in reading, maths and science. But we lag behind top performers such as China, Singapore and Estonia as well as Finland, Canada, Ireland, Sweden and Poland. 

Worryingly, the UK's teenagers were also found to have among the lowest levels of "life satisfaction" and happiness, which is not surprising in a country where we test, check and monitor our children more than most other countries across the world. Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's education director, said there were "positive signs" from the UK's results for the tests taken in 2018 - which he said showed "modest improvements". Still it's good news that:

• In reading, the UK is 14th, up from 22nd in the previous tests three years ago
• In science, the UK is 14th, up from 15th
• In maths, the UK is 18th up from 27th

The next PISA tests will also focus on creative thinking in 2021 and digital learning in 2024, although the UK is apparently not going to take part!! Sad really in a world where the kind of things that are easy to teach and test have also become easy to digitise and automate. And especially, when the skills that will be required to thrive and succeed at school at work and in life in general are the skills that underpin the arts and culture and sport.... teamwork, communication, planning, creativity, problem solving, organisation, imagination, awareness and a sense of responsibility. Skills that our children need to enable them to harness the opportunities of the 21st century and to shape our world for the better.

IMPORTANT STUFF: People are happier in places that spend more money on public places like parks and libraries!

“We are not paying taxes, we are investing in our society. 

We are purchasing quality of life.”

Meik Wiking

To date there has been no rigorous empirical investigation into how government spending specifically on public goods impacts well-being. An important new study published in the journal Social Science Research finds that Americans report greater levels of happiness in states that spend more money on public goods such as parks, libraries, infrastructure and public safety. The report provides robust evidence that citizens report living happier lives when their state spends more (relative to the size of a state's economy) on providing public goods. Interestingly this relationship didn’t hold when considering all government spending or when considering spending on other categories such as welfare or education. Those categories did not produce a meaningful change in well-being in any direction. That suggests that public spending on categories accessible to everyone has a similar effect on the well-being of everyone.Moreover, the statistical relationship between public goods spending and happiness is substantively large and invariant across income, education, gender, and race/ethnicity lines – indicating that spending has broad benefits across society. These findings suggest that public goods spending can have important implications for the well-being of Americans and, more broadly, contribute to the growing literature on how government policy decisions concretely impact the quality of life that citizens experience.

If money buys happiness, in other words, then so does government spending on libraries!! 

SKILLS MATTER!

The IBM Institute for Business Value has produced a report which identifies which skills matter most. Executives’ responses indicate workers require a blend of both digital skills and soft skills – also called behavioral skills – to be successful in the workforce. In the IBM 2016 report on global skills, “Facing the storm,” executives placed a high value on digital skills. The latest research reveals that a shift is occurring; executives’ views regarding the priority of critical skills have taken a turn from digital and technical to behavioral or so called soft skills. In fact, soft skills dominated the top four core competencies global executives seek.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE ARTS IN SCHOOLS

WHY DO THE ARTS MATTER?

WHY DO THE ARTS MATTER?