The Conservatives’ promise to fund an arts premium is “slightly galling” and “too little too late”, a union boss has warned.
In their election manifesto, the Tories pledged up to £111 million-a-year to fund “enriching activities for all pupils” at secondary schools across England.
This smacks of a belated and inadequate effort to repair this damage
The proposal is one of just a handful of new schools policies put forward by the party yesterday, including a £34 million investment in PE teaching and a £250 million-a-year fund to improve “wraparound” childcare.
The arts premium pledge comes after leaders described a decline in the number of pupils entering non-EBacc subjects as “bleak” and “worrying”, and follows calls for the performance measure to be reformed or scrapped.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL school leaders’ union, said the arts premium pledge was “welcome” but “slightly galling that it comes after arts subjects have been hammered over the past few years by a combination of cuts to school budgets and school performance measures which prioritise traditional academic over creative subjects”.
“The ‘arts premium’ smacks of a belated and inadequate effort to repair this damage. It is too little too late.”
A spokesperson for the Bacc for the Future campaign, which wants to see the EBacc scrapped, said the Tories’ pledge would not solve the crisis in arts education.
“For many students, the classroom is the only place where they are able to access creative subjects – but for that to happen the EBacc, a failing policy, must be reformed or dropped altogether.”
Under the Conservatives’ flexible childcare fund, up to £260 million a year will be handed to schools and childcare providers to “open up more options” for wraparound childcare – which takes place before and after school and in school holidays.
The Tories have also pledged a one-off £250 million capital boost to help schools provide this “wraparound” childcare provision.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the Tories’ pledge on wraparound childcare was “modest both in comparison to current spending on the childcare system (£5.4 billion) and relative to the giveaways promised by Labour and the Liberal Democrats (which the parties cost at £4.3 billion and £9.9 billion in today’s prices, respectively)”.
“This offer could benefit parents of school-age children by increasing their childcare options, but it’s less clear whether it will have a big effect on parents’ working patterns or children’s development,” said IfS research economist Christine Farquharson.
Labour has also pledged arts funding in the form of an arts pupil premium for primary schools, initially worth £160 million a year.
We get it – “Tories bad, Labour good”
Of course the Institute for Fiscal Studies also said that Labour’s proposals would “push the tax burden well above levels sustained in the UK since the Second World War” and that “it will be extremely hard simply to deliver anything like this scale of increase in capital spending, at least in the near-term, certainly in an efficient and cost effective way”.
But let’s not bother with that, let’s publish criticism of the Conservative manifesto from vested interests (which we didn’t do with any other party’s manifesto), cherry pick quotes from bodies which have criticised all parties, and do what we can to paint Labour as the chosen ones.
If you’re going to bash a political party (which I’m not at all averse to), have the decency to bash them all.
You are correct Mr Barton.
The EBacc has been a disaster for Arts education in England. Many forecast this would happen, and they have been proven correct.
It’s a pity that errors cannot be pointed out without it being seen as a political attack.
Our system is such that politicians cannot admit their mistakes and correct them. Instead they have to keep supporting a failed initiative and try to ameliorate the worst effects with half baked stopgaps. This applies to both Conservative and Labour policies.
It would be good to find ways of reversing mistakes rather than promoting political sabre rattling from politicians (and their supporters).