The Guardian is to be commended for its sustained support for arts education, frequently highlighting the serious decline of arts teaching in our schools. Your article (‘Worse than the Tories’: cultural figures question Labour plans for arts in schools, 2 March) was an interesting read, but left out one way in which government policy is reinforcing damaging Conservative policies.
You quote a government spokesperson as saying: “We are committed to ensuring art, music and drama are no longer the preserve of a privileged few. To help achieve this, our curriculum and assessment review will seek to deliver a broader curriculum.” My concern is that this list of arts subjects leaves out dance, an omission replicated in many recent government statements.
This is sadly reminiscent of the 1988 Education Reform Act, which created a hierarchy for the arts in schools, giving art and music individual statutory status while drama and dance were subsumed under English and PE, being seen as second-class art forms. The Conservative policy has been highly detrimental to dance in schools, which has been in severe decline. OneDanceUK reports that over the last 15 years there has been a 50% reduction in young people accessing GCSE and A-level dance, and the 2023 Ofsted PE report Levelling the Playing Field stated that dance is often delivered at a low quality, to some students only, or not at all.
I suspect that the Labour government will not have the courage or inclination to challenge, this policy, which reduces the breadth of the arts in schools and misses out on the many benefits of dance as an expressive physical art form. But there is a solution; renaming PE as PE and dance would raise its profile and ensure the subject’s value is recognised.
Veronica Jobbins
Chair, Lewisham Education Arts Network
