EBacc campaign gains support

Arts subjects may yet be included as core GCSE subjects in the new ‘English Baccalaureate’ (EBacc) following the recommendation by parliament’s Education Committee that the complement of subjects should be reviewed following the completion of the National Curriculum Review later this year. The Committee said that the Department for Education’s decision not to include music and art in the EBacc “could be seen as odd in light of the Government’s view that ‘Involvement with the arts has a dramatic and lasting effect on young people’”. It noted that evidence of a decline in arts provision in schools has been emerging since the launch of the EBacc as a school performance measure last year. The National Association of Music Educators reported that 60% of the 95 music teachers who responded to their study in January 2011 indicated that their schools had already taken action to reduce the uptake of the music GCSE in September 2011, and a more recent survey for the Department for Education in June/July by the National Centre for Social Research supports this. It found that over half of the schools taking part in the survey said that the EBacc had influenced their curriculum offer. Forty-five percent said that a course had been withdrawn, and while most of these were BTEC courses, music, the performing arts and textiles were also mentioned. Among other evidence reviewed by the Committee were 340 similarly worded letters based on a template provided by the Incorporated Society of Musicians, which together with Music Teacher magazine has launched a campaign to keep music in schools.