Free art school gets go-ahead

A bid by Plymouth College of Art to open a mainstream, city centre school for pupils aged 4 to 16 has been given the go-ahead by the Department for Education, which has confirmed its intention to fund the next stage of the Free School project. The initiative has already attracted support from nearly 500 Plymouth parents and has been welcomed as having potentially national significance by Tate. When established, the school will join up a continuum of creative education in Plymouth, from age 4 through to Masters level postgraduate awards. According to the National Society for Education in Art & Design, pupil numbers in art and design have declined by 50% since the introduction of the English Baccalaureate. College Principal Professor Andrew Brewerton sees a new Plymouth School of Creative Arts as helping to reverse this decline, which he described as “happening by design, not by default”, as schools reduce the availability of arts subjects to fewer and fewer timetabled curriculum option blocks. He said: “I welcome the recognition – implicit in the Government’s support for our School project – that creative education does indeed matter, and that innovation is the key to success in these terms.”