The case for culture in the classroom

"Our capacity to interrogate the present with any degree of wisdom or any likelihood of creating a more fulfilling future rests on our knowledge and engagement with the past".

Looking back to 1946, when the Arts Council of Great Britain (which would later become Arts Council England) was born, it's impossible to say definitively what role the arts played in schools across the UK. No data survives (if it ever existed) on the numbers of young people with access to arts subjects or what kinds of experiences were on offer. (We should note that, 80 years on, things aren't much better: we still lack many of the basic data sets we need to give us this information, particularly for primary education.) But, in addition to individual stories, there do exist some tantalising examples of schools making extraordinary commitments to the arts, and building whole-school curricula around them.

It's therefore possible to construct micro-histories of schools that, for shorter or longer periods of time (and usually under the influence of enlightened leadership), developed radical new visions of how the arts and humanities could be embedded in school life. These micro-histories offer us (with thanks to Michael Fielding, Emeritus Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London) "critical case studies of possibilities".

One such study I find myself returning to again and again (after first being introduced to it by Professor Ian Grosvenor from the University of Birmingham) is the story of Steward Street Primary School in Lozells, a working-class area in the heart of the Birmingham. The Steward Street 'experiment' (as defined by Grosvenor and Catherine Burke) took place in the 1940s and 1950s. Over a 15-year period, two consecutive headteachers placed creative arts at the centre of the school's curriculum – and in doing so, turned it into a point of reference for all those who believed in the transformative power of the arts in education. The school's visitor book reveals that it played host to luminaries such as Rudolph Laban (a Hungarian dance artist and movement theorist whose work still influences contemporary dance studios and rehearsal rooms), as well as a host of international researchers and education officers. In 1941, there were seven visits to the school to observe its approach; by 1948 this had shot up to 247.

In 1949, the Ministry of Education published 60,000 copies of a pamphlet written by the then-headteacher, Arthur Stone. Stone's belief was that children were inherently creative and should be encouraged to paint, build, make and dance - a highly unusual philosophy for the headteacher of an inner-city school full of children from working class families who were likely to be heading to work in one of the many factories that dominated the Steward Street skyline. "Story of a school: a headmaster's experiences with children aged seven to eleven" gives a detailed account of the kind of arts-based curriculum he and his staff were leading.

Stone was succeeded in 1945 by Ken Scott. Scott built on his predecessor's legacy, noting on his arrival at the school that "[the children's]…academic standards were 'above average' in most subjects…", and choosing to capitalise on this by using the energy of arts-based learning to teach all subjects. He announced the abolition of "all forms of punishment" in the school, and "all comparisons of individuals by class lists of examination results and the like were done away with, since they encouraged feelings of superiority in some and inferiority in others". For the same reason "no Artwork was exhibited until at least six months after its execution". Unusually for the time, Scott also introduced provision for pupils with special educational needs. Contemporary reports show that academic achievement increased under this system, and pupils' efforts appeared to intensify (they wrote booklets of stories, gave lectures, held debates, and contributed to school policy through class councils). As Burke and Grosvenor state, "Steward Street's 'story' can offer 'signs' of how radical educational experiments could be possible today". But the experiment did not continue once Scott moved on from the school. Grosvenor and Burke note "it is likely that, like other experiments located in English elementary schools, the prioritisation of the arts over the basics could not withstand the introduction of the examination at 11+ for selection to secondary schools."

(The question I'm left with, by the way, is: what happened to the Steward Street children as they grew into adults? Were there differences in their attitudes, aptitudes and life choices compared with their peers who didn't have those experiences? Before it's too late, we need an intensive research study to find the remaining pupils of Steward Street and discover more about their adult lives. That's a PhD begging to be written.)

Individual cases of enlightened leadership and commitment to the arts were brought together in a landmark 1982 publication from the Gulbenkian Foundation: The Arts in Schools: Principles, Practice and Provision. The report was the culmination of a four-year inquiry into the state of the arts in schools in England and Wales. Its lead author, Ken Robinson (later Sir Ken Robinson, knighted for his services to education), was just beginning a distinguished career championing the value of the arts in education nationally and internationally. The report inspired many professional arts organisations to engage with the education sector for the first time, and paved the way for the arts to be included in England's first National Curriculum in 1988.

That triumph was, unfortunately, short-lived. Ofsted and the school inspections process began in 1992, school league tables were introduced in the same year, and the breadth and quality of local authority arts services (which had to be purchased by schools, who were now the budget holders/commissioners) was gradually eroded. After a moment when it looked as if access to the arts in education might become a given, we returned to a situation in which the level and quality of arts provision was left once again to chance.

But the news wasn't all bad. The tug-of-war over the arts in education coincided with the period when Arts Council England committed itself to more explicit involvement with children and young people, issuing its first policy statement on education in 1982. This was the green shoot that grew over time into a wide range of Arts Council interventions in cultural education, including the launch of Creative Partnerships (a programme designed to put creativity at the heart of school life) in 2002; the requirement for National Portfolio Organisations to deliver education and learning commitments; and more recently the advent of Bridge organisations, and the creation of Music Education Hubs and Local Cultural Education Partnerships.

So what can we learn from all this history? I'm struck by the fact that the same challenges continually assert themselves and we haven't yet found an answer to them. Take, for example, this excerpt from the 1943 White Paper on Educational Reconstruction: "Instead of the junior schools performing their proper and highly important function of fostering the potentialities of children at an age when their minds are nimble and receptive, their curiosity strong, their imagination fertile and their spirits high, the curriculum is too often cramped and distorted by over-emphasis on examination subjects...". We might use different words today, but we see the same things being written, about both primary and secondary school curricula.

And while, today, we also have case studies of possibilities – stories of individual school leaders who create arts-rich learning environments – what we still fundamentally lack is universal integration of the principle of an arts-rich education for every child.

The present

"'Subjects we have always seen as culturally important will increasingly become the preserve of private schools because state schools can't afford to teach them."

In 2023, a little over forty years on from the original Gulbenkian Arts In Schools report, the Gulbenkian Foundation and A New Direction published a new version, reviewing what had changed, what had stayed the same. and what had declined in that time. The updated report had three key findings:

1. Arts subjects and experiences have an evidenced role in contributing to improving outcomes for children and young people, providing them with skills for life and skills for work.

2. Despite all that we know about the value of arts subjects for children and young people, there is a lack of value ascribed to the arts within the state education system in England.

3. Many of the current problems identified in the report are as much about the wider context in which learning takes place as about the specific challenges for the arts in schools, and there are now widespread calls for education system change.

When the updated report was published, I spent time talking with Sally Bacon and Derri Burdon, co-chairs of the Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA), about the impact of arts subjects and experiences on learning outcomes for children and young people. This question, which has become something of a hobby horse of mine, probably stems from a conversation I had with a man I tremendously admire: Brian Anderson, the now-retired headteacher of Springhead Primary School in Stoke on Trent. He told me very simply that if an arts education programme wasn't making a difference to children's learning, he couldn't justify doing it. When I first started working at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) more than 20 years ago, we couldn't say what difference exploring Shakespeare's plays through embodied, theatre-based forms of learning made to outcomes for children and young people. We can now. Thanks in part to Brian's challenge, we have used randomised control trials and longitudinal studies to help us understand the value, impact and relevance of Shakespeare's work to children, from nursery age to sixth form. Studies consistently show improvements in children's literacy, particularly their speaking and their writing; they write more, they use more complex sentences, they want to write - particularly children who have previously been reluctant writers. And children's academic self-concept improves; when a child feels confident about Shakespeare's work they feel differently about what they can achieve.

In terms of the wider evidence base about the differences that arts subjects and experiences make to learning outcomes for children, the RSC and the CLA co-commissioned three Rapid Evidence Reviews (RERs) in Dance, Music and Drama to sit alongside an existing review of Art, Craft and Design which had been undertaken by Professor Pat Thomson. Pat also oversaw the writing of the three new RERs. We published the findings in 2026. In brief, the four RERs collectively provide a substantial evidence base. They represent a total of 1,176 studies spanning different methodologies, contexts, age groups, and geographic locations, though primarily focused on English-language research from the US and UK.

1. Art, Craft and Design – 463 studies (2000-2021)

2. Dance – 71 studies (2004-2024)

3. Drama – 351 studies (2004-2024)

4. Music – 291 studies (2004-2024)

Aggregating the findings across all four RERs, we see the following impacts consistently reported:

Agency and personal development were the most significant benefits. Agency is a key attribute for entry into adult life. We need to know we have the agency to make changes – that we aren't 'done to' – that we have a voice and can make active choices that in turn make a difference to our lives and the communities or workplaces we are part of. Agency is also an essential component of wellbeing.

Wellbeing - all four RERs document substantial health and wellbeing benefits, spanning both physical and mental health dimensions.

Collaboration, Communication and Empathy - there is strong evidence that all four artforms powerfully foster social connections and break down barriers. These kinds of connections relate to basic needs for human happiness and belonging.

Cognition and Interpretation - remarkably consistent cognitive benefits were reported across all artforms, with enhanced concentration, memory, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking.

Creativity - expressive arts subjects and experiences develop creative problem-solving, imagination, and analytical thinking skills that are valuable across all areas of learning and life.

I'm also struck by the fact that in 2020, the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) published a Rapid Evidence Review led by Professor Daisy Fancourt into the relationship of the arts to health and wellbeing. The results, graded for reliability, included strong A-grade evidence for the arts in supporting social cohesion, and strong B-grade evidence for the arts in supporting wellbeing in children and young people. A and B grade evidence is considered good enough to inform policy decisions. As far as I'm aware, no new policy's have yet emerged informed by this research.

I have spent hours - probably weeks - of my life in discussion about the intrinsic versus instrumental value of the arts. Some colleagues in the sector feel reticent about ascribing outcomes and measurement tools to arts subjects and experiences on the basis that they are of intrinsic value and to measure them is reductive. Although I respect the point of view, I don't agree with it. I believe in the intrinsic value of the arts, but I also believe you have to experience them first to understand that value. Many people haven't had that experience – which means, in practice, that we need to articulate their value in other ways first. If we can't describe to a headteacher what contribution arts subjects and experiences will make to the children in their school, and if we can't evidence that, why should they believe us? Why should their families?

It was on this basis that Sally and Derri invited me to chair an Evidence and Value Narrative Group for the CLA. The group consisted of colleagues from the cultural, education and higher education sectors, including Professor Pat Thomson from the University of Nottingham who has led some of the most significant international studies into the place and value of the arts in education. Our job was to craft a value narrative about expressive arts subjects and experiences, supported by research and evidence. We started our work in September 2023. I naively imagined we'd crack it in two or three meetings; I thought we'd all easily agree on the kind of language needed to describe the value of arts experiences. I was wrong. Some 18 months later, we finally had a draft value narrative and what had emerged as a Capabilities Framework. It took that long to debate, disagree with and challenge each other, and ultimately to wrangle the different perspectives that colleagues brought into a coherent and compelling evidenced narrative.

In our deliberations over that 18-month period, we kept coming back to the example of sport. The sports sector is incredibly good at articulating the importance and benefits of sport in terms of wellbeing, enjoyment and connection. The arts sector is less good at doing that because we don't have a shared language to describe the difference experiencing arts and culture can make – in the classroom or outside of it. The Capabilities Framework which came out of our work is built around three pillars that describe the capabilities which expressive arts subjects and experiences develop: Being, Becoming and Belonging; Relating; and Critical and Creative thinking. These in turn encompass seven capabilities that have personal benefits for the child, and which also result in societal benefits: agency and wellbeing, communication, empathy and collaboration, and creativity and interpretation. We hope the Framework can provide that shared language.

The Future

"Human resources are like natural resources…you have to go looking for them…you have to create the circumstances where they show themselves." Sir Ken Robinson

This essay is asking why we need culture in classrooms. Through a performing arts lens, I've focused on the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of the difference that accessing the arts and culture make to a child. On the question of whether arts and culture belong in the classroom, there is no longer any case to answer. What we need to ask ourselves is: where do we go from here?

I believe that we must now put in place ideas for a future that will see every young person in every hamlet, village, town and city able to make, shape and participate in the arts where they live. And I believe we must ensure that those experiences are of the highest quality in terms of process and practitioners. This isn't about what kind of art form or even what kind of art children have access to. It is about the necessity of that provision being of the best possible quality – in terms of safeguarding, representation, pedagogy, inclusion, access and artistry.

In the very near future there will be a new National Centre for Arts and Music Education. We have also recently had the results of a long-awaited Curriculum and Assessment Review, and government responses emphasising the role of arts and culture in education and in developing young people who feel they belong and have the conditions they need to thrive. There are reasons to be cheerful. But for myself, I hope to see the following things happening, as we look to the future:

1. That the arts and cultural sector can focus on learning and improving its work with schools and young people, as opposed to proving once again the things we already know.

2. That we have an arts education evidence hub that contains the best quality research from the past 20 years to ensure the narrative about the value of arts subjects and experiences is understood, robustly evidenced and confidently articulated.

3. That policy-making is empowered by robust data which tells us which children in which schools are getting access to which kinds of experiences (from early years to Year 13). That these data sets then shape decisions made by the National Centre for Arts and Music Education to ensure the areas of the country with least access are prioritised and supported. (On this point, I was struck by someone telling me recently that the sports sector has access to data-sets which can tell them, for example, how many young people in schools in a particular region or town took a particular sport in any given period. Wow.)

4. That we have an arts policy (with a National Centre for Arts and Music Education) which addresses both universal and targeted provision. This has to be the basis of national and regional policy making; it's been the basis of our strategic decision making at the RSC. If we only focus on universal provision, we will always serve the same people.

The psychologist Donald Woods Winnicott said "It's a joy to be hidden, but it's a disaster not to be found." This work is about finding children: about children discovering their own potential; and the adults in their lives recognising different possibilities for them.

For some children – and I was one of them – arts subjects and experiences offer them access to their potential in a way that simply does not happen through any other means. Urgent questions remain about how we secure an arts-rich education as a core entitlement for all children – but one thing is clear. That entitlement should not and must not depend on the chance recruitment of a Mr Stone, or a Mr Scott, or a Miss Higgins – no matter how wonderful and impactful those people might be. It should be made available to every child in this country on the grounds of the essential role the arts play in human thriving and human happiness. It should happen because we have the systems of opportunity in place in every school that enable every child to realise their potential: to find out who they are now and who they want to become.