The gallery is just a short tram ride out of Lille and is always a quiet pleasure. I enjoy the sculptures and paintings which are mainly 19th and 20th century and idiosyncratically provincial – designed to cultrivate the taste of the town’s workers, foremen and their wives. The collection, like La Piscine itself, comes from a time when Roubaix was a thriving provincial industrial centre for textiles. This has now faded but the buildings and warehouses bear witness to the past. It’s worth a visit if passing.

The report provides an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses HMI have found in art teaching and education in all key stages. It illustrates the findings with examples of practice gathered from visits to 184 schools and from inspections. One key recommendation is that there needs to be subject specific professional development – particularly in the field of drawing (this is not a strength in key stages 1, 2 and 3). The great thing is that the landscape he draws is so obvious and recognisable and the recommendations are so appropriate.

Earlier this year I spent a day with old friends and colleagues, including Ian (advisers, inspectors and teachers) on the occasion of John Steers retirement as General Secretary of NSEAD. As is normal on such occasions we sorted out art education over lunch. It wasn’t, or didn’t seem, so very difficult and we felt the whole thing could easily fit on a couple of sides of A4. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to write it down. If we had, it would have included simple things like ‘ You must have a clear conceptual framework on which to base both planning and assessment. It doesn’t have to be the very best framework ever, but there has to be one. Assessment for learning just means that children should be able to work out for themselves what they can do to improve and recognise what it will look like when they do. The opportunity to draw regularly and for different purposes is intrinsic to any good art education.‘

You can fill in the rest yourselves but I would recommend reading ‘Making a Mark’ first.

It is disappointing that the report seems to take little account of the recent history of arts education in our schools. Thus it sometimes fails to recognise current momentum, or to build on our success, or to learn from our mistakes – preferring to reflect on practice in the (culturally enlightened?) USA. Where the report is shallow and uninformed it is dangerous because it will close down debate and embed weak ideas in the scaffolding that is now being used to build our new practice.  And it is ‘our‘ education system, and it will be changed by ‘us‘, that is the people who work with children and teachers. Ken Robinson talks eloquently of the process of change in education in my previous blog post.

There is much to admire and celebrate in the report: not least the fact that it was commissioned and published in first place. Although, as some of us older educationalistas know from long experience, the existence of a report does not necessarily lead to anything. The report will, of course, generate territorial disputes between subject vested interests. But by and large the report is a good thing. In amongst all the obvious flag waving it seems to me to be important to cheer particularly loudly for some key rallying points and to recognise the dangers of leaping to conclusions based upon superficial assumptions.

The principle of an entitlement to an arts education which is specific and specified is a valuable principle at this time: the details can be argued over later. The proposition that all agencies should align their aspiration and endeavour and work together is in itself a platitude. But that this should be explicitly underpinned with political action, authority and a plan is intelligent. This recognition that change is most successful (or indeed only possible) when it goes with the grain of political ambition is astute. The report is also intelligently grounded in reality by making clear recommendations for national advocacy, medals and recognition by well-known and respected champions from both the cultural and political world. This is not a question of icing the cake, but making sure the cake gets put in the oven in the first place. At the other end of the scale the report again shows a pragmatic understanding of day to day reality by recognising the essential and pivotal role of the headteacher as the key to action at a local level. (recommendations  1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 24)

In making its case the report, quite properly, recognises the importance of the new, digital creative industries to both our cultural and economic life. It recognises that the use of, and access to, new media in education should be a daily reality. The principle that, on behalf of our young people, we should endeavour to stay ‘ahead of the curve’ is really worth holding on to. However, this is not reflected explicitly in the recommendations, apart from some soft words in the ‘entitlement’ which is a shame. It is not the same thing but the report also proposes that something should be done about design. It should.
(para 2.14, 2.15, 2.16, recommendation 1, 9)

The proposals most likely to make a difference to the quality of experience for children relate to support and training for both teachers and artists. Teachers and educational professionals are too often side-lined by the new generations of artists working in, and with, schools anxious work with children. Who then act as teachers and educational professionals. They are not and shouldn’t try to be. This should be a partnership, but teachers should be leading it and they need more experience, training and support to do so more effectively.

The report recognises that teachers will deliver cultural education and engage with the professional partners (artists) most effectively if they have first hand experience to draw on. This is an important point that should not be overlooked. It goes to the heart of the classroom – if teachers are personally informed, energised and engaged with professional practice (and practitioners) they will make cultural education come alive to generations of pupils for years to come. If they simply watch a workshop the experience will be dead within weeks.
(recommendations 15, 16)

The report also recommends improving the quality and experience of cultural practitioners who work in and with schools. This is to be cautiously welcomed. It proposes a new qualification to achieve this. This might be useful if it is led by, and promotes a productive partnership with, educational professionals. However, the proposal for qualifications to become a ‘Qualified Creative Arts Educator’ comes from Darren Henley’s report on music education. However, there is little, in this report, to justify it other than a statement that he sees no reason why it should not be rolled over into all other art forms.

This is an example of where the report is dangerously simplistic. I do not feel the role of music professionals in music education is necessarily directly comparable to other art forms, certainly not to the visual arts. The precision, skills and techniques required to engage with music are very different in kind. It may be that I misrepresent music, for which I apologise, but it seems that the role of a professional supporting teachers and children to learn play and appreciate music will involve  unlocking technique and technical skills. But in art it would be profoundly counter-productive if qualifications shaped the role of ‘Creative Arts Educator’ primarily as a skills based workshop leader or tutor. Nor would you want professional writers dealing with grammar and paragraphs. This represents the worst of current practice and simply creates another kind of LSA. In the visual arts the role is, or should be, as much about creating, imagining, inventing, inspiring by example as about learning skills and techniques – perhaps more so. Teaching the skills necessary to make effectively should be the responsibility of the teacher, perhaps supported by an artist as an example of a particular type of practice.

The other given source of the idea for qualifications for cultural practitioners comes from the Arts Council which has ‘commissioned Creative & Cultural Skills to create a suite of nationally available, accredited vocational qualifications specifically for cultural practitioners working with children and young people.’ These qualifications are not yet available, but it is worrying that the Arts Council is again attempting to define educational practice and bypassing the educational establishment in doing so. The Henley report makes virtually no mention of Creative Partnerships which also distanced itself from the educational establishment and, as a consequence, from mainstream practice. Improving the quality of those working alongside teachers in classrooms is a sensible and needed improvement. The solution proposed is worryingly superficial and in the wrong hands could be quite damaging.
(recommendation 17)

It is astute to recognize that schools will wish to be assured that Ofsted will recognize and endorse, as well as evaluate, changes to improve the quality of cultural education. The report would have been remiss not to have included Ofsted and is sensible in inviting HMI to contribute to defining good practice. However, the proposal that Ofsted creates some distinct criteria to judge the quality of learning delivered by cultural practitioners is worrying. The quality of learning is the responsibility of the teacher and it would be inappropriate, in my view, to give cultural practitioners the idea that they can in some way take on this responsibility and be evaluated in their own right. It is another example of shallow thinking which could undermine, rather than enhance, the proper partnership between teacher and cultural practitioner.
(recommendation 13)

There are several other examples of superficial thinking and glib comments which could belittle the quality of cultural education and which do not reflect the best contemporary practice. For instance, the report continually presents cultural practitioners as people working directly with pupils -as a kind of LSA or workshop leader. Recommendations are coloured by this. It does not present artists as partners for teachers. This is a weakness for it is in this role that they can make the greatest impact.

The report recommends a national ‘Culture Week’. On first sight this is fairly harmless but it could have significant and unintended consequences. Arts weeks are fun and celebratory. But by their very nature they usually consist of short, shallow, heavily contrived taster experiences, followed by celebrations wildly in excess of the actual achievement by students. Parades are good things but it would be a shame to give the impression to children that cultural achievement is so easily won. Perhaps an ‘Arts Friday’ for a half term would provide a deeper, richer more challenging experience. At a time of flux it is just too easy to cast simplistic ideas in tablets of stone – which then become millstones.
(recommendation 22)

The report is surprisingly shallow in exploring issues of creativity and the educational concepts that might underpin what might become ‘cultural education’. In this it appears to have taken account of very little that has been written, achieved or developed in our schools in recent years. Indeed more space is given to a report from the USA containing some self-evident platitudes than is given to discussing creativity. Where it does mention creativity it simply misses the point.

In some significant respects this report appears to be unapologetically, uninformed. But in this it simply mirrors the current political stance, so perhaps we should not be surprised and choose with great care which wall to bang our heads against, and which bandwagon to jump on.
(paras 3.27, 3.28, 3.29)

Presented at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference, London, 26th January 2012.