Wednesday 29 February 2012

Henley 2: This time it’s cultural


So finally the cultural education review has arrived. Like a difficult second album, this one has taken far longer than Darren Henley’s excellent music education review (although not quite as long as Kevin Rowland’s notorious second solo album – my friend Jon was working for the record company that waited twelve years for that gem to arrive).



The delay might have been caused by Darren’s creative angst, but my guess is that it was probably down to torturous back and forths between the DfE, DCMS and possibly the Arts Council. As a member of the Cultural Learning Alliance’s steering group, the process was frustrating. Despite being promised consultation and early sight on recommendations, yesterday’s news was genuinely news to most of us.

The report has hardly been eagerly awaited – that’s part of the problem. Cultural learning is generally somewhere on everyone’s list of priorities, but despite the fantastic efforts of the CLA, it generally scrapes along the bottom of people’s ‘to worry about’ lists, especially in these meaner, more blinkered times. We all knew that key decisions on the future of cultural learning lay outside the boundaries of this review: in the now-delayed national curriculum review, and the space it leaves or doesn’t leave for schools to develop a whole curriculum; in the changes to the accountability system so that not every subject matters; and in the budget decisions made, relatively autonomously, by thousands of schools, youth centres, local authorities and cultural institutions.

So, has the review been worth waiting for? Plans for a £3m BFI Film Academy, or the £2.7M going to English Heritage to pay for brokers to foster links between schools and historic sites, made reasonable Tuesday headlines. But if you know your history (as Michael Gove might say), they don’t really cover up the financial holes created by Arts Council and Government decisions. Nor do they answer the bigger questions about quality, access, the role of schools, colleges and HEIs as cultural institutions, and how we target, target, target resources at those most risk of missing out culturally, often through lack of demand rather than supply. I still worry that in a few decades this government may be remembered for precipitating the UK’s creative and cultural decline.

Henley’s focus on newly qualified teachers feels like the right pressure point in the system – the Teaching Outside the Classroom programme I established always found it difficult to compete for space in a student teacher’s calendar, With money attached, this idea could fit well into a teacher’s first or second year, when they are just looking beyond the exhausting parapet of behaviour management, and might link to Masters’ qualifications.My thoughts on Gove’s thoughts about ‘data not being the plural of evidence’ (borrowed from Dylan William) will have to wait for another post.

The Review also makes a good effort to define cultural learning. When leading Find Your Talent (a programme which appears to have made a depressingly minimal impact on the future of cultural education) I stepped on the shoulders of Raymond Williams and other giants to define culture as 'the means through which we understand and create our identities'. This film by Billy Pols, shown at the Turner Contemporary exhibition on youth culture, fits with my definition. Would it make the Henley cut?


Although the national plan for cultural education will be important, bigger news for cultural learning may well have come the week before. According to Arts Industry, thanks to a big rise in National Lottery ticket sales, The Arts Council can expect an extra £1.25 billion in extra income over the next five years. I know it’s not all about the money, but even if a proportionate amount was spent on children and young people, that would give an additional £50 Million per year to play with. Now, where did I put that proposal I wrote for a redesigned Creative Partnerships 3.0?