News
‘Urgent action’ needed as arts A Level entries drop by a third since2010 Arts subjects now account for the smallest proportion of A Level entries since 2010, new research from Campaign for the Arts reveals.
Jack Gamble, the charity’s director has called for ‘urgent action’, warning that the decrease in A Level uptake represents ‘wasted potential’. He added that this particularly impacts students from lower income backgrounds.
Campaign for the Arts found that performing arts suffered the largest decrease in 2023, with Drama A Level entries falling by 8% in a single year.
The stats This decrease is in line with a steady decline in A Level Drama uptake: entries in England have dropped by 45% between 2010 and 2023, from 15,144 students to 8,340.
One year is an anomaly to this trend: the number of UK Drama A Level students increased by 3% from 9645 in 2021 to 9,953 in 2022. This temporary uptick has anecdotally been put down to the impact of returning to in-person education post-Covid.
A wider impact A new report written by the British Academy and the National Foundation for Education Research found ‘considerable decline’ in takeup of arts and humanities subjects over the past two decades compared to socials sciences and STEM.
The independent study attributes these changes to the Conservative government’s severing of A Level courses from AS Level exams almost 10 years ago. This change meant that only a single set of A Level exams is taken after two years of study, when previously there were AS Level exams midway through.
The report also notes that the number of schools and colleges offering A Level courses in arts subjects such as drama and music has also seen a ‘dramatic’ fall. The summary concludes with a call to ‘bring arts back into the curriculum’.
‘Breadth and balance should be at the heart of any future post-16 curriculum and should not be negatively impacted by future reform’, British Academy’s director of policy told The Guardian.
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Sector response The Guardian also broke the news that Paul Whiteman, the general secretary at the NAHT school leaders’ union, claimed that the decline in arts entries across the board was linked to government performance measures.
‘The government has used high-stakes performance measures as a blunt tool to drive curriculum and qualification choices in schools,’ Whiteman said. ‘While entries inevitably vary each year, this may explain the concerning decline in take-up of arts GCSEs, which has a knock-on effect when it comes to choices for sixth form and college students.’
Little Angel internship to target lack of diversity in puppetry
Little Angel Theatre is launching an internship scheme to offer a grant aimed at supporting ethnically diverse aspiring puppet makers.
The internship is available due to receiving one of the four instalments of the Mo Siewcherran Fund grant, alongside Edinburghbased theatre and dance organisation Imaginate, the Women’s Prize Trust and academic publisher the Association of Laboratory Medicine.
The grant will contribute to six month’s salary for a traineeship and full programme support for those from black, Asian and other ethnically diverse backgrounds.
On the news, artistic director of Little Angel, Samantha Lane, said receiving the grant would ‘help to enrich the cultural workforce.’
She added: ‘There is a shortage of diverse puppetry makers in the UK. This is, in part, due to limited access to education and training opportunities, and the systemic barriers to engaging with exciting opportunities.
‘Funding to support our intern enables us to provide yet another diverse puppet maker with a year-long, on-the-job, hands-on experience.’
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LAT ’s production of Dogs Don’t Do Ballet
6 Drama & Theatre Autumn Term 2 2024/25
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