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Education and the Arts (The Robinson Report)
Dateline: 3rd October, 1999
Last week's news that the Department for Education has changed its
mind about implementing the Robinson Report in its review of the National
Curriculum was as welcome as it was surprising. It had seemed that Ken
Robinson's report, commissioned jointly by the DfEE and the Department
of Culture, Media and Sport, was to be completely ignored by David Blunkett
and the QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority).
The Report, entitled All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education, takes an in-depth look at creativity and culture (in the widest sense of both words) in the education of children from 5 to 16, and makes 59 recommendations, many of which refer specifically to the arts.
The entire 243-page Report can be downloaded from the DfEE Website - this is the link to follow. It is in .pdf format and requires version 3 or above of the Acrobat Reader. It is a 1.29MB download. It is also available in more manageable sections from the index page. If you don't have the Reader, you can download it from the Adobe Website.
The main recommendations of interest to the arts world (any italics are mine!) are:
- Head teachers and teachers (should) raise the priority they give
to creative and cultural education; to promoting the creative development
of pupils and encouraging an ethos in which cultural diversity is
valued and supported.
- School plans for staff development should include specific
provision to improve teachers' expertise in creative and cultural
education.
- The rationale for the revised National Curriculum from 2000 should
make explicit reference to the necessity of promoting the creative
and cultural education of all young people.
- OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) should develop its capacity
to ensure that specialist areas of education, such as the arts, are
inspected by specialists. In particular, there should be a greater
number of HMI (Her Majesty's Inspectors) in OFSTED to offer expert
advice on specialist teaching and provision and standards.
- The DfEE should put in place a more fundamental review of the structure
and balance of the National Curriculum beyond 2000. Within this review
full consideration should be given to achieving parity between the
following discipline araes throughout key stages 1-4 (i.e. ages 5
to 16) as a matter of entitlement:
- language and literacy;
- mathematics and numeracy;
- sicence education;
- arts education;
- humanities education;
- physical education;
- technological education.
- In order to achieve parity, the existing distinction between core
and foundation subjects should be removed.
- Provision for creative and cultural education in early years education
should be further developed, in particular through provision for the
arts.
- The DfEE should .... take urgent action to assess and remedy the
decline in the numbers of teacher training institutions offering specialisms
in the arts and humanities in the training of primary school teachers.
- The DCMS and the DfEE should:
- establish a national programme of advanced in-service training
for artists, scientists and other creative professionals to work
in partnership with formal and informal education;
- fund a number of pilot projects involving cultural organisations
and education providers to investigate practical ways of training
artists and teachers to work in partnership;
- establish a national scheme to allow arts students to take an
intercalated year in schools as part of their first degree programme.
- The Teacher Training Agency should develop the course requirements,
standards and National Curriculum for initial teacher training ....
to promote parity between the arts, sciences and humanities in the
training of primary school teachers.
Go to the second part of this article.
Articles Indices:
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
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