Is the curriculum stifling pupils' love of the arts?

This article was first published by TES on 24th October 2019

After a trip east, I fear creative pursuits are being side-lined despite the bold aims of curricular reform

I was in Russia on holiday recently and visited the theatre in St Petersburg. I was struck by the superb sightlines, the groups of young people on guided tours and the wide age range of the audience members, all of whom were engaged in the performance – with tickets priced at levels that made this more likely.

The floor was a joyous sight, with young children running around and having fun before curtain-up. They paid close attention during Mozart’s The Magic Flute and chatted excitedly at the end. I don’t speak or read Russian, but 40-plus years of teaching and parenting means I can read faces, and they were certainly avidly discussing the performance.

The whole experience got me thinking about what we were doing back home to encourage a love of live music, theatre and the arts.

There has been a great deal of coverage of the instrumental music tuition postcode lottery in Scotland, particularly with the recent inquiry by the Scottish Parliament's Education and Skills Committee. And local and international evidence shows the benefits of the arts for language and literacy skills, numeracy, intellectual development, general attainment, creativity and personal and social development.

My big question is this: why hasn’t Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) resulted in our children and young people, with all their advantages, being more like the ones I described above – enlightened, freer, excited, apparently more civilised?

All the way back in 2002, we had a national conversation that resulted in a desire for a new way, with CfE seen as the vehicle to get us there. 

We set out on a road to encourage holistic approaches, to encourage creativity in teaching and learning in order to develop citizens – not just workers – for the 21st century.  And civilised society needs an understanding and appreciation of the arts; we need the arts to express our individuality, creativity and feeling, whether that’s through dancing, music, literature, acting, drawing or painting.

Is CfE stifling this? Here we are, 17 years on, and we are bogged down in structures, benchmarks, Es and Os (experiences and outcomes) aplenty and standardised assessments.  It all got too complicated, bureaucratic and focused on knowledge, with exam results as the only means of measuring success.

A curriculum cannot be static, it needs to evolve. There have been calls for "CfE 2.0", and I think the time is right for a proper review – because what we really need is not a curriculum for excellence, but a curriculum for enlightenment.

Isabelle Boyd