Britain has long punched above its weight creatively. We export actors, musicians, writers, designers, game developers, theatre and film-makers with astonishing regularity. Our West End is world-leading, British film studios attract Hollywood blockbusters and our musicians dominate global charts. Creative industries contribute over £125bn a year to the UK economy and employ more than two million people. Yet, this past week’s GCSE results reveal we now treat the arts in schools as an optional extra.
It is a strange contradiction. We celebrate our cultural success while dismantling the pipeline that made it possible. Since 2010, GCSE entries in arts subjects have fallen by around 50 per cent. Meanwhile, the number of A-level Music pupils has halved over the past 15 years, with warnings that the subject may disappear from many state schools. That should alarm anyone who cares about Britain’s future, not just those who happen to like opera or painting.
Of course, money matters. I taught in a new-build state school that could not even afford a library – or, rather, a librarian. Schools cannot teach music without instruments, drama without performance spaces or art without materials – and most importantly, subject teachers. Years of squeezed budgets have inevitably hit subjects viewed as luxuries rather than educational necessities. The gap between state and independent schools is particularly stark here in music, where private schools remain much more likely to offer orchestras, choirs, specialist tuition and qualifications than their state counterparts.
But funding alone will not solve the problem. We require a change in mindset after years of relentless STEM evangelism. Nobody sensible disputes that science, technology, engineering and maths matter enormously. The mistake has been presenting them as the only reliable route to a secure future, while implying that the arts are somehow indulgent, niche or economically irrelevant. That simply no longer reflects the world our children enter.
There are very few guaranteed career paths today. Accountancy is changing because of artificial intelligence; so is law, software engineering, financial services, etc. The idea that choosing a particular GCSE at 14 guarantees employment at 30 is anachronistic (with notable exceptions).
Instead, let young people pursue something that genuinely excites them, because passion breeds commitment, resilience and, often, excellence – as my school’s English A-level results attest annually. Careers increasingly emerge from combinations of skills rather than rigid subject tracks.
And, let’s dispense with the lazy assumption that the arts are a minority pursuit. I write this column from Verona, where thousands of people gather most summer evenings in the city’s ancient Roman arena to watch opera under the stars at affordable prices. That’s 400,000+ in the season. It is a reminder that great art, when properly valued, becomes part of everyday civic life rather than an elite pastime.
Britain already knows this. Yes, our theatre, television, film, music and design industries are globally admired, but they do not flourish by accident. They depend on children first picking up a paintbrush, learning an instrument or standing on a stage, discovering that creativity is something they can do, not merely consume.
If we allow arts education to wither, future generations will produce fewer playwrights, composers, designers and filmmakers. We cannot then complain when creative industries begin looking elsewhere for talent. The arts are an economic growth opportunity and one of Britain’s greatest competitive advantages. Sadly, we seem determined to diminish this.
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