Creative Education in Scotland Review 2021
Culture Counts published this Creative Education in Scotland Review 2021 in January 2021. Read the review below or download the PDF version here.
Introduction
Since the publication of the Scottish Government’s Education and the Arts, Culture and Creativity Action Plan in 2010 and the Creative Learning Plan 3 years later, awareness and momentum around the inclusion of arts and culture education in the curriculum has slowly grown. However, we feel the commitment of the Scottish Government to more consistent inclusion of creative learning in the implementation of curriculum can be strengthened.
The Independent Review of Curriculum for Excellence by OECD is an opportunity to look at the current state of culture in the curriculum against the aims of Scotland’s Culture Strategy, Creative Learning Plan, Programme for Government and a myriad of other culture linked strategies.
Alongside the curriculum review, the lasting impacts on the wellbeing of students, teachers and families of the pandemic shines a light on unique cross-cutting benefits of centering creative education in the curriculum. The review also opens up space to revisit resourcing the Scottish Government gives to support infrastructures needed to embed creative learning, especially when held up against newly promised resources for our sister curriculum area of technology.
A country that values culture recognises the role culture plays in building confidence and resilience, contributes to wellbeing, supports the development of entrepreneurs and helps students reach educational attainment. We feel there are several areas of opportunity to move toward the commitment to, ‘Place culture as a central consideration across all policy areas including: health and wellbeing, economy, education, reducing inequality and realising a greener and more innovative future.’
Centre creative learning in all schools
There is a disparity across local authorities in the priority they give to cultural learning experiences. An unstructured national landscape of strategies, short term funding, short life programmes and lightly resourced infrastructural support for schools’ expressive arts curriculum contributes to the varied weight local authorities give to creative learning.
Adopting a more structured approach to supporting creative learning, which builds on and connects existing initiatives and streamlines funding to leverage the existing infrastructure would give something consistent for local authorities to anchor to.
Scotland’s Creative Learning Plan is now 7 years old and, despite the existence of Creative Learning Networks in each local authority and an ongoing series of support schemes, the influence of these things on school curriculum overall isn’t commensurate with the place culture holds in writing in the nation’s policy landscape.
Where schools do access funding or networks through which to bring in support from artists and creatives, they face cycles of pilots, case studies and disappearing funds attached to predetermined criteria and outcomes that may be misaligned to their local needs. This landscape risks reinforcing extrinsic motivations for including creative learning, for example seeking funding or meeting expressive arts experiences and outcomes metrics. Moving to meet Culture Strategy aims to the intrinsically motivated weaving of culture into everyday life requires more coherent, consistent, long term and cross-sector reinforcement from central to local government.
Honour creative education's role in emotional wellbeing
The role of creative education in wellbeing is well documented and it is one of the many reasons culture features in various government policies. Catalogues of case studies illustrate the benefits of creative learning to emotional wellbeing, not just for students but for teachers as well. Pandemic and post-pandemic periods in schools bring new challenges as well as exacerbate existing challenges for the wellbeing of students, teachers and families.
Scotland’s creative practitioners have an important role to play in the delivery of curriculum in continued lockdowns as well as in post-Covid recovery. There’s hardly a better time to leverage the knowledge, experience and expertise of people in the creative sector to help people heal from collective trauma.
In an effort to equalise access between students from different economic backgrounds, arts and funded projects tend to focus on supporting ‘at risk’ or ‘disadvantaged’ young people who may not have as much access to cultural activity as some of their peers. While the pandemic has exacerbated health inequalities in already marginalised groups, it has also exposed more privileged families to hardships they may have otherwise been shielded from because of their socioeconomic status. Artists and creative educators can provide much needed support to schools dealing with adjusting to a new normal, helping students navigate change, helping students understand and express their feelings, and thinking more creatively about new ways of learning.
There is a rich seam of arts educators available to schools, if schools know where they are and how to engage with them.
Acknowledge interdependencies of arts, culture and technology in the cirriculum
The August 2020 Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review (‘the Logan Review’), commissioned by the Scottish Government, was celebrated for its suggestions for radical interventions in the education system, including that computer science should become a core subject.
The government enthusiastically accepted all of the Logan Review’s criticisms and proposals (along with a £4 million kick off fund), which, at a school level, have a lot of parallels with creative learning. Technology is the creative sector’s sister industry and both are insecurely resourced and underpinned by central government backing. With the incoming Logan recommendations being implemented, there are opportunities to bolster creative learning by linking it closer to the elevation of computer science in future curriculum plans.
There are clear practical benefits to more integrated arts, culture and technology in the curriculum. For example, visual art, music and design thinking all have a place in supporting technology product development and business development. But less often recognised are skills like emotional resilience, creative problem solving, and whole systems approaches that form the backbone of sustainable, more inclusive entrepreneurship and businesses growth.
The role education plays in developing workforces and economic growth is important, however, an imbalance of growth to wellbeing risks counterproductive outcomes. An out of proportion focus on growth also risks reinforcing the gender, race, age, environmental and other injustices we see in massive growth tech ecosystems in other countries.
Opportunities
Every local authority could have a cultural plan; which schools use as a jumping off point for their own cultural plans. Local authority cultural plans could be developed and supported through existing Creative Learning Networks, thus strengthening relationships between schools and local artists and creatives. School cultural plans could be agreed in collaboration with parent councils, allowing parents and Head Teachers to support each other to bring culture into schools and into homes.
Streamline and extend opportunities offered through the current landscape of short life funding, programmes and pilots. Move the rhetoric of creative strategies to a level of commitment that meaningfully demonstrates that creative learning is valued. Give local authorities and schools the security of long term partnerships and support to help them fully integrate creative learning into the whole of school curriculum.
Elevate the roles of Creative Learning Networks and give them protected time, space, people and funding to further develop relationships between schools and local creative communities, in line with schools’ individual cultural plans.
Devolve some Creative Learning Fund responsibilities to local Creative Learning Networks and relax predetermined funding criteria to allow flexibility for local needs.
Innovation is not always about making new things, but instead building on what is already there. Existing cultural networks could be brought together with new and emerging tech networks stemming from the Logan Review for cross-pollination, peer support and working together in schools.
There are symbiotic relationships between creative industry and tech in building capability in each other, complementing skill sets, complementing approaches and doing business together. By introducing young people early on to art, culture and technology as naturally interdisciplinary subjects, we can increase the opportunities for sustainable businesses that temper growth with wellbeing.
Bibliography
‘A Culture Strategy for Scotland’. The Scottish Government. Accessed October 30, 2020.
‘Creativity 3-18 curriculum review (impact report).’ Education Scotland. Accessed 30 October, 2020.
Creative Scotland. Scotland’s Creative Learning Plan. Edinburgh: Creative Scotland, 2013.
Education Scotland. How good is our school? HGIOS 4. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2015.
Education Scotland. Creativity across Learning 3-18. Edinburgh: Education Scotland, 2013.
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