Britain Wants World-Class Artists Without Letting Ordinary Children Touch the Instruments
Britain loves the arts. We know this because politicians keep saying so, usually while standing beneath flattering stage lights at an awards ceremony funded by somebody else. We love the prestige, the sold-out concerts, the West End marquees, the television exports, the festival crowds and the comforting belief that this small island remains a cultural superpower. What we appear to love considerably less is the untidy, expensive business of allowing ordinary children to become artists in the first place. That is what I took from The Guardian’s editorial on the decline of music and drama education in English state schools. The figures are grim enough to sound like satire written by an education department with a particularly dark sense of humor. Fewer than 5,000 students now take A-level music, almost half the number who did 15 years ago. A-level drama entries have nearly halved in a decade. Forty percent of state schools no longer offer either subject at GCSE. We have not merely allow...
