School drama doesn’t need GCSEs – or Ebaccs, for that matter

Listening skills are part of the National Curriculum for English at all levels. Teachers have to find ways of getting children and teenagers into the habit of listening attentively to the spoken word. It must be very hard for them because few teachers seem to be able to listen themselves.

As soon as Education Secretary, Michael Gove speaks, most of the education establishment is so busy automatically loathing him and finding fault with his every word that they forget to listen to what he is actually saying – a very worrying example from the nation’s educators.

This week Gove, carefully flanked by Nick Clegg for political expediency, announced the replacement of GCSE with English Baccalaureate Certificates (EBC) initially in Maths, English and Sciences.

Cue for unthinking howls of outrage about ‘unfairness’ and being backward looking – especially from teachers involved with the performing arts who think their life’s work has been airbrushed out of existence because it isn’t regarded as a core subject.

Now, performing arts and education in them is something I deal with all the time as Education and Training Editor of The Stage. And I don’t think these changes will affect them much at all. It could even be the making of them. Here’s why.

First, we all want all students – and of course that includes those who will go on to study the performing arts vocationally – to be as well-educated as possible.

Someone who wants to be, say, an actor, but who cannot read fast, fluently and critically is likely to have serious difficulties in making progress. He or she needs to be a numerate and a scientifically literate problem solver too.

GCSEs are no longer – and perhaps never have been – fit for purpose. And I feel very sorry for the millions of young people who have dutifully laboured to leap through its spurious hurdles since 1988 when it replaced O levels and CSEs.  So I welcome the prospect of the EBC with its promise of ‘proper’ end-of-course exams which ask unpredictable questions and require reasoned, essay style answers – without the ambiguous, so easily abused, distraction of coursework. Each subject is to be set by a single examining body too so that’s good news.

Second, in the first instance, the proposal is to continue GCSE alongside EBC for subjects beyond English, Maths and Science. This means that subjects such as history, geography and languages will probably be phased in gradually.

But drama, dance and music will not. And quite right too. You can’t assess these subjects through a three hour silent exam as you can maths, chemistry or English.

Music or drama need to be taught by building up practical skills in regular sessions over a long period of time. You don’t learn to play the trombone or to dance and sing like Summer Strallen by sitting in classrooms and taking long written exams.

Many secondary and other schools do a very good job with teaching performance subjects but they don’t need the status of the EBC label to ensure that they thrive in schools.  I’m not even sure that they need to be examined, in the strict sense, at all.

These subjects (and PE) require a completely different sort of assessment system based on continuous monitoring and recording of achievement leading to some sort of accreditation certificate.

This does not, in my view, make them second class subjects – as some defensive teachers will immediately allege. It simply means they are different. You simply cannot – and I taught in secondary schools for decades – lump all school subjects together and treat them as though they are all identical. Subjects are like children – all different and each with their own individual needs.

Most head teachers are well aware of the value of performing arts subjects. At the most basic level even the most philistine head is aware of the transformational effect of the arts on other learning.

Fortunately the vast majority of heads also value the arts for the breadth they bring to children’s lives. Neither is there a head in the land who doesn’t want a good school play or concert to impress his or her governors and visitors and few are daft enough to think that any of that can happen without systematic teaching within the curriculum. So I’m confident that arts subjects will continue to be supported in schools as a crucial part of the curriculum.

I contend, in fact, that taking drama and other comparable subjects out of the GCSE factory could actually free teachers to teach them more flexibly and better than they can at present. But GCSE drama, music and dance are set to continue for some years yet.

And that’s my third reason for thinking that the alarm bells are premature. Gove’s announcement is a proposal – not an edict.  The document is now “out for consultation”- which means many interested people will chew and comment on it and, as these things always are, it will be watered down.

Look at the timing, moreover. The plan is that students taking the first EBC exams will do so in summer 2017 – the ones who start their exam courses at the beginning of Year 10 in 2015. They’re aged 11 and 12 now and have only just arrived at secondary school. It’s all a long way down the line.

There will be a General Election in 2015 – if not before – and a change of government could mean another dramatic change, although I hope, really hope, that MPs might agree, irrespective of party, that education is in a dreadful mess and it needs drastic action to get it back on track.

I also hope – although probably in vain – that teachers start listening and thinking before churning out their politically motivated auto-pilot comments.

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• http://www.facebook.com/ziby.cherry.philips Ziby Philips

  The 3 Rs – Reading, Writing and Arithmetics. The fiundation of learning.

  I specialise in Education Management. The Government has to be a glasshouse…transparent first and foremost. You need to be free of nepotism, favouritism and greed and lesrn from leading individuals of the Commonwealth.

  Even I can give you better holistic advice on the way forward. Discrimination on any prejudice is not the way forward.

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• uanime5

  Expect art, drama, music, and dance to be considered subjects for thickos because they don’t have an EBC. Also expect schools to force the inept children into these subjects so that their EBC league table isn’t affected.

• Grammar Nazi #56

  Wow, Education Management, think you should have a look at managing your typing and spelling skills.

• GwendolenMeiMeiWilliams

  I disagree. Drama, music and dance are already seen as “soft subjects”. My own school, whilst building an impressive theatre and putting on excellent performances, relied on large numbers of pupils receiving music and drama lessons outside school. The teaching of these subjects within the school was appalling. My first year at the school, we spent an entire term watching films as the drama teacher was on maternity leave and the expensive grammar school already regarding a subject with a low GCSE uptake rate and high grades guaranteed by the few who selected it, due to their outside exposure, as completely unimportant. This new move will make schools with this attitude take an even lower view of the subject. For somebody like me, who once aspired to be a professional actress, this attitude can ruin dreams.

• Pacificweather

  It would definitely be better to remove music and drama so that pupils are free to enjoy them without the pressure on teachers produced by league tables.

• HairyScot

  The point that is always missed is the endless interference by politicians in education. It has to stop. Let the educators come up with a programme that meets the purpose that society asks them to meet, just for a change?

• porkfright

  The Arts? Tories? Might as well trust Herod Antipas with childcare.

• scotsgal

  Surely if we get the 3 R’s right in primary school when those children reach high school they will be better prepared for the final exams? As far as I can see we are failing these children as soon as they enter the education system and constantly moving the goal posts will not fix their abilities in the final years.

• scotsgal

  Its a typo the k and l are next to each other.

• sweetalkinguy

  In the case of Summer Strallen, surely genetics played a leading role.