Chair of National Drama - an association for drama teachers - Geoffrey Readman highlighted a variety of issues facing drama in schools at the House of Lords Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee on 11 May.
Readman says that few subjects have been ‘so consistently undervalued’ as drama, and that the subject has been ‘consistently marginalised by government policy’ since 2010.
He added that the ‘unfair’ hierarchy of subjects in schools and too music focus on assessments have had a ‘disastrous’ impact on drama in education.
Readman evidenced that the decline in the number of students taking arts subjects has been largely due to the introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) - a performance measure for schools that does not include drama and music - and changes to GCSEs in 2016 that introduced written work as the dominant method of assessment.
‘National Drama is deeply concerned that the secondary curriculum is assessment driven at the expense of high-quality process and pedagogy,’ he stated.
Citing a reduction of 36% in GCSE drama entries and a reduction in drama teachers of 18% between 2010 and 2020, he said these issues were contributing to drama becoming more exclusive, with children at fee-paying schools increasingly having better access to theater education.