A new report from the Commission on the Future of Oracy Education in England claims that oracy should be placed more centrally into the experience of all young people in their journey through education.
The number of students taking arts subjects at GCSE has declined by 47 per cent since 2010. According to the Commission on the Future of Oracy Education in England, children in the most economically advantaged areas are twice as likely to play music or engage in performing arts outside of school as their least advantaged peers. Only 16 per cent of people who professionally enter the arts industry are from working class backgrounds – unsurprising, given that Eton continues to have three staffed theatres and produces 20 productions a year. But you already knew that, didn't you?
And I bet you already know that the arts are good for us. That, according to the Arts Council England's 2014 report, kids who take part in arts subjects are 20 per cent more likely to vote, twice as likely to volunteer and 60 per cent more likely to report good health.
I'm a co-director of the theatre company LUNG and, probably just like you, we think every child should have the right to sustained and valued arts provision in school. In the 10 years we've been running we've been constantly banging that drum and shouting to the beat – the arts are good for us; the arts matter.
But we, like you I bet, have become completely exhausted. We've been saying it and saying it and it feels like no matter how much or how loudly, it's just not being heard. Why is nobody listening? Is it maybe because actually, they all already know?
When Gove was turning schools into businesses, or when Sunak was leading the fight for STEM (science, technology, English and Maths), or when arts venues were deciding to discontinue their schools projects, it wasn't because they thought the arts didn't matter. The people making the harshest decisions to strip back arts provisions in schools are also the people paying for their children's ballet lessons and the people with membership to the Royal Academy.
State schools now have no option but to serve the system rather than serve the child. And now we need Government-commissioned reports (like the Oracy report in October) to remind us that things being made by the education-machine, the products that pop out at the end of the factory-line, are literal human beings.
So at LUNG we're going to stop making the case: the arts matter. We already know that, don't we. Instead, we'll be banging the drum and chanting to the beat: people matter. People matter. And even, when it comes to schools and the curriculum: people are here.