Opinion with John Rainer

Recently, a number of disturbing press announcements of cuts to university arts courses have appeared in the UK media. A typical example is Wolverhampton University, which plans to cut 138 courses, including many Drama and theatre programmes.

The University and College Union (UCU) described the cuts as ‘a crude attack upon the arts…which is becoming endemic across the sector.’

This attack has already been acutely felt in the state school sector, where the marginalisation of the arts which followed the introduction of Ebacc in 2010 sent the number of students studying Drama – and of Drama teachers in UK schools – spiralling downward. Reductions in Drama applications to university courses are actually the follow-through of many years of anti-Drama propaganda and policy: given the 43 per cent reduction in the number of young people studying Drama to A Level, it is perhaps unsurprising that fewer of them are now seeking careers in the subject.