Schools becoming cultural deserts

What kind of education you get - and the chance to participate in music, film, theatre and other forms of culture – is more than ever dependent on your parents’ status and income, how aggressive they are in getting you into a well-resourced school, if they can afford extra tuition and where you live.

Middle class and wealthy parents offset poor provision in many state schools by moving to other areas, sending their children to fee-paying schools or paying for  private tuition. But these options are difficult or impossible for those on lower incomes, those whose benefits are being slashed and those living outside urban centres.

Above all, children’s access to culture is most affected by inequality, as Action for Children’s Arts (ACA) reveals. Using information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the charity discovered that, while children under 12 years make up 15% of the population, “their share of the available public funding for the arts is rarely more than 1%”.

ACA found that the BBC’s budget for children’s programmes has fallen in comparison with five years ago and less than 1% of it is spent on original programmes made in the UK. It rightly argues for the central place of the arts in children’s learning, drawing on the 84-page Darren Henley review, commissioned by the government and published at the end of April.

But, while Henley extols the virtues of “cultural education” and calls for support and funding for various initiatives especially for talented students, he recommends increased backing from philanthropists and royal patronage. The review includes a ghastly proposal for “Downing Street cultural education medals” to be awarded to talented young people.

The reality is of course that cultural poverty is inseparable from economic poverty, as actor Michael Sheen pointed out, supporting the launch of the Children’s Cultural Poverty Forum in Wales: “It is mind-blowing to me, but in Wales 32% of children live in poverty.” He fears that many British schoolchildren no longer have a way of discovering culture. “My old school does not have a drama department. Anymore,” he said.

Promoting the well-being of children and those in education does mean exactly what ACA says, when it calls for “making theatre, music and dance affordable for families and schools”.

A recent inquiry into the difficulties of growing up in today’s world conducted by the Children’s Society concluded that “the aggressive pursuit of personal success by adults is now the greatest threat to British children”. But its recommendations have been lost to the winds of intensified commercialism, economic crisis and public spending cuts. 

Last year, the Mothers’ Union pointed to the cynical exploitation of children by market forces: “Childhood has become a marketing opportunity worth £99 billion in the UK and £350 million is spent in the UK each year on persuading children to consume.  Manipulative techniques exploit children’s natural credulity and use them as a conduit to the household purse.”

The brutally competitive nature of education with its emphasis on personal achievement - together with unequal access to culture  - is a blight on those growing up today. And it’s going to get worse under education secretary Michael Gove’s proposal to reintroduce a two-tier system of education. He plans to abolish GCSE’s and re-introduce O-levels – which would re-introduce dividing pupils into more and less academically capable streams.

Access to education and culture should be a right and not a privilege. Neither a big state nor Cameron’s Big Society are the answer. Tackling cultural inequality at its very heart requires a transfer of ownership and power away from the 1% to the 99%

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Students show the way

The first National Assembly for Education has adopted a strategy to broaden and deepen the student movement against cuts and fees, to take it to workers and the population at large and for the development of people’s assemblies.

The gathering, called by students from occupations around the country who met on December 14, was held the day after 2011’s first protest marches against the Coalition government. The National Assembly came out of the massive wave of student protests during November and December last year, which saw occupations in fifty universities and colleges which became organising hubs.

Students who felt betrayed by the right-wing leadership of the National Union of Students leadership under Aaron Porter, created the London Assembly, itself a new phenomenon in the history of the British student movement.

In a historic decision, and against some opposition, the December 14 meeting voted to make the national assembly inclusive, embracing not only students and education workers but that it should be open to all to participate and vote. The aim of yesterday’s assembly was to develop a strategy to “take our movement forward to victory”.

Yesterday's meeting brought together students from London's Institute of Education, Birkbeck, LSE, University College, Manchester, Kent, and Stirling universities, sixth form colleges, with trade unionists from UCU and political activists. Held under the banner of the London School of Economics Student Union, yesterday’s meeting first heard Camden Town sixth-form college student, Ruby Hirsch. She appealed for students to unite with workers and said events in Tunisia proved that it was possible to overthrow a dictatorship which had been in power for so many years.

Jim Wolfrey, of University and College Union (UCU), called for the TUC’s March 26 demonstration to become “our day of anger”, referring to the Egyptian revolutionary movement. No government could stand in the way. UCU is balloting this week for strike action in defence of jobs and education, he said.

Student activist Ben Beach, from University College, said the aim was to use occupations as a hub to go out to thousands of students: “We have turned a right-wing university into a left-wing one, using consensus decision making and an autonomous system”. Support had flowed in from workers in the college and from around the world. Labour leader Ed Miliband was “neither socialist or red, and would not provide a solution to the cuts crisis”, Beach noted.

The hundred-plus students, education workers and political activists responded enthusiastically to accounts by participants in the revolutionary events in Tunisia and Egypt. Mohammed Inab said that the Tunisian government could not be reformed. His father, a 63-year-old primary school teacher, now headed a local people’s defence committee which organised barricades to safeguard security. Remnants of Ben Ali’s presidential guard had tried to stage a counter-coup against the people’s uprising, moving hundreds of cars full of weapons and bombs to create a provocation. The barricades had stopped the transport, co-ordinating their actions live on national television.

Wasim X told the meeting that the Egyptian movement was inspired by the way students had taken Saturday’s protest to the Egyptian embassy in London and made it “almost an internal affair”. In Britain and Egypt alike, those attacking living standards are the same ones who are deaf to the voice of the people, he said.

Mark Barrett spoke in favour of building inclusive People’s Assemblies to unite students, education workers, trade unionists, community groups and all those resisting austerity and ConDem cuts, as well as climate change activists, campaigners for human rights, migrant support networks and anti-racist groups.

The aim was to develop an alternative democratic voice and long-term presence to effectively challenge corporate/financial power and its grip on the existing political system. He called for assemblies, to unite resistance to the cuts but also to build a bottom-up, long term movement in response. The national assembly supported these aims plus a proposal for city-wide assemblies to be formed.

The assembly also supported calls for a general strike and the defence of victimised students on a day when police used CS gas on tax avoidance protesters. All in all, it was a major step forward, not only for students but for the struggle against the Coalition government as a whole.


Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary