Head teacher fighting the cause for ‘under-valued’ arts subjects
By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter
The headmaster of a school rated ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted has welcomed Government plans to bolster the arts curriculum, having kept a focus on art and drama while others were cutting back.
Paul Stubbings, who leads the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School (CVMS) in Holland Park, said the ‘downgrading’ of arts subjects had been harmful for state schools.
Mr Stubbings, who has been headmaster of the multi-award winning secondary school for 13 years, said the introduction of the English Baccalaureate, also known as EBacc, by the previous government, resulted in ‘distortions’ in pupils’ education.
He said the scheme prioritised traditional subjects like maths, science and geography over the arts. He said: “The intended consequence was to jumpstart schools into assuring that they would offer this suite of subjects, which sounds fine, but because this emerged from the thinking of a very small circle, you got distortions.”
He said subjects like sociology, arts and music were left ‘literally nowhere’ with many state schools forced to scale down the subjects because they were no longer able to afford running them. Mr Stubbings said: “You are not going to prepare citizens for the 2020s by creating a fantasy of the grammar schools of the 1950s.”
He said offering students the arts was a way of building a ‘whole person’, a point picked up by Ofsted inspectors during a visit in 2021. Their report found the school emphasised creative subjects like art and music which helped children thrive.
The school, a Roman Catholic comprehensive with a mixed sixth form, holds yearly art exhibitions and has carried out excursions to museums in New York and Paris.
In 2018, CVMS was named Comprehensive School of the Year by The Sunday Times Schools Guide.
For Mr Stubbings said: “Art is a universal human language which crosses cultures and a deeper understanding of art, therefore, entails a deeper understanding of other cultures and indeed the nature of human communication and therefore it deepens and broadens the development of the person. That applies to music, that applies to art, that applies to drama.”
He backed Lisa Nandy’s curriculum review which the government said was aimed at putting subjects like music, art and drama back in at the heart of learning, saying: “It’s a sign of a vibrant, developing, growing culture and the more that the arts are upgraded in the national discourse, the greater the priority, and that trickles down into schools and the deeper and more educative the work we do in those schools will be as a consequence.”
He added: “Our mission is for the formation of the whole person, intellect, heart, will, character, and soul… And you cannot form the whole person without the arts. You simply cannot.”
A Department of Education spokesman said: “We are committed to ensuring art, music and drama are no longer the preserve of a privileged few.
“The curriculum and assessment review has been asked to advise on how we deliver a broader curriculum, so that children and young people do not miss out on subjects such as music, art, sport and drama.”
Pictured top: Paul Stubbings (Picture: CVMS/Tim Anderson)