Arts advocacy organisation Public Campaign for the Arts has launched a petition ahead of this year’s spending review, calling on Rishi Sunak to follow through on the pledged ‘arts premium’ for UK secondary schools.
Earlier this academic year, it was revealed that the additional funding promised by the Conservative government is ‘now subject to this year’s spending review’. The written response was given by former schools minister Nick Gibb.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is currently undertaking the spending review, which will conclude on 27 October.
The additional funding for arts subjects, like music, was promised by the Conservative government in their 2019 manifesto, and in the 2020 Budget.
Through a petition, Public Campaign for the Arts is calling on Sunak to ‘keep the government’s manifesto promise’ of an arts premium of ‘at least £90 million a year’ to secondary schools and distribute this as soon as possible.
As well as the premium for arts in schools, the petition calls for the £500m Youth Investment Fund pledged in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to be delivered, in order to support youth centres and services, including extra-curricular arts activities.
More generally, the campaign advocates for increased investment in the arts on a national level, so that ‘everybody can benefit from high-quality arts and cultural services in their local community at this crucial time of recovery’.
Commenting on Gibb’s answer given on 9 September, ISM chief executive Deborah Annetts said: ‘Creative education enriches the lives and learning of students, but all too often schools don’t have access to sufficient funding to be able to deliver high-quality education in subjects such as music.
‘The arts premium would have gone some way to address this imbalance and there will be students who miss out because of it. That no official statement was made on the premium, despite it being a manifesto and budget commitment is sadly another example of the disregard shown by the Department for Education towards creative subjects in recent years.’
MT contacted the DfE for a further statement, but a spokesperson said that their response was ‘the same as minister Gibb’s in this instance as he represents the Department for Education in this area’.
Find the petition here.
