Abstract
This case study explores the way that school art in England remains a marginalised subject at secondary level, despite the expansion of art-based career opportunities. A recent government document evaluating art, craft and design education highlights the potential role of head teachers in raising an art department’s profile. The current study found that school management having low expectations of the art department, together with the unimportance attached to art by parents, contribute to the continued undermining of the subject. It is proposed that leadership has a part to play in expecting the art curriculum to include effective differentiation in order to improve subject esteem and attainment without alienating less engaged students. In particular, individualised learning can ensure that academic drawing skills are taught where appropriate, enabling access to vocational degree courses.
Keywords
Introduction
In England, the teaching of art, craft and design (hereafter abbreviated to ‘art’) in schools is statutory up to age 14. Thereafter, students may opt to continue studying art for public examinations at 16 (GCSE) and at 18 (A-level). However, take-up numbers can be low compared to other subjects. The new secondary curriculum for art and design, implemented from 2008, was intended to encourage greater participation in post-compulsory art by students. GCSE criteria reflected the new flexibility by, for example, removing the necessity to paint or draw. Yet, GCSE results attest to a decline in candidate numbers year on year between 2008 and 2012 (Joint Council for Qualifications, 2012).
I have discussed previously how a perception that school art is vocationally irrelevant strongly influences the uptake of the subject (Etherington, 2008). However, the rapid expansion of the creative sector in the national economy should have the potential to dispel this notion, especially as careers education is mandatory in schools. This article is a case study that investigates the status of art at a comprehensive (i.e. state secondary with a mixed ability intake) school in the East End of London in an attempt to establish how an ‘average’ art department might be unknowingly contributing to its relatively low subject esteem.
This particular art department was selected for the study simply because I was given the opportunity to do so, having a pre-existing connection with the school in a different professional capacity. The school, which is co-educational, is located in an inner-city borough that has high levels of deprivation and child poverty. There is wide ethnic diversity among the student population of around 1000 pupils aged 11–16, of which approximately 80% have English as an additional language.
It was anticipated that the findings would point to aspects of an art department that require consistent senior management support to maintain or increase the subject’s credibility in the 21st century. Further, there may be implications for other marginalised subject areas with regard to leadership team backing.
Literature review
The report on school art by the government-driven school inspectorate, the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted, 2009), is concerned with identifying good practice, and also focuses on explanations and remedies regarding engagement with the subject. Popularity and high achievement levels for both sexes are associated with a broad range of materials being used on art courses. There is thought to be a link between the increase in fine art courses and decreasing participation due to the preference among students, particularly boys, for craft- and design-based learning. However, the latter activities tend to be more costly to a school in terms of rooming, equipment and technical support. Where resources are scarce, the art department may not be viewed at management level as a high priority in the curriculum. Currently, art departments are likely to experience cutbacks (Shepherd, 2011) rather than investment.
Ofsted (2009) is concerned to make it more widely known that studying art strengthens pupils’ prospects of working in a sector where jobs are seemingly in abundance. Some secondary schools are criticised by inspectors for the lack of information given to parents as to the vocational relevance of art, and a key finding of the report blames schools for weak or non-existent links with the creative industries.
It was the apparent de-emphasis on teaching pupils how to draw that led me to question whether school art is actually in danger of becoming less vocationally relevant, despite efforts to advertise the subject’s usefulness to an expanding sector of the job market. Powell (cited in Chapman, 2012), a principle higher education lecturer for game art design, laments the absence of basic drawing skills in the national curriculum: The scandal we face at the moment is that we have nearly 400 applicants for 40 places every year and probably 60 per cent of those students, even the ones with art A levels, can’t draw…. Drawing is not a mandatory component of the education system. That is as scandalous as if maths was taken off the curriculum or if English was not taught using grammar and sentences.
In an attempt to make art more attractive to students by removing the obligation to teach drawing, then, there exists the prospect of the subject being even less able to equip pupils with the practical knowledge needed at university and in industry than it was before.
Nevertheless, Ofsted places responsibility for explicating art’s relevance to school management, teachers, parents and pupils, and for ensuring optimum participation in the subject, on subject leaders. The implication appears to be that by merely communicating information about art’s ‘importance’ in the right way, the subject will be more valued, which ignores cultural and societal factors that impact upon the perception of school art; moreover, it is hinted that failure to accomplish this objective would be down to the subject leader’s ineffectiveness, perhaps an inappropriate blame game. On the other hand, it is also argued that senior leaders should ‘ensure high levels of participation … in the subject’ (Ofsted, 2009), and it was interesting to see the extent to which this occurs, or not, at the case-study school.
In addition to an art department’s role in raising the profile of their subject, Ofsted comments on the part that the whole school can play in promoting and valuing art. However, where departments are less successful in providing a stimulating curriculum, there are also failures at school level to challenge poor provision or understand art’s potential for school-wide development (Ofsted, 2009). This implies that the support of senior leadership is crucial to the standing and quality of school art within an educational establishment. Specifically, in Ofsted’s list of recommendations, head teachers are exhorted to enhance pupils’ experiences by ‘developing sustained partnerships between schools, creative industries, galleries and artists in the locality’ (Ofsted, 2009). It is observed that gallery trips and artists visiting the school have a beneficial effect on students’ attitudes and work, yet availability of these experiences is patchy (Ofsted, 2009). Freedman (2011), too, points to the role of leadership moving beyond mere advocacy for the art curriculum, to promoting change, improvement and innovation, as well as dispelling misconceptions regarding art’s importance to the national economy. Enquiring as to the involvement of the head teacher in relation to art in the case-study school formed part of an interview schedule.
A further question posed in my investigation related to the support given to pupils to optimise learning. Ofsted (2009) asserts that weak art teaching is associated with neglecting to use assessment to develop students’ capabilities. In particular, excessive praise is frequently utilised in place of critically evaluative feedback. In all, the preceding literature was used to evaluate provision at the case-study school, with a view to understanding why art education remains peripheral in many institutions.
Since the research took place, the issues arising from the findings have grown in national significance. In February 2013, it was announced that the English Baccalaureate Certificate, which omitted art, is to be abandoned. Furthermore, ‘It is proposed that art and design becomes one of eight subjects which together form a new performance indicator for schools’ (NSEAD, 2013a).
A draft art and design national curriculum has been published (DfE, 2013), which advocates a return to all pupils learning to paint and draw up to the end of Key Stage 3 (age 14). However, this proposal has not appeased the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD), the subject association for teachers of art, craft and design in the UK. Although the society calls for a more rigorous and challenging curriculum than that recommended by the Department for Education, the discipline of drawing has not been highlighted as part of an aspirational curriculum reform. Responding to the government’s draft document, the NSEAD argues that exclusive references to fine art practices, including drawing, should be avoided, being seen as restrictive and anachronistic rather than enabling the curriculum to look forward and reflect the breadth and industrial relevance of art in contemporary society. As such, a much wider range of techniques, including computing, should be utilised to resonate with the subject’s economic value in the 21st century. For the NSEAD, providing professional development to implement their advised reforms would be essential, necessitating funding to be allocated by central government and/or school leadership (NSEAD, 2013b).
Methodology
The research objectives, then, were to discover perceptions of GCSE art students and an art teacher within a single school that might help to explain the status of art as a curriculum subject. In doing so, the implicit, if not explicit, role of senior leadership in relation to the art department was evidenced.
The methodology used was a case study of an art department, an interpretive, primarily qualitative, approach (Cohen et al., 2011). I was an outside researcher who taught a small cohort of GCSE students there for a year (the Accelerated Learning Group (ALG)), with the result that I was able to amass field notes based on my observations of working in the department. Data were also derived through questionnaires and from one-to-one interviews, the latter method being informed by recommendations in Kvale and Brinkmann (2008). There is no claim made as to the generalisability of findings, but where they correlate with the research-based substantive literature, such findings may be applicable to other secondary schools and provide a starting point for self-evaluation of practice.
The research sample comprised ALG members Uzma, Nilofar, Rabia and Taura, who are all girls from minority ethnic families, and Calum, a boy from a white British background. An art teacher and member of the SLT, Mr P, with whom I had a pre-existing working relationship, was interviewed. All participants have been given pseudonyms and the school remains unidentifiable for ethical reasons relating to confidentiality (BERA, 2011); this practice arguably encourages frankness of response, too, thus increasing the validity of data.
Following the school-based study, I visited an exhibition featuring art department representatives from higher education establishments, with a view to discovering whether drawing still has a place on degree courses. I picked at random those I spoke to for practical reasons (they were not busy at that particular moment). However, in doing so, I reduced bias in my selection of institutions.
Findings
The following subheadings emerged from the data to provide a coherent structure for the reader. Under these themes are discussed various factors relating to the literature cited earlier.
The art department: Facilities, pedagogy and creativity
At the case-study school, the two art rooms were basic, without a water supply. On my first visit, a technician brought in a number of rusty, used tin cans containing a centimetre of water for rinsing brushes. From a perusal of coursework folders, it was evident that the generation of numerous artworks took precedence over technical competence, and written feedback or marks were conspicuously absent. Mr P, the teacher, explained that this consciously prolific approach to engaging with art had enabled the department’s GCSE results to improve from around 20% C grades to 50%, but that students did not attain grades above C.
Mr P conceded that technology facilities were ‘very minimal. We bought Macs but no one knew how to use them. They were in an art room trolley but there was no software, no printers.’ Other school computers blocked images useful to art students. Furthermore, due to lack of space, any large-scale three-dimensional work would need to be carried out at home. It was not usual for the department to exhibit students’ work in school at the end of GCSEs, again, because there was perceived to be insufficient room to do so.
Not surprisingly, when asked whether students were encouraged to use traditional drawing and painting skills, Mr P responded: ‘That’s all they’ve got.… They have terrible painting skills. The skills taught are very surface because they aren’t doing it at Key Stage 3. We focused on outcomes, not skills.’ It was acknowledged by the teacher that the ability of students to meet coursework deadlines and produce good-quality art was adversely affected by the department’s loose approach to setting homework, which tended to comprise ‘Ongoing projects and finishing off. It is not rigorously followed up if not done.’ Where homework was forthcoming, some type of assessment was either not always available to students or of limited value in facilitating progression: ‘They tell you to improve but don’t say how’ (Taura). Thus, opportunities for optimal attainment in art are constrained by limitations in facilities and pedagogy.
The ALG
The curriculum provided for the ALG included teaching practical skills. I kept in mind that good drawing was present in the examination board top grade exemplar material at a day course I attended.
A great deal of tuition was conducted by email, which enabled a high level of individualised learning, with students sending photographs of the work in progress they wished to discuss. As these were able students who did not present behavioural problems, it was evident that they had been ‘left to it’ in lessons, and were therefore unaccustomed to automatically following instructions. At first, punctuality, attendance, deadlines and listening fully to the objectives of a lesson were often treated as optional. Their new curriculum, therefore, entailed a shift in their attitudes. In addition to frequent formative assessment via email, both finished and unfinished work received written marks and/or comments. The students generally responded to the demands of a different teaching style and higher expectations good-naturedly.
None of the students reported being coerced by their regular art teacher into joining the ALG: ‘It was my idea, I wanted to be challenged. I felt that I was losing my ability by staying in a classroom where I did not receive criticism and advice on how to improve my work’ (Nilofar). Homework and deadlines were more rigorously applied than they were used to, but when I enquired whether they thought strict deadlines in art important or unnecessary, all said ‘important’, and qualified their opinions along the lines of Nilofar’s following response: ‘If there was no deadline I wouldn’t have probably never [sic] started my work’.
Everyone in the group stated that their confidence in their artistic ability increased as the course progressed, and all believed that they now had the potential to do an art-related career if they wanted to. The GCSE results for the two main Year 11 classes that year followed the previous pattern of 50% attaining grade C, but no higher. In the ALG, three were awarded A* grades and the other two students achieved B grades.
Information on art-related careers
Mr P asserted that some effort is applied by the department to explaining art’s relevance to pupils and their parents when GCSE choices are made, without much success: ‘Parents don’t understand what children can get out of art. It’s a challenge. We try to address this through PowerPoint and pamphlets with a big PR push. It doesn’t change minds – they’ve already decided. The rooms put them off.’
When being observed for performance management, the art department brought in a practising artist to work with classes to demonstrate a vocational link to the curriculum, but Mr P admitted that the focus on applied learning was only present during very occasional senior management scrutiny.
Attitudes towards art: The head teacher
In Mr P’s opinion, art is not a valued subject at the school: The attitude is ‘it brightens the place up’. The head didn’t say anything about the art show to us. He laughed at [the work of] the artist in residence. There is no opportunity to show off art in the school, only in the art department.
I taught the ALG for a year free of charge. The art department wanted me to continue the following year, but when I requested travel expenses, the head teacher declined on the grounds that it was ‘only art’. The previous (acting) head teacher had arguably betrayed a similarly dismissive attitude towards the subject when an arranged gallery trip was abandoned at short notice: ‘In Y10 a Tate Modern trip was cancelled by Dr W because it was a normal school day and we would miss lessons. We only found out on the day of the trip’ (Rabia). When it came to the status of art within the curriculum, group members felt that it was not seen as important, or even a ‘proper’ subject, by other teachers, and believed that many students and teachers thought it to be ‘easy’.
Whole school: The organisation of the curriculum and other issues
Arguably, there are aspects of the way in which the whole curriculum is organised and staffed that influence art’s standing in the school. Moreover, the school’s approach to monitoring attendance can be understood as affecting student commitment to the subject.
An example of art being treated as a less important subject is an implicit assumption that it can be taught by anyone at Key Stage 3, which is unlikely to be the case for science or mathematics, for example. Mr P thought it ‘massively’ problematic that non-specialists taught art to the younger pupils: They are not teaching any skills. There is no care of children’s learning at all. It’s perfunctory. They are forced to teach art if there are gaps in their timetable. Non-art teachers are supposed to cover observational studies for one double lesson in Key Stage 3 but the work is naive due to lack of subject knowledge.
However, although drawing might be expected at Key Stage 4, students were not actually taught how to do it then, either.
As a rule, homework for art not being structured, checked or marked reflects a school-wide inconsistency with homework setting. This is apparent from students’ responses when asked about their parents’ views on the time spent doing art homework: ‘They felt that I should be pressured by my other subject teachers to spend as much time on other subjects as I do on art’ (Uzma).
The school was reported to deal ineffectively with truancy, which had an impact on attendance to art lessons and therefore work output. Mr P estimated the attendance at art lessons to be 85% in Year 10 and 55% in Year 11. He added that this related considerably to output because students do not undertake art outside the classroom and he ‘loses sight of them’. He described the school system as ‘atrocious’. ALG students confirmed that it was easy to miss lessons at their school. According to Calum, it enables students to drop out of art by not coming to lessons.
Although not all of the preceding examples are necessarily applicable solely to art, it can be argued that they constitute an accumulation of systemic factors that subtly reinforce its marginal status as a school subject.
Beyond school: The relevance of drawing ability
From informal enquiries to higher education lecturers staffing promotional stands at the ‘Design Your Future’ exhibition for schools and colleges in December 2011, I obtained a cursory overview of drawing’s significance to those ultimately hoping to secure art-based employment. I picked at random representatives from six universities to answer my questions on drawing. All confirmed that observational studies are highly regarded by admissions tutors because they demonstrate the drawing ability required on vocational degree courses. Just being able to produce good-quality computer-based artwork is insufficient. Although not all GCSE and A-level art candidates aspire to a career in art, it is timely to ask questions as to the appropriateness of students missing out on an entitlement to learn drawing.
Discussion
It should be reiterated that mine was a small-scale study and there are no claims as to generalisability. On the other hand, many findings reflect the picture nationally, as identified in the literature, or offer explanations that may enable similar art departments to audit their practice.
Art’s peripheral status at the case-study school derived, in part, from the low expectations of students, notably, at Key Stage 4. The department did not stand out as leading good practice or inspiring students to produce exceptional work. Instead, it was one of a number of subject areas at the school in which teachers did not encourage students to attain higher than grade C, whereas in mathematics, English and science, the more able were urged to aim for A* grades. Thus, the gulf in esteem between the prestigious core subjects and others was maintained. Art staff were unable, or not inclined, to provide fully differentiated learning opportunities. Quantity was prioritised over quality, work was set rather than taught, and over-praising was arguably used to dodge formative assessment, thereby concealing teachers’ lack of confidence in their expertise. In addition to the dearth of individuality and creativity in artworks, depriving students of information on how to improve technically also limited their self-expression to a standard below the GCSE A* to B grade range. Without a firm homework policy, self-development, work output and the potential to achieve an ambitious final grade were constrained. End-of-course artwork was not normally showcased within the school. Inappropriate praise, a lack of formative assessment and uniformity of students’ work have been identified by Ofsted (2009) as serious weaknesses in provision generally.
Disadvantageous rooming and inadequate facilities notwithstanding, the industriousness, commitment and final results of the ALG demonstrated that considerably raising expectations among an enthusiastic and determined cohort of GCSE art students enhanced their motivation and enjoyment. Factors that facilitated their rapid progress included setting demanding projects with firm interim deadlines, teaching them how to draw to a competent standard and providing comprehensive formative feedback. The latter gave them confidence and optimised progress.
The whole school ethos may be difficult for a single department to confront. Ofsted (2009) stresses the importance of the head teacher’s role in supporting an art department. It was clear that the head thought art an unimportant subject, through derisory comments, non-attendance at the school’s art exhibition and reluctance to target school resources at supporting or celebrating the art department. Senior management’s decisions to designate barely adequate facilities to the department during a rebuilding programme and to routinely allocate non-specialist staff to teaching art at Key Stage 3 both underline art’s marginal position in the curriculum. It is difficult to believe that the latter would occur in the case of science or mathematics. Using GCSE art as a failsafe repository for students new to speaking English conveys the subject as lightweight and undemanding. Students being ‘permitted’ to drop out of art through poor monitoring of attendance is similarly undermining. The approach taken to conducting learning walks, that is to say, senior managers observing lessons, is to announce well in advance when they will occur and the member of staff involved, allowing the possible neglect of good practice during the remainder of the time. Homework, set inconsistently across the school, remains unmarked unless observation has been scheduled. (From my experience, GCSE art is unsuitable for a no-homework curriculum.) School management has not recognised gaps in art teachers’ expertise and, therefore, the need for professional development.
Although they found observational drawing to be an exacting discipline, the ALG could see for themselves how it helped more creative work to develop successfully. A selection of higher education tutors confirmed the importance of drawing to art- and design-related occupations. However, not having to draw should make teaching it understood as optional rather than unnecessary, and effective differentiation would ensure that students can access this learning opportunity if they wish. In order to make an appropriate choice, art students with career aspirations in the creative industries (and their teachers) need to be provided with accurate information regarding the skills required. The study shows that these schoolchildren were not helped to understand how their art education can provide skills and abilities relevant to the workplace, and did not routinely receive advice on art-related occupations.
Conclusion
The organisation of the case-study department contributes to a perception of the subject as being of little significance, a view that echoes my previous research findings (Etherington, 2008). Low expectations in terms of student attainment had the effect of further underlining its poor subject status, and the teachers had been unable to convince students or parents that art is vocationally important. The organisation of the school was revealed to be unsupportive of, even obstructive towards, art.
The head teacher, with overall responsibility for the education of her/his students, should ideally be making strategic decisions to ensure that the art curriculum is facilitated to optimal effect. This accords with Ofsted’s observations that successful secondary art departments benefit from supportive school leadership (Ofsted, 2009). Early careers education could give children more awareness of art-related occupations of interest to them, and help them to make decisions regarding any art skills they might need.
Now more than ever, with dwindling candidate numbers at GCSE and financial cutbacks, it is crucial that where an art department is mediocre, it prioritises raising its profile within the school. In order to do so, full backing of the SLT is essential.
Moreover, if the government’s recently stated intention to return to a limited range of fine art practices is realised, adept leadership will be required in maximising opportunities to raise the profile of school art without alienating those pupils for whom traditional practical skills were found to be unappealing and demotivating. Alternatively, if the NSEAD’s proposals of spring 2013 for a more varied, stimulating and relevant curriculum are implemented, it will be for the leadership team to ensure that finance is available to expedite teachers’ professional development.
This study raises questions about inequalities between core and marginal subjects in schools, and the part that may be played by the SLT in perpetuating these, which deserve further investigation.