Creative and Performing Arts Teaching Grants

My Lords, decisions on the strategic priorities grant for academic year 2026-27 reflect the challenging fiscal position and not the value we place on creative and performing arts courses. We recognise the important contribution that the disciplines make to our cultural life and economy. We have had to prioritise funding towards the highest-cost subjects and areas facing the most acute skills shortages, while protecting £57.1 million of funding for world-leading specialist providers, including 12 arts institutions.

My Lords, far from being “challenging”, as the previous Secretary of State put it, this is a disastrous decision that will further imperil higher education arts courses already under threat from closure. It is at odds with the industrial strategy’s commitment to the creative industries and the concerns of Skills England, including those skills combining creativity and new technology. Does the Minister agree that increases in tuition fees are not relevant, since that will affect all courses equally? Will the Government reconsider this decision and instead formulate a strategy which will improve access to creative subjects in higher education?

I understand the disappointment in this decision, but to be clear about the scale, we are talking about the removal of £130 per student for those taking some creative and arts subjects. That is roughly 1% of the contribution towards those subjects. A £6 billion increase in the income to higher education that comes from the decisions this Government have made about tuition fees is not insignificant; it is by far the biggest part of the funding for all higher education courses, including those in creative and performing arts.

My Lords, before I ask my question, I must apologise to the House for my inadvertent failure to declare my interest as chair of the independent inquiry into the Police Federation of England and Wales when I spoke last week in the Second Reading of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill. This interest is recorded in the register. Does the Minister agree with me that access to higher education and careers in the creative and performing arts should be open to all, regardless of wealth or social background?

Absolutely I do, which is why, in the strategic priorities grant, we have focused on at least maintaining the funding that goes towards access and participation, including for students going into creative and performing arts subjects. This is why, as a Government, as part of the support of the creative areas, we have additionally invested in, for example, a wider spread of awareness of careers in the sector. In fact, there is a £9 million UK-wide creative careers service.

My Lords, given that the creative industries are one of the country’s most productive money earners, is it not perverse to cut grants to young people hoping to bring their skills and talents to the world of work? I was recently up at the Edinburgh Fringe, where brilliant young musicians, actors and dancers often to have to fund themselves, so tight are the purse strings for funds, yet they give such pleasure. How do the Government to propose to encourage more young people into these creative industries with these cuts?

To be clear, this is not a cut of a grant to students; this is a cut of £130 per student to the institutions that run these courses. This is partly in order to safeguard, for example, the £20 million funding that goes to Uni Connect to open up opportunities to get into higher education for more young people. It goes alongside the expansion of other ways to develop skills in this area, such as higher technical qualifications, creative skills bootcamps and the lifelong learning entitlement, all of which provide support and opportunities for young people and people throughout their lives to get into the creative sector.

My Lords, universities need more teachers generally, but so do schools. The Government pledged to recruit 6,500 new teachers, but the annual school workforce census shows that there are 1,900 fewer teachers across all schools. Does the Minister agree with Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, who called it a “mockery” of the pledge?

No, because we have been clear in our pledge to recruit 6,500 more teachers that we would focus them on the areas in secondary and special schools where we are not seeing a fall in the number of pupils and where we know that there is a particular need, and there we have done so. The latest number is over 2,500 more teachers. We are delivering on our commitment to teachers and pupils.

My Lords, £76 million of capital funding from this grant has been let out to competitive bidding. The OfS prospectus, subject to separate guidelines and the guidance letter, identifies bids that relate to the creative industries nationally and locally as meeting the criteria for growth and priority skills needs. I am confused, as I am sure the universities and the industries are. Please can my noble friend the Minister clarify the situation? Does she agree that, with a new Secretary of State in DfE, it is an excellent time to reflect on the evidence base, ready for next year’s guidance?

I am sorry that I am not completely clear about the point that my noble friend is making with respect to SPG capital, which I think is what she was referring to. I will write to her about that.

My Lords, it is not all gloom and doom—I declare an interest at the University of Oxford—as there are other ways to encourage capital and money to come into creative education in our universities. I draw the Minister’s attention to the recent donation by Stephen Schwarzman to the University of Oxford, which provided £200 million for a new centre for the humanities and, within that, all sorts of performing arts spaces using the latest technology. If we can encourage business and commerce to invest here and make more money here, I know of lots of other organisations, like Bank of America and Steve Schwarzman, that would put more money into the creative industries and higher education in this country. Does the Minister support philanthropy coming into this area to help?

Yes, of course. I do. Philanthropy has always been an important way in which facilities in our universities have been supported. To help that happen, as other noble Lords have commented, we have already made the creative industries part of our industrial strategy. As a Government, we are supporting an extra £100 million of investment for the next wave of creative R&D clusters. We are supporting the arts through additional money to Arts England, and we are making sure that there is a pipeline of young people coming into the sector as well. Given the enthusiasm that there always is in this House for the creative industries and the arts, which I know is reflected out in the country, I hope that where people have the money to contribute to higher education and other areas of education, they will consider doing so.

My Lords, the reason that I was able to retrain as a design and technology teacher is that I have a graphic design degree. There is evidence that universities are already reducing their creative courses. How are we going to get the new generation of people with the subject knowledge to teach these badly needed courses that are part of the new national curriculum if nobody has the subject knowledge?

As I have said previously, I am very glad that the noble Lord has a degree and was able to train as a teacher. I am not quite sure when that happened, but I suspect that the availability of a bursary was probably as important as his first degree. It is by investing in our teachers through pay awards and bursaries for shortage subjects, and because of the success that we are having in retaining more of them in the classroom, that we are seeing more teachers in all areas of the curriculum, including the creative areas.

My Lords, is my noble friend looking forward, as I am, to the freeing up of the curriculum, so that there can be much more drama and other creative subjects in the secondary phase? This will ensure that we have enough students to continue the very good place in which the creative industries are at the moment.

Yes. That was absolutely a theme in the commissioning of the Curriculum and Assessment Review. We are already making changes to the curriculum, as my noble friend says, to ensure that the breadth, enrichment and value of creative subjects are reflected both across the curriculum and in the wider enrichment opportunities that we want all schools to offer to their pupils.