9 Thirty-one teachers (seven male, 24 female) were recruited for focus groups in four LEAs (Glasgow City, East Dunbartonshire, North Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire) through council arts and education officers, snowballing and 'cold calling'. They took part in six focus group discussions held at Glasgow Caledonian University between September and November 2004. Two of these groups comprised 12 primary teachers and one primary head teacher; another two comprised seven secondary teachers and a secondary deputy head. The two remaining groups comprised five head or deputy head teachers of primary schools and five teachers from SEN schools respectively. All participants agreed to attend as volunteers. A full explanation of the purpose of the study and ground rules regarding confidentiality was given at the start of each focus group, and consent sought from each participant ( see Appendix B).
Primary SchoolsTeaching the arts
11 The groups discussed what was required of a teacher of expressive arts; they discussed how comfortable they felt with different subjects within the arts, and 'trading' of subjects between teachers with different preferences; teaching resources; and training in arts teaching. A recurring theme was debate over whether arts teaching should be provided by a specialist or a general teacher.
12 A major concern for teachers was whether they saw themselves as someone who could 'do' art, music, drama or dance. Teaching in the arts was seen to be best delivered by someone interested in the arts, knowledgeable or skilful in the subject, and confident:
…it does show when you feel confident with it, then the children produce, I think, better work. Cause you feel like you know what you're talking about eh?
13 However, many participants reported that they or their colleagues felt intimidated or under-experienced in one or more arts subjects. For example, the technical demands of music or the performance aspect of drama and dance might be off-putting; for others with musical training or an enthusiasm for drama, the feeling that they 'couldn't draw' was a major disincentive to teaching visual art:
…I dread art lessons, I'm not artistic in the slightest, and I dread, you know the … 5-14 package and your primary 6, you're looking at level D and you're thinking: 'oh no how am I going to do that'?
14 Elsewhere, however, it was argued that a teacher did not necessarily have to be able to draw to teach art:
T4: I mean I can teach some art but I'm I can't draw a line with a ruler, know a straight line or that….
T2: Yes but I would argue to teach art you don't really need to be able to draw.
T4: No aye exactly, now I think it maybe a wee bit different in music and so on, but I think if if people had like the structure, what with the wee bits of thinking and the wee bits of extension you could do
15 It was acknowledged that a teacher without a vocation or background in a subject area could deliver that part of the curriculum, through training in basic skills and the availability of a framework or structure to follow.
T4: Yeah it's using the resources as in art and design to a degree: how to use a paintbrush… Teachers can't teach children how to use a paint brush if they don't really know a lot about paintbrushes. But you can make a lesson…
T3: I mean well that's true…
T1: …you can make a lesson out of it.
16 Three themes emerged in relation to these ideas of teachers' attitudes to their subjects. Resources for teachers were seen as particularly important where teachers did not feel authoritative in an arts subject. Available materials such as the Borders Arts pack or 5-14 Strathclyde pack for Drama were mentioned approvingly. Nevertheless, the head teachers worried that there was a danger that staff would use these packs 'without thinking'; and that they encouraged homogeneous activities based on reproduction rather then individual expression, with an emphasis on 'copying the master'. This was felt to bring too strong a focus on the product rather than the process. The head teachers emphasised instead the need for broad training in basic skills for teachers, with endorsement of teachers who developed their own resources:
T3 In a way these are just two kind of two extremes though, because we're talking about very good high quality visitors, and places they can go; and we're talking about the basic delivery of the pack [unclear] and in between I've got this problem because many teachers are not happy and confident about teaching sometimes all four of the expressive arts areas, sometimes one or two: they'll tend to go through the motions a wee bit, and what I think's needed is: yes all these things are wonderful to be, to be you know going to concerts and going to theatres, but I think also we need to improve the basic delivery of teaching of the expressive arts within the schools.
17 Both teachers and heads found more local resources such as Museums packages tied to particular topics or exhibitions ( e.g.A Million Days in China at the Burrell Collection) and in-service workshops to be of particular benefit, with the latter having an 'evangelising' effect on teachers.
18 Teachers also described arrangements whereby teachers would 'trade' in subjects according to their preference; within a school, one teacher might undertake to deliver teaching in, say, music while a colleague would undertake the provision of drama teaching.
…people say to me: 'Thank God you're doing music, I hate it. I didn't know I was that bad'.
19 This could allow some teachers to develop a subject that they saw as their 'baby', as well as allowing children to become acquainted with more teachers, and vice versa:
… they would take your class for it, if you took theirs for music, and I mean I did that a way back when I was teaching classes, we used to do that: swap around, for our strengths. I think it's quite nice for the children as well that they get to know more of the staff in the school. And it helps you yourself get to know more what children you, you know I'm working in Primary 6 and I'm Primary 1, so I'm keeping my oar in down with the infants…
20 One head teacher described staff at the school receiving in-house training in delivering the music curriculum from one member of staff who was more knowledgeable or confident in this area.
21 In the light of all this, the rise of dedicated subject specialists was frequently discussed; (some participants were now teaching solely as specialists, covering a number of schools). At the head teachers group, it was seen by some as desirable if not inevitable that expressive arts teaching should move to being taught exclusively by specialist teachers, as a more efficient and effective means of provision; they argued that such a move would be appropriate to the importance and special demands of arts teaching, particularly at the P6 and P7 stages. Some opinions were also voiced against a wholesale provision of arts teaching by specialists. It was argued that this made it harder to integrate arts teaching with other areas; that arts teaching would then not be taught by a very large proportion of skilled and dedicated teachers, whose skills in that area might atrophy; that teachers or guidelines exaggerated the demands of teaching arts at a primary level, where exploration and fun should be more key than acquiring particular skills and techniques; and that this could leave the expressive arts out on a limb from other subjects, furthering their alienation from the core curriculum and leaving them somewhat precarious:
…we had a cut in staffing, which meant that the first person to go was going to be the specialist, and the staff were suddenly panicking, having sat there for ten years, watching her inputting, they suddenly thought: 'But we don't know what to do'. And all the material's there, in the room, but they'd actually de-skilled because they hadn't been doing it themselves.
22 More frequently, the benefits for general teachers of working with or observing specialists were spoken of. This was an important way for teachers to gain skills or understanding. There were several instances where the importance of training in the arts was emphasised, with some criticism of how their training had prepared them for teaching arts subjects:
We need to like train teachers to do the basics themselves so that they feel comfortable about it…
23 Nevertheless, the head teachers group had some criticism of teachers' inclination to attend training in arts subjects. They saw some teachers as unlikely or unwilling to undertake training in subjects they did not like or were not confident in, despite these being the subjects in which training would be of most benefit, and there was some perception of a double standard in this respect in comparison with core curriculum subjects:
..the teachers will go on courses to teach science and maths and language, because they might feel that they need a bit of help with that, but they can be desperately awful at teaching music, and have no ability and think that they're awful, but they never go on a course, on how to help them to teach music better…
Curriculum and guidelines
24 Where the curriculum was discussed, there was generally satisfaction with its content; more problematic was the amount to be covered in the teaching time allocated to the Expressive Arts, leading one head teacher to describe the curriculum as 'completely unmanageable' with no opportunity for coming back to a topic. It was suggested that covering two Expressive Arts subjects per term would be a more workable arrangement; and also that coming changes in the secondary curriculum might bring more pressure on children to specialise within the creative arts. Teachers at one group were also concerned at the inclusion of PE; they felt that its implications for children meant that it should be considered and delivered separately from the other arts subjects. There was also some frustration with the rate at which priorities changed:
T1: I feel as though that what happens is, we pretend in Scottish Education - I don't know about English education - but we tend to go two steps forward one step, maybe even two steps forward, two steps back, but it seems to me that most teachers feel what we were talking about, that sense of frustration that as soon as you get to grips with one thing, [mm] you're being faced with something else.
T3: You sort of feel that work you've done for the last six months is unnecessary.
25 More criticism was voiced of the 5-14 guidelines for Expressive Arts: a "horrid document" in the words of one teacher. Others saw it as too vague, using too much jargon, quite 'user-unfriendly', or encouraging excessive compartmentalisation among a subject. One group stated a preference for more examples than were currently available; the other felt that the document did not seem rooted in classroom experience. Among teachers, there was particular concern at the demands of the guidelines for music. One specialist commented on the challenge that general teachers perceived in what was required towards level D:
…one of the most difficult strands for primary school teachers is very little knowledge, of musical knowledge, is using instruments, and yet they're expected to do that from level A right up to level D. Level A they probably could get by, but as you get into the side of notation and invention and things like that, if you've got no formal training in music, it's an impossibility, it you can't just teach that to staff over night or after a few lessons, it's taken us years as specialists to build up all this knowledge…
26 Another participant felt that gaining facility with a range of materials in art and their use at different levels presented a comparable challenge; there was seen to be less certainty in the guidelines here given the similarity of targets for levels A and C.
At the head teachers group, the importance of good guidelines for teachers was stressed in helping teachers to deliver a subject without specialist knowledge or personal experience. Overall, they felt that staff were positive towards the document, but with different attitudes to different curricular areas:
T3: …although the staff do address 5 to 14 I have had staff saying, you know, 'I don't trust it totally, this is a new thing', that their priority is the maths and language. And that they if they they're forward planning, it can be very, it can be very detailed about their maths and their language, and when it comes to expressive arts, there's a plan there but it's a lot less detailed, and they're a lot less bothered, that they might or might not get through, what they plan in the arts.
27 There was also some concern about the difficulty of getting arts subjects included in development plans:
…5 to 14 has been around since about what 1992, something like that right, it's 14 years; Glasgow as our authority, has not brought out a new drama plan to support it, has not brought out a new art plan to support it, there' s no music plan to support it.
Resources and management
28 The groups also discussed a number of issues relating to school administration and management that had a bearing on the delivery of the Expressive Arts. Access to a suitable space for teaching music or drama could be problematic, with clashes restricting access to school assembly halls or gyms. Properly maintained pianos were also raised as a scarce facility by one music specialist. Classroom assistants were also viewed as a vital prerequisite for putting on larger projects. Most teachers described having some areas of arts teaching handled by specialists or other teachers under McCrone time agreements, or of doing this for areas they preferred. Access to specialists, however, was another difficulty, one head teacher felt that the size of their school forced a choice of which subject to have a specialist in. Another suggested that visiting specialists should be programmed centrally, ensuring their availability to all primary schools in an area; although encouragement of teacher 'trade-offs' was another way to address this problem:
T4: I think the other thing though: limited resources is exactly what we're saying, the staff in the school, and in our school just now, what we've got is, not necessarily because people don't feel strong enough, but for a variety of reasons they'll say: I'll take your children for art, and you take mine for music, and there's there's trade-off and there's deals.
29 Arts subjects were seen by one group as demanding significantly more resources than other subjects. The difficulty of finding the budget for art materials, CD players and instruments were all raised, and the cost of transport for visits was frequently discussed. Some participants had found Glasgow City Council's Class Connections scheme particularly helpful in this respect, whereby schools in SIP areas could apply for up to ten free buses per year; others were not aware of the scheme. Bringing in external workshops or arts organisations were seen as highly rewarding, but both teachers and heads considered that the cost of could make these difficult to provide without the option of discounts, incentives or special arrangements:
T: It was a fortune… and I I think it was something like six, it was something like seven or eight hundred pounds it cost, now that's a horrendous amount for a school to pay.
T: It is, it is.
T3: Now Glasgow, Glasgow schools were given £400 off, that's why I did it, and I got together with another school to make it worthwhile. But they had rehearsals and they had workshops, and then they had performance, and they got so much out of it.
30 Where choices had to be made over funding projects with external input or trips, the head teachers reported that they would prioritise according to how whether an artist or organisation could provide a project specifically linked to topics that were being covered in the school. The need to seek value for money also meant that sometimes projects had to be selected on the basis of what cost less:
T2: But artists all have different fees, and the artists don't have a regular employment, so it all depends as on expertise if you will, to get [names artist] , she wouldn't come out for less than £200 a session, she won't come out.
T4: She's worth it.
T2: She's fantastic, yes but and if on the other hand if you're getting an artist who's just newly qualified, who's not very much, they might come out work for £25 an hour. I was, I think that the Scottish Arts Council works out guidelines and I think £20 is the minimum, and you'll get very few quality artists….
31 The head teachers stressed the importance of finding alternative ways to fund projects (one mentioned halving the cost to the school of a project through a grant from the Books Trust) but suggested that operating through three year development plans made it difficult to plan long term projects.
32 The allocation of designated time to the Expressive Arts within the school timetable was found to be a problem. Teachers frequently described the slots in which arts teaching was to be delivered as impractical:
T: We actually get an hour assigned, but by the time you go and get their coats and bags, if it's then well it's then anyway but it happens with mine… coats and bags up to the gym hall to do drama, so it's, the actual teaching's 45 minutes.
33 This allocation was seen by teachers to be the responsibility of school management. Some suggested that schools tended to be unable to meet the requirements for time dedicated to the expressive arts, and would have to rely on compromises to do so:
T: … because most people do half an hour for music a week, but they add on hymn practice or whatever to that, and most people only get half an hour to do drama.
T: I think most schools struggle to meet that, I don't think they meet that.
34 Arts subjects were also seen by the teachers as more demanding in terms of their planning or preparation time than other subjects, particularly if it was in a subject they were less sure of:
T4: No it depends how confident you are with each subject.
T3: Well you can put in minimal work for one that you're confident with like drama, if you're quite happy to pick up a book and be able to do something with it. You know just on 10 minutes notice, whereas with art I would need about 3 days to look for this, and look for that, and look at what on earth I was going to do with this bit of pastel and this bit of chalk. And you know, it can be quite stressful as well trying to work out what I was going to do with it.
35 The head teachers also stressed the need to monitor teachers in their delivery of the arts as much as in other subjects, to know whether a staff member was struggling with a particular area. One teacher group did feel that monitoring of expressive arts teaching was not as strict as for other subjects, and that arts teaching time was therefore most likely to be compromised by other demands of the job:
T: I think also if some, if you had something to catch up on then you'd maybe do it during your music time or…
36 Teachers also relied on opportunities to develop their skills; however, some participants felt that they missed out on many CPD courses through the delay between the course being advertised and the school management or administration notifying them of the course, since they booked out very rapidly. One group also thought that more in-service days should be programmed with arts specialists.
Assessment and accountability
37 There was some feeling among teachers that assessment was harder in expressive arts than other areas, where progression could be more easily quantified:
T: Do you know, I do think though, see in maths or language or you're not getting through the work, it's very very evident that your children are still not adding or whatever in in primary 5, do you know what I mean they [unclear], whereas I think with expressive arts…
T: It's not monitored though is it?
T: …if if you don't get through the work and it is monitored closely and it might not be as evident, that they're not progressing.
38 The limited time available for teaching the arts also meant that there was not time to go into depth when assessing a child in those subjects, only to register whether that child was 'getting it' or not. They recognised a need to cut down or limit paperwork involved in assessment, and discussed the 'traffic lights' system derived from the national guidelines as addressing this need. One teacher gave an account of the system in practice. They would decide on the focus for assessment (one of four of the six strands for music per term); watch the children's work during music time; then allocate them either a red light' (failing) an 'orange light' (acceptable) or 'green light' (described by one participant as '85% or 90%'). Not all found this easy to apply:
it's relatively impossible, in primary 1 cause we'll have a horde of kids all bumbling about doing whatever it is they're doing, and you've got some notion in your head that you're looking for, and if you see somebody and if you're not distracted by somebody doing something that they shouldn't be then maybe you'll get an assessment, and on the record or off the record, it's largely a paper em exercise…
39 Specialist teachers at the groups also pointed out that they found particular challenges in assessment given the difficulty of being acquainted with very large numbers of children of different ages from different classes or schools:
… a lot of the specialists are being used for now, we don't really know the children very well, we're getting, we're seeing hundreds of children a week, but yet we're supposed to assess them, and we don't even know who they, who they are, what their names are! So we're supposed to be taking certain ones for music lessons, you know piano such and such and assessing them at the same time, it's nigh on impossible.
40 Some questioned the assessment system's fundamental utility or validity, pointing out that they were expected to allocate consistent percentages of their classes to each category, rather than considering the merits of each case in itself. It was suggested that teachers should trust to their own systems of judgement in considering children's progress:
…they're orange before they even begin the goddamn lesson as far as I'm concerned, because I don't hold by all that nonsense - yes they're going to assess their need, yes their going to get it, yes they know it's absolute mince, so why the hell should I muck about with it? I close the door and I do what I consider to be the best job that I can do in the circumstances…
41 One participant suggested that the introduction of personal learning plans for every child would facilitate assessment, making it easier to record a child's strength's in particular areas as an aid for the teacher when reporting. A head teacher reported their development of an 'in-house' assessment plan for other Expressive Arts based on the model of PE assessment.
42 The head teachers saw parents as a source of some pressure to grade children's work: parents wanted to be given straightforward indicators of their offspring's academic development. Yet they acknowledged that the vision of getting children to evaluate their own work could compromise the opportunity those children had to undertake experimentation essential to future enjoyment of or success in the arts. Being driven by the need to assess could also stultify the necessary creative partnership between teacher and pupil:
T2: But is all teaching not about an inspired passionate teacher, if you're passionate about something, what you can give the kids, is so much more than if you think: well I don't really agree with this but I've got to do it because I've got to get through the national tests.
…but I mean, you know, this is about allowing the children to be creative, allowing the children to experiment, allowing them freedom.
43 The goals of expressive arts were also seen as being beyond academic results to some extent, instead being an arena for personal development where assessment was less relevant; the lack of a national test for expressive arts subjects reinforced this status. The head teachers saw this as part of the basis of the subjects' appeal for their staff, or part of what made it harder for them to focus on assessment in the expressive arts:
…if they they're forward planning, it can be very, it can be very detailed about their maths and their language, and when it comes to expressive arts, there's a plan there but it's a lot less detailed, and they're a lot less bothered, that they might or might not get through, what they plan in the arts.
44 Teachers in the groups, however, felt that their head teachers were often more concerned to see children achieving grades than creatively exploring:
T2: …but you've got the head teacher breathing down your neck going, 'But where's that at level D? These are primary 6 children and they're supposed to be this why are you doing sponge painting?' You know I've actually had…
T1: It's sheer exploration, it's sheer exploration.
T2: Uh-huh I've had somebody saying that to me and I've tried to explain it like that, but no that's now what it says, if the inspectors come in here next month, then he'll have to see this, and you'll have to prove this, and it's all about proving…
45 In contrast to this, the head teachers group also felt that there was a risk of some teachers downplaying assessment in favour of free expression could also represent a tatic for avoiding having to evaluate children's work. It was suggested that teachers without an interest in the arts themselves, would have "no clue" how to evaluate work in the arts:
…I think people don't have an interest in a particular area like expressive arts, they've got no idea what to say to the children in order to guide them, in order to improve something, in order to give them ideas. So if you've got two children doing a dialogue between each other, they'll make it up, they'll make a wee script for something, the teacher's got no idea what to say to them in order to allow them to progress, or to… to make it better, to get better … or to need to give everyone ideas. We're just doing art, we're doing drama, we're doing music but we're not actually progressing…
46 Teachers in this situation could create further problems by not talking about this to their line managers. While published packs could help, being structured from A to E according to how they complemented the curriculum, there was concern that over-reliance on these was not, on the whole, conducive to progression.
Involving professionals
47 Teachers strongly endorsed the visits they recounted from external professionals. They gave glowing accounts of working with a range of companies or individuals, including the National Youth Choir of Scotland, students from Glasgow School of Art and RSAMD (thorough the GOALs project), Scottish Ballet, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, TAG Theatre Company, African drummers and artists in residence:
T5: I've had before actual university students in, teaching my class music, which I thought was brilliant, [yes] because they all came in with their instruments so we had a cello and everything and em, the kids ended up they played and created their own piece of music they worked in groups and it was just so, like I could never have done that on my own, but there was maybe about 10 students in, and they took a group each.
48 Museums projects, including special sessions with drama workers, were also praised, particularly where they could be linked to class topics. These projects were seen to have a strong impact on children's progress. Not only did the chance, for example, to hear real instruments or see actual performers in action allow pupils to learn a great deal from these days, but they could be very rewarding for teachers as well, especially if there were any in-service sessions included in the package. Locally available resources were preferred, partly because of the reduced cost implications.
49 While the teachers groups were unreservedly optimistic about projects involving external professionals, head teachers voiced some arguments for and against these. In their favour it was felt that projects such as artists' residencies gave children a unique and valuable experience of working with a real artist, raising their awareness of the arts as a field of work. Such projects were also seen as an important enrichment of the basic curriculum offered to children. However there were limitations from the schools' point of view. Visiting artists or performers were not necessarily trained to deliver educational objectives, or indeed work with children. They often did not want to work with whole classes, which created administrative difficulties. Also, it was not always possible for schools to assess what could be gained the quality of a project, or its potential benefit to them, before booking it. One head teacher felt she had seen some artist interventions that she thought a teacher could have delivered. Finally, it was thought that the success of these projects depended very heavily on the proactive attitude of the class teachers, both in terms of supervision of children and assimilation of some of the skills and working methods in use:
I went to monitor at a session in a particular school and the teacher actually totally ignored the class completely. The poor girl who was doing a dance session was really struggling, she was very well prepared but didn't know any of the children, didn't know any of their names, had to tell them off two or three times, and the teacher just sat oblivious to it just doing her marking for the whole time; and I thought: 'well this is really not on at all'.
How the arts are valued
50 Given that the participants had volunteered to take part in a discussion about teaching the arts, all placed a high value on arts education in primary schools. Their enthusiasm was accounted for in different ways, but a recurring theme among the teachers was the importance of the arts as an arena for the enjoyment of learning:
…it's this attitude of a wee bit of leaven in the lump, if you are constantly being in front of a classroom, and you're doing this, that and the next thing and the children maybe are struggling with, and it is a struggle. And then in the afternoon say: 'Right! we're going to do this, and its going to be great fun, and we're going to end up with this, and we're all going to be involved in it and we're going to show off about it…'
51 The arts areas of the curriculum were stressed as opportunities for 'sheer exploration'. While the element of fun or 'mucking about' was viewed as important, though, some participants were concerned to distinguish arts education from recreation:
T4: Mucking about's fine, but it has to be structured, structured mucking about. Children have to know what they're doing with the materials that…
T1: Well no I agree you don't want people poking one another's eyes out and that that can certainly happen.
T4: So it does have to be with children - what you're doing is giving them the opportunity, you're giving them a vehicle I suppose, you're giving them the opportunity to explore, and once as as they develop, as they learn new skills
52 Participants were also concerned about the potential for arts lessons to be treated as a reward that could be withheld in a way that other subjects were not:
T1: I think art and music I think are kind of withdrawn after not behaving and I think that's really bad.
T2: Art, I think that especially art…
T1: You know, 'We're not doing drawing this afternoon, you've been naughty,' I think it's really bad and it shouldn't be seen as something…
53 This was of particular concern given the limited time available for covering the curriculum in expressive arts, and some participants emphasised the need to maintain parity in how all subject areas were valued:
T1: …if you were withdraw it [music] you wouldn't certainly get through everything you've got planned, but it's not something I would do. Like for example if I'm in music or assembly and the children aren't singing and I'm thinking 'This is just like a maths lesson or a language lesson where it isn't up for discussion, you need to do it'.
T2: It's a bit like…
T1: 'Children if you don' t do it now, you can do it at play time or lunch time,' maybe.
54 Other teachers felt less able to allocate equal priority to both arts and other areas:
T: But sometimes if a child hasn't um picked up a skill then you're not going to go and spend, you know time, you don't have time to take that one child out and to you know…
T: I know, it's not in your control.
T: …to really, you know like really work on their skills, whereas if it was maths or languages then, you would give put in extra support, you would give that, but if you know…
T: If you miss a lesson you don't do double art to make up for it, as if it was maths.
T: [unclear] …the thing is with maths and language we've got to teach it, that's we've not got a choice whereas, music or other… then it's: just can't do that this term.
T: I think that's what's happened.
T: That's what's happened, many…
T: …for many many many many years
55 The head teachers also saw their staff as valuing the arts highly, whether or not they felt confident in teaching them, though one participant was not sure whether staff valued them equivalently with other subjects:
…it's not just because they don't value [the Expressive Arts] as part of life, it's that they see it as less important academically.
56 It was suggested that some teachers were more concerned about their own artistic ability than the enjoyment of artistic production:
the current teachers came through the systems which didn't allow them, to be expressive in the arts; that they're teaching the way they were taught, that they, they think you have to be good at drawing to enjoy art, they think that you have to be musical to enjoy music, and it's far more an exercise - personally that's my personal view about the arts is, it's about the, you know, the emotion in your life and enjoyment you get from it
57 Some were also concerned at the prevalence of beliefs among teachers that being good at art meant being good at replicating, or the excessive application of an ethos from other areas of the curriculum that there was an objectively correct way of doing things:
…there's this idea that with schooling, within the system of schooling there's a right and a wrong - and it's trying to break away from that: that's nothings either right or wrong in the art as a, it's a way of seeing, it's a way of communicating.
58 Both teachers and head teachers saw the arts as central to the life of the school, in their capacity for creating a particular atmosphere of excitement. The contribution of artwork to its appearance was particularly mentioned. This was seen by some teachers as the source of management enthusiasm for the arts - as a means of making the school beautiful, or bringing pupils and parents from different communities together for school shows. Not all saw this as leading to unreserved support from their management, however:
T4: …there's always something on the go… [yeah] yes I think they are, again a lot of it I think comes from the head teacher. I think in ours they [the arts] get they're valued in that yeah, you know they know that there's a place for them and they know that it's beneficial to the children, but if something else comes along they are the first to get put out the way, you know it's like, 'you want to do that, it's only the art time', you know.
59 Teachers felt that parents were likely to value the arts as a source of pride where their child was struggling in other areas, and as an area where their children reported they were enjoying themselves:
T: We've just recently had an open day in school when the parents came in and watched their children at work throughout the day, and em the parents… they had options to write comments, and most of the comments were, you know the art display was fabulous, it's all about, so for parents I think they like to see, you know, the art…
60 There was no discussion of whether how important arts were thought to be in children's home lives; one teacher, however, did feel that part of the strength of art's appeal lay in the opportunity to use paints or materials that were not encouraged at home:
…you maybe have a load of kids who are in a situation at home where there is nothing in the way of art, nothing, if they get, if they have paints and they get them out, then their mum's cheesed off with them because they want not to have the mess in the house and all the rest of it.
61 The head teachers suggested that parental valuing of arts education might vary depending on the location of a school.
Well you know, as for parents I think it really depends on where in the city you're talking about, I would imagine in Hillhead and some other … most of the parents value the arts very highly indeed, but in Drumchapel - a different story.
62 One participant commented that parents were more likely to come to a school show than a parents' evening. Where a child's parents were 'into the arts', however, this was seen as giving their child an advantage of coming to arts subjects with prior knowledge. They also perceived some prevailing cultural factors mitigating against enthusiasm for the arts:
There are also those causal factors as well, I mean apart from cultural factors like Muslim kids are you know, just it's not it's not encouraged what ever, but I mean cultural factors like people being dissuaded from continuing to do art or music because: 'we don't do that'.
Benefits of the arts
63 In the course of the primary focus groups, various benefits of learning arts subjects recurred. They were seen as addressing basic need for creative expression, or the enjoyment of arts activity, was perceived. One teacher group also mentioned the need to foster talented individuals, in particular the importance of raising parents' awareness of a child's potential in an arts subject. The head teachers spoke of the importance of offering pupils a broad range of experience in their time at school of which the arts were an important part, and the value of allowing individuals to know they can enjoy the arts.
64 Arts subjects were also seen as having an impact in other areas, or on learning in general. Primary teachers in the groups were also strongly of the view that the potential for teaching other areas of the curriculum ( e.g. maths through music, English through Drama) were underused. The difference in learning environment and the importance of the arts as an arena of learning not dependent on pen and paper were also stressed. At the head teachers group, arts teaching was seen as promoting creative thinking rather than just giving right or wrong answers. The tactile and physical aspects of the Expressive Arts subjects were seen as having the potential to improve manipulation, concentration and coordination. The experience of arts activity was seen as an important part of development.
65 The arts subjects were also seen as an arena in which children with difficulties in other subject areas could shine, or those who were generally 'struggling'. In particular, the arts were described as an opportunity for those who were not getting on well in maths or language, and possibly vice versa. At the head teachers' group, arts education was described as putting everyone on an equal footing, as an arena where "everything's acceptable" or where achievements were not necessarily to be measured in grades:
…it's a case of allowing the children to have the experience, most of all education is all about life isn't it, we do not expect children to leave school saying: well I have achieved that level in music, 'What level? What part of music? What about music? What factor in music?'
66 Such levelling was interpreted by some as arising not just through allowing some children to do well, but bringing others down somewhat; one teacher attributed these benefits not just to children's own achievements, but to the perception that a classmate who excelled in core subjects was less able in the expressive arts. Two participants perceived benefits of arts education for children with dyslexia in particular.
67 Arts subject were also seen as offering particular personal benefits in terms of individual development. Many teachers spoke of the gains in confidence or self-esteem that their pupils had made through arts learning. It was seen as facilitating self-expression for some children, and offering valuable experiences of success and achievement in a social context.
68 Finally, the arts were also seen as an area of the curriculum that developed general social skills. children were seen to acquire team working and cooperative skills from arts work; the head teachers pointed out the value of such gains in terms of future employability. It was also maintained at several points that taking part in the arts granted children an improved understanding of others in society, particularly other cultures or people with disabilities. At both teachers groups, participants from schools with a number of pupils from the families of asylum seekers mentioned the benefit of arts projects in integrating these pupils into the school. However, some were also of the opinion that such benefits might be overstated:
…I'll dump drama - cheerfully. [laughs] Just because well I'm not particularly good at it. This isn't your idea of professionalism and they can see it, and if somebody came in and did a good job, but er - when I'm watching in the Primary 3s and they're shuffling about pretending to be old people, and this is meant to engender good attitudes, well it doesn't. [laughter]
Secondary SchoolsTeaching the arts
…there is a sort of tendency for kids to say, 'oh, the art teachers are cool, they kinda understand you that wee bit more'…
69 Both groups viewed teaching the arts at secondary level as a vocation, for individuals who were immersed in their subject and would be there for children if they wanted to work. One group discussed how these staff and their departments were viewed by pupils; art teachers, for example, were seen as 'a kind of friend'. Ideally this would be someone who would be at ease interacting with pupils, with strong individuality and the flexibility to offer and justify suggestions in response to a pupil's own choices on their work. This was specifically tied to the creative potential of tasks in the arts giving young people a strong personal attachment to what they produced:
T2: …some of the things the kids are doing, they're proud of it and, eh, you've got to be aware that, eh, that you could discourage that very quickly if you treated them in a way that perhaps they maybe get treated in, say, a class where they have to sit quietly and get on with their work. It's the fact that there isn't just one answer, there's 20 answers.
T3: Yes, I think that's important.
T5: And the uniqueness of the kids themselves, it's a wee bit of them that they're showing you, so you've got to be very sensitive of that.
T4: And also so that they can decide what direction this piece of work is going to take, you know, they have an element of control and power in what they're doing because it's their work, it's their painting, whatever.
70 Arts departments were seen to provide a unique learning environment within the school, desirable not only for pupils who responded better to a less formal milieu but also to other staff; one teacher noted that their colleagues loved receiving a 'please take' for an art class. Most teachers of arts subjects, it was suggested at both groups, were practitioners in their own time, and were glad to see the pupils they worked with and put in extra time with them. It was pointed out that, particularly with Art & Design, this was more often a requirement for them than their colleagues in other subjects, given the requirement for teacher presence at the exams. The importance of feedback on written work was also highlighted at one group:
T3: I think in art, I'm doing my designer studies at the moment and I think that's an opportunity for the kids to actually write and not feel the normal pressures …I've been handing back their essays and going 'I really like what you've written because you've written some things that I hadn't thought about'. And these kids are quite often surprised because they think that they're bad at writing, and maybe their grammar is awful and the way they write, their handwriting is awful, but their ideas are quite interesting. Cause I think that art is good, or design, that part is good because then you get to their, sort of, try and start changing the kids' preconception about how they are, how literate they are, when they're writing about something that's not maybe as stressful …
71 Extra-curricular activities were a central part of arts teachers' commitment to their subject and their pupils. Participants frequently referred to working with or rehearsing pupils at lunchtimes and after school:
T3: I do a pottery class, we've been doing it every lunchtime, but are going to move it to after school just for more time, cause there's more interest and the kids are wanting to do it for a longer time than is allowed … so it's just an opportunity for the kids to do 3D clay work and a sort of relaxed atmosphere, a sort of different pace of learning...
72 Such activities could also involve substantial input in a teacher's own time; for instance, one teacher described reworking big band arrangements for the instrumentation available to school groups, to 'get kids into jazz'. Facilitating pupils' greater involvement in their work in these ways was seen as essential in allowing their enthusiasm for the subject to develop, and not becoming frustrated or disinterested. Arts activities were seen as having the potential to allow children to develop skills and understanding at their own pace, in some cases ahead of the curriculum. The participants also described actively working to bring in external visits or be involved in external projects to raise awareness of contemporary practice, or the arts as a profession. Teachers would try to advise or help parents in supporting a child's interests, for instance by arranging for a pupil to attend life drawing classes at an art school.
73 Some concerns were raised at the groups with regard to teaching practice. There were criticisms, for instance, of the low skills of pupils arriving from some primary schools, particularly in drawing, music reading or coordination; this left secondary teachers to try and accelerate their development in these areas during first year. This was attributed by one group to the arts sometimes being treated as a less serious subject at primary level, or primary teachers not feeling confident themselves in delivering technical skills in the arts; they felt that pupils took from such an attitude the belief that they themselves lacked the ability to, say, draw. The participants, on the other hand, averred that anyone could and should be taught such skills. The drive to achieve targets was blamed at some points for leaving children with 'no time to discover themselves'; the language of 'learner styles' was dismissed as 'buzzwords' by one group.
74 The other group, all of whom held postgraduate teaching qualifications, spent some time discussing training for teachers in arts subjects, which they felt should have been more comprehensive. In particular, there was seen to be a considerable gulf between the specialised focus of their first degrees ( e.g. in one department of an art school) and the range of skills required to deliver the curriculum in schools. From having studied one instrument at undergraduate level, one participant found that he faced considerable challenges in acquiring additional keyboard, percussion, woodwind, singing, conducting and recording knowledge and skills over a relatively short period of time. Others felt that they suddenly had to broaden their skills from the specific medium of one department of an art school:
T3: … you've got to be able to do print making , HMI want us to do clay work, or pottery, you've got to be able to draw and paint, do design so that would be textiles, jewellery, all of these things. And at art school you're only trained for one, and you've got quite specialised quite early and then suddenly you're a jack of all trades and it's, sculpting, everything … whereas if you did a degree in maths and then taught maths, you've got your subject knowledge, you go and you do it…
75 The probation year system was seen as supportive in this respect, but there was still 'a lot to cram in' in that time. Teachers at the other group were also concerned that they did not feel that they had been able to make full use of other qualifications in their work (for instance an MA in Education Management).
76 Despite these reservations, secondary teachers were extremely positive about the business of teaching the arts; departments and their staff were still seen as places full of 'so much goodwill and talent':
And this is where drama departments and art departments are unique, and you walk into a good art department and you can taste the ethos, you can feel it in the air, you can see it…
Curriculum and guidelines
77 A number of problems were raised with the curriculum in arts subjects at secondary level. In terms of music, one participant felt that there was still too great an emphasis on acquiring skills on traditional instruments, and not enough effort to embrace the use of technology in music. In particular, it was suggested that a focus on the use of computers and recording technology would be more appropriate to the current character of the music industry and therefore more vocational. This was also seen as allowing them to develop their computer literacy, and as a potential means of empowering children in areas of social exclusion, for whom expensive instruments and lessons were less achievable. The curriculum in Art & Design, too, was suggested as not necessarily consistent with what art schools were looking for in students; and there was some concern that the demand of the curriculum worked against initiatives to build routes into jobs or further education:
… teachers that I've spoken to feel that there's a lot of kids that aren't getting into art school that, they could maybe, y'know; ten years ago or whatever, getting more kids into art school than they are now and something is, something is happening there where the curriculum is pulling the course one way and it's not necessarily what the arts people are looking for.
78 The curriculum was also criticised for a narrow focus that left some 'huge gaps' in children's knowledge. In music, one teacher felt that understanding of the theory of music was giving way to the pressure to bring playing skills to the point where children could progress; an art teacher was concerned at losing Classicism and Romanticism from the written component in Art & Design. Both groups expressed worries about a perceived 'dumbing down' of the Higher syllabus. With respect to these concerns, participants did feel that they had to 'flesh out' the curriculum more than colleagues in maths or English. Some criticism was also made of the extent to which guidelines were 'tinkered' with from year to year; one teacher felt that he 'couldn't make head nor tail' of the composition guidelines for Music.
79 It was also felt by some that too much of the timetable was devoted to Maths and English. Not only did this place demands on arts subjects to deliver their curriculum in less time, particularly where areas like citizenship and enterprise and education were being expanded; it was felt to force some pupils whose strengths were in the arts to spend too much time learning less useful skills:
Which, I've nothing against maths at all but really, it's computational skills which most people never use again once they leave school. It might be useful for getting you a job because it looks good if you've got a maths Standard Grade, Grade 2 or whatever it is, but really, what do you learn that's gonna actually help you in your life skills? I mean if you think about, say for instance even doing design in art, the kind of life skills you get from that, the transferable skills, the processes you go through which are useful, eh, to me, for most kids, are much more useful than say what they would get out of a maths course, yet every one of them has to do maths no matter whether they're good, bad or indifferent, or no matter what they're gonna do when they leave school.
80 One group felt there should be more effort to deliver a model of education where pupils were freer to choose where they wanted to specialise:
I would quite like to see, instead of this wasted 6 th year where you get kids coming back, trying to do extra Highers, I would maybe like to see, say after 1 st or 2 nd years and the kids think they know the area they would like to go down, more specialist units within schools where kids could go and do purely sciences and see if that is, indeed, what they think they're interested in. Or arts and have a sort of, almost like a mini arts school, drama school where they could put on performances.
81 However, others stressed the importance of a broad approach to the curriculum, and the benefits of cross-curricular projects and 'loosening up' ages and stages. One participant suggested that second year could more profitably be treated as a 'foundation year' along the Art School model, allowing children to experiment with a wider range of specialisations at an age when they might still lack the information to make choices about what they wanted to do. There was also some disappointment expressed that the participants had not had the time in recent years to visit primary schools. This was a 'big loss', since without their input prior to transition, children arrived from feeder primaries with even greater disparities in their knowledge, abilities and expectations relative to the SQA syllabus. The importance of first year as a 'baseline' year within which to level out those differences was also underlined.
Resources and management
82 Both groups spent considerable time debating issues around facilities and management. Adequate resources of equipment, premises, and funds were a key problem for arts subjects in particular. Requirements for, say, clay and kilns in Art & Design, instruments in good condition for Music, or lighting for a theatre space within which to work in Drama were viewed as significantly more substantial than the needs of other departments. Lack of a budget meant that some external projects could not be followed up, and was also felt to make some extra-curricular activities impracticable or less satisfactory:
…when I was wanting to do the art club, I had to make sure that, y'know the materials were replaced by the kid paying for the stuff … because our budget was so tight, we couldn't really, y'know open our doors and say 'Right you can make this and take it home', you have to pay for everything, y'know what I mean, so that in itself was kinda demoralising the kids…
83 One music teacher felt that improved access to up-to date technology was vital, yet difficult to secure; in art, the importance of providing a wide range of materials to improve pupils' chances at Higher was stressed.
84 Management acceptance of the differential in needs between subject areas was seen as critical, and some schools were considered to provide more than others - for example those where arts subjects were important in raising Higher results. Participants had encountered very varied provision in the different schools they had worked in:
…the Advanced Higher is being taught where the kids come and work in a room that's maybe about four foot wide, long, it's like a cupboard, and they all go in a row, like a galley kitchen and draw, and that's not good, y'know. There's no storage, y'know, the roof leaks, there's no darkroom facility, the kiln's in another cupboard…
85 The considerable challenge of working simultaneously on compositions with 19 fifth year students in one small room was described. Understanding among management of what the specific needs of each department were was also vital. One teacher had a refitted drama room that was nevertheless too small for an audience and had no desks for teaching the written component. Another participant described being provided with a new art classroom in a new building that was nevertheless carpeted and lacking a supply of running water, thus ruling out, for example, printmaking, where screens of ink had to be washed out. Developments in health and safety issues were also seen as having had an impact on what could be provided in art; allergies now precluded working in a number of materials, while kilns were subject to a limiting raft of restrictions.
86 Participants did see some avenues for improving their access to resources. Cultural coordinators were highlighted at one group as a valuable source of external project involvement. To some extent, deals could be agreed with other departments for materials. It was also suggested that teachers made a significant contribution to resources themselves:
It's also safe to say that, as subject specialists, art and design teachers and drama teachers as well spend a great deal of their own time and money in providing resources. You go into an art teacher's room or a drama teacher's room and there's a great element of their personality there. Old toys, old bits and pieces from their homes, half their life is there and that's something that's alien to most other subjects…
87 The participants also tended to feel that their subject demanded long hours and a lot of work in their own time. Several reported that they provided supervised study, and working at lunchtimes was viewed as inevitable if older pupils were to be got through their SQA exams:
T1: The idea of a 35 hour week, it's a 35 hour day some people work, it's nonsense. And if you're a true professional, you don't watch the clock, you don't stop at 4 o'clock, you'll work through.
T4: I'm the door now with my kids, but I work at night, every night.
88 However, their opportunity to put in these hours was now seen to be limited by the implementation of the recommendations from the McCrone report. Extra-curricular activities or large projects were now difficult to accommodate:
If you're doing extra curricular duties, that could bring you over the hours that are required, d'you know what I mean, and some schools are kinda saying, 'Well what d'you want, d'you want concerts or d'you want us to work our lunchtimes, to try and keep up with the work?' And you're finding concerts and things like that no longer being part of the school, we've done the odd concert, we did a Burns Night that was quite successful, but very tight. Don't do Christmas shows any more; can't, we've no got the time…
89 For his part, a depute head in one group found that the imposition of a 35 hour week for teaching staff was a 'straightjacket'. He now found it difficult to get staff to meetings, and found that a great deal of flexibility in matters such as the voluntary supervision at lunchtimes that had been based on goodwill between teaching staff and management had been lost.
90 Another cause for concern was the extent to which column structures in the timetable prevented the combination of arts subjects, or mitigated against taking them. Timetabling was typically seen to favour children taking science subjects, though some noted more recent erosion of their intake from a different source:
… art and design and drama and music have never had a problem taking in loads and loads of kids, I mean our problem is we have so many, senior management has to convince the children to pick another subject because they don't have the teachers to teach them. Now, they're introducing us in competition with hairdressing and beauty, etc, etc, so children that would have taken art and design in the past are thinking, 'oh, hairdressing and beauty'…
91 Other concerns expressed by individuals at the group included the perception that arts departments tended to be used as a 'dumping ground' for disruptive pupils, which made it harder to teach those who did want to be there. Another participant was concerned that teachers of arts subjects tended to have only limited opportunities to talk to parents at PT meetings.
92 It was observed that in schools, the head's vision was seen to be 'what goes'. The blame for many of these problems was frequently attributed by some participants to management whose unfamiliarity with, or lack of understanding of, the arts led them, for instance, not to recognise the particular resource requirements of these subjects:
…our requisition is worked out in our school as bums on seats, so the Maths Department get lots of money and it's all books. We're working with consumables, but we have less kids taking the subject, so we've got less money and it seems like totally nuts, because we should be getting more money because we're using up the stuff all the time and it's consumed, but they're gonna need like one set of books and they'll use it for so many years and jotters, but they get the most money…
93 Management were also suspected by some of 'fiddling' the hours allocated to their subject. Some teachers reported feeling bitter or low in self-esteem in response to this perceived attitude. However, others felt that it was important that teachers faced with such an attitude engaged with management to change the situation. In their view, arts teachers needed to seek any opportunity to raise funding issues with head teachers, explain the needs of arts subjects, and present them as with evidence of results to win them over:
T3: I've got a laser printer, for example, I've got two, two base computers in every single teacher's room, I've got scanners, I've got three digital cameras.
T1: You've had to fight though?
T3: No, because I get the results, so my senior management team give me the stuff. I'm very well resourced because I'll go to him and I'll say, 'I want A, B, C, D' and he'll say 'But you get a lot' and I'll say 'Yes, you get the results'.
94 The perception that most head teachers were not from an arts background was frequently used to account for management intransigence. However, some participants countered this view with the belief that teachers of arts teachers had to be more willing to take on managerial jobs themselves; though others felt that being an teacher of an arts subject had counted against them when they had applied for such positions. It was observed, nonetheless, that a change in management could transform the circumstances of a department
Assessment and accountability
T2: 32 folk doing Higher last year and we got 31 passes, but we only got three As and you're thinking 'How the hell is that?'. Because there were so many As there, as far as we were concerned and -
T1: But the SQA have not shared the criteria for success, they're no telling you where you're going wrong. If they were telling you where you were getting it right, you could consolidate that and you could look at, in terms of development planning and developing skills, CPD for staff saying okay, it's maybe in the expressive side of things that we really need to work.
95 Strong criticism was expressed of the SQA marking system, as 'a nightmare'; the explanatory CDR for Art issued by the SQA was dismissed as 'bananas' at one group, with illustrative images too small too make out. The teachers did not find it clear what the SQA were looking for. Some felt that they often could not understand decisions made by the exam board, and that there was a considerable disparity between those and their own assessments to the detriment of results. One participant felt that her holistic approach to working and marking was 'unpicked' by the mechanistic approach of the exam board. Moderation also emerge as a significantly negative experience for participants, particularly given that it could come at any time; one called it 'the most frightening experience of any job I've had':
…there was a moderator came out and told what was wrong with the way they were doing things and it's like some magical thing that nobody quite understands how it works, nobody's getting the training; and in the school I'm in at the moment, the department felt as if all of them had used all of their knowledge and experience to assess this work and yet when it had come back the results were totally different.
96 It was suggested that it was much harder to steer a pupil to a 1 in Standard Grade Art than in Maths or Physics. Others felt there was a lack of consistency in the expectations from subject to subject:
T1: … you look at what kids have to produce for the graphic communications Standard Grade, for example, and you compare that to what you have to do in art and design Standard Grade and it's night and day.
T2: It's the same at Higher too.
97 It was suggested that there were not enough examples in the guidelines for assessment, and one group felt that teachers should be receiving training to understand how the system worked. One participant was also aggrieved at the penalties their students had incurred for what they took to be overuse of computers and technology, and expressed concern that the board were not 'moving on':
…I got the feeling a couple of years ago that somebody at the exam board that was marking the design unit was going, 'Hamish, do I detect the use of a computer here in this design unit? So that's a fail'. [laughter]
98 Art teachers in the group also raised concerns at plans to place the burden of assessing non-written material on themselves. They felt this would significantly increase their workload, leave greater room for ambiguity and therefore increase the number of appeals, and put teachers 'in the firing line' from parents.
99 Participants acknowledged that assessment was central to the success of their departments. Gaining good results at SQA level gave 'credibility' with both management and parents, and schools in turn had to justify their performance in terms of SQA successes. Nevertheless, most of those at the groups felt that there was a danger that being too oriented towards assessment and exams could obscure opportunities address individual needs or to build education 'on a wider scale':
T1: basically at the end of the day, you've got to justify some kind of result or get a guidance report and say, 'Look, this kid's nuts, I cannae get him through an exam' and that's you covered your back. But you want to try with these kids at least; but you're no gettin' the time cause you're so much under pressure, or trying to …
T3: It seems to run contrary with the sort of Lifelong Learning idea or whatever, that you're just making them jump through this hoop in this particular exam.
T1: Yes, that as well.
T3: That seems totally contrary to the idea that you're gonnae enjoy your learning and
T1: And inspire.
Involving professionals
100 The teachers at the secondary school focus groups did not discuss projects involving external professionals to the same extent as the primary teachers. The projects mentioned were mostly in the visual arts, and included practical workshops with visiting or resident artists and craftspeople (a bag maker, jewellery designers, sculptors, a milliner, a painter, a product designer etc.) as well as visiting organisations ( e.g.TAG Theatre Company) and visits to projects such as Art Lab at Stirling University. Such involvement was seen as beneficial on a number of accounts. Public art projects in a community setting were seen as giving school art a higher profile among parents, and making it part of their life. Visiting artists raised awareness of current practice, showed the arts in a working situation, and introduced pupils to specialised skills, enriching the curriculum. Above all, this familiarised pupils with the arts practised as a profession, and demonstrated to them how a living might be made in their subject area:
We're bringing in designers, artists, bringing the parents in, parents' nights, getting that crossover so they can be, so that art becomes as tangible as a trade…
101 The secondary teachers described themselves as proactive in trying to tailor available projects to the pupils they were working with, in some cases seeking out artists or organisations on the internet that might be most relevant to them. Nevertheless, participants in both groups reported that Cultural Coordinators had been instrumental in bringing many such opportunities to their schools, and one group had found schemes such as the Clydesdale Bank's Art for All and GOALs to be valuable means of bridging the gap between secondary and further education.
How the arts are valued
It's important that every child in Scotland has a meaningful creative and aesthetic experience throughout their school career, from Primary 1 until they leave, and it should be core, it should be a core experience.
102 The teachers at the focus groups placed a very high value on participating in the arts, describing a wide range of activities that they took part in in their own time at an amateur or professional level, including painting, jewellery making, and playing in bands. It was suggested at one group that it was important that an art teacher should 'know what you can achieve and what kind of enjoyment you can have' with the arts. They found their colleagues on the whole to be 'very cultured' and active in the arts, though one participant did fear there were some that 'never went near a gallery'. This enthusiasm for the arts was also seen to translate into a passion for teaching the subject:
…the reason why we got into the arts is because we love the subject, we're inspired by the subject and we feel we can promote that across to the children…
103 Within their schools, however, they did not generally perceive a high value placed on the arts. There were some suggestions that management viewed arts departments as 'sin bins' for difficult pupils, or offering 'Cinderella' subjects:
…in some schools … you see art, art and design as an add-on, as a lot of 6 th years coming back as a wee leisure subject, y'know, as a wee time filler, so it's not really taken seriously.
104 One teacher found that drama tended to be seen as a 'thrill subject' with only its performances valued as a showcase, rather than the work that went on at an everyday level; while art teachers felt that management sometimes viewed their main contribution t the school as decoration. Some participants also felt that their performance in terms of results did not translate into appropriate funding allocation. This was accounted for as a lack of understanding of the arts by management, particularly those without an arts background themselves; for instance not being aware of the qualitative differences between design taught in art departments and that taught in technical drawing. Some participants suggested that their head teachers rarely visited their department, even for large events or projects. To some extent, this attitude was thought to be consistent with that at primary schools where art, for instance, was treated as a 'handmaiden' to other subjects; it was also argued that such an attitude on the part of management was transmitted to pupils:
…and yet when they want you to do the three-day element in the Higher … they're not giving you the means to do it and they're not giving you the space to do it, and that filtrates down to the kids' attitude to the subject. They just think 'Well', y'know, I mean they can't help but feel like, 'Well it's not really worth bothering about, is it? Because they're not bothered about it'.
105 However, not all participants held management solely to blame for any low esteem for arts subjects; they argued, for instance, that if a head teacher was not visiting the department , teachers should be more proactive in petitioning them and keeping them informed of events. Also, it was suggested that head teachers were more likely to visit troubled departments; any lack of attention might be a sign of confidence.
106 Participants found that there was no uniform appreciation of the arts among parents. Some were very supportive, providing their children with opportunities in their spare time; others, for example would not sign their children's punishment exercises on the grounds that 'it's only for Art'. It was suggested at various points, however, that parental appreciation of their children's enthusiasm for the arts did not necessarily mean they were keen for their children to make the subjects central to their academic endeavours. Several participants found that promising pupils who took the subject at Standard grade would frequently drop out before taking the Higher; they saw this as largely the result of parental pressure. This led to some differences in participants' views of their Higher pupils. Some felt that the subject tended to suit individualistic, 'gothy' kids who had had to fight to be allowed to take the subject; others suggested that these pupils were instead the ones they were left with after many 'excellent', 'academic' or 'bright' pupils dropped out. One art teacher emphasised the academic demands of Standard Grade, underlining that the children who did well at it were those who worked steadily and produced good written work, rather than those with a 'flair'. The participants certainly felt it important to educate parents in the value of the arts in their children's education, vocational and otherwise, as well as instilling those values in the children they worked with:
…the arts education in school isn't preparing the parents of the future to show an interest by the way they're going about it … You know, they're just gonna say, 'Well, it wasn't important when I'm at school, it's not important now'. See, I think you've got to make changes now if you expect parents to get more involved.
Benefits of the arts
I say to my children that I can't think of any job, any university course, any college course where drama will not help you, it will be vital for some things, it will help you in everything. And I also say to them that even if you were never to work in your life, you will still need these skills, you'll still need to deal with your family, you'll still need to deal with your friends, you still need to deal with officialdom…
107 More so than participants in the primary teacher groups, secondary teachers were very emphatic about the vocational value of studying the arts. One group stressed the importance of telling their pupils that a Higher in their subject was of equal value to other Highers in gaining university entrance. With the rise in applications of role-playing it was felt that many employers beyond arts-specific fields saw a qualification in drama as an asset in a potential employee; and the scale of the music industry in Britain now meant that pupils could be assured that it was possible to make a good living from music. One participant felt that they had come to use their own arts training from school after many years in another field, and therefore saw studying the arts at school as a shrewd long-term investment.
108 The arts were also seen as encouraging transferable skills of benefit in other areas of the curriculum, helping some pupils with literacy and numeracy. The written components of arts subjects were also singled out as something that honed valuable writing skills, particularly among those who struggled to write in subjects whose essays required fewer individual opinions:
…art is good, or design, that part is good because then you get to their, sort of, try and start changing the kids' preconception about how they are, how literate they are, y'know, when they're writing about something that's not maybe as stressful or something that they've not…
109 Design skills were particularly stressed as an area of the curriculum with real-world applications. The relaxed atmosphere in art departments, where there was the potential to move about, was also held to be more conducive to working for some pupils. Participants pointed out the understanding of cultural and historical issues gained through the written component, and its potential for encouraging the expression of individual opinions:
…we're doing tile design at the moment and the kids are, there's certain kids that I'm thinking of right now that are describing the tiles in ways that, because there's no right or wrong in art, you have to give your opinion on it and you have to describe what it reminds you of, or how it makes you feel and things like this, so, straight away, some kids that are obviously thinking that they are bad at describing through writing, are coming out with things that are quite inventive, and I don't think they would get an opportunity in other subjects to do that, because there's more of a right and a wrong way to write an English composition.
110 Drama was also held up as a subject where pupils learnt transferable life skills of 'communicating with people, negotiating with people, organising, meeting deadlines etc.'
111 Much emphasis was also placed on the benefits to an individual of studying the arts, or their potential to 'make the whole person'. Participants saw their subjects as having considerable potential for instilling citizenship values, particularly through public projects in the community; as facilitating self-expression and emotional response; as encouraging creativity without having to deploy language or number skills; and as heightening individual discernment. Arts departments were seen by one group as allowing those pupils who 'like to dress a wee bit different' to feel at home and relax. Being involved in the arts was viewed as a means of building confidence and self-esteem for all pupils, but particularly those with behavioural difficulties:
T2: …we had to open up some of the parts to first and second year, and they did brilliantly. Two 2 nd year boys who are considered trouble in the school, just went for it, y'know, and they were brilliant, they were stars of the show, they were…
T1: It really is a confidence builder, school shows …
112 Developing an interest in the arts was described as a means of encouraging pupils who were 'notorious' in other departments away from trouble, by providing them with a consuming interest in an activity:
I mean we've got kids that have came to us and they're gang fighting, the young team from so-and-so are fighting the young team. But, y'know you get them interested, you teach them to read a wee bit, whether it's the drums or something else and they suddenly think, 'oh this is good, so I think I'll go down the Millburn Centre, there's a wee band night down there, let's go doon there' and then suddenly he's cock of the lot because he's the best drummer.
113 Finally, arts activities were also viewed strongly as a major contribution to the general life of the school:
I mean it's fantastic for parents to see [the school show] because there again, that brings the community into the school and y'know, it can, well I won't say paper a lot of cracks, but, it really does a lot to help for school relations with parents and pupils and staff.
SEN SchoolsTeaching the arts
114 Teachers in the SEN group all reported working with pupils whose special educational needs were widely varied, encompassing for example wheelchairs, those with learning difficulties, or those with multiple server special needs, requiring considerable flexibility in their teaching approaches. Nevertheless, all were enthusiastic and zealous about the importance of the arts for their pupils. One teacher, for example, had found music to be 'very successful' with children with children with Asperger's or Tourette's Syndromes, or those who had been road accident victims (she distinguished this work as creative rather than therapeutic, not being trained as a therapist). Classroom projects or activities mentioned included friezes, painting, dance and theatre work, pop bands, staff/pupil choirs, recorder groups and percussion. The expressive arts were always a source of enjoyment for pupils; where afterschool activities were run, there was always strong commitment to attending from pupils and their families.
115 Some participants' schools were also involved in joint arts provision schemes with mainstream schools; in one, for instance, this took place every Friday afternoon. This link with mainstream schools was seen as important on a number of counts - for children in the SEN schools, it represented something of a broadening of horizons; for those at the mainstream school, it familiarised with the everyday experience of individuals with special needs, promoting understanding on both sides. Arts subjects, having most scope for collaborative activity and an end product in which pupils had a sense of personal investment, were seen as the most appropriate vehicle for such interaction. For the mainstream schools, furthermore, the specialists employed by the SEN were seen as a valuable opportunity, and for the SEN teachers the chance to liaise with other teachers and pick up advice, information and suggestions on teaching practice was particularly beneficial. One participant felt that SEN teachers did not receive nearly as much information on developments in arts teaching as mainstream teachers did:
I don't think Special Needs gets all the information at all that's out there. It all goes to mainstream and unless you hear through one of your friends or that about something that's come out and that they've acquired…
116 For this reason it was repeatedly stressed at this group that being able to network outwith the school was crucial.
117 Like the teachers at the primary and secondary groups, the SEN teachers debated the role of specialist teachers. Specialists in art, music or drama typically visited schools for one or two days a week. Participants were strongly positive about their input, particularly in one-to-one work, though one had found that differences in specialists' approaches meant that some worked better with their pupils than others:
…[a former specialist's] perception was that you just did art as you would do in a main stream school, and was very clinical, and you didn't talk when you were in the art room, and you didn't - and it was like a morgue. And she's been she's been off for about a year and a half, and we were fortunate in that um we got a supply teacher in, not to replace her but he eventually became a full time member of staff, a class teacher, but his degree is in art, and he's taken over since the summer, and turned the department upside down. It's amazing the work he's getting, I mean he's down on his hands and knees with the more complex children, and he's got them all messing about and doing stuff and everything. So my experience has been it depends on the specialist…
118 However, these teachers also stressed the importance of general teachers acquiring the means to deliver the arts curriculum:
R: Is a specialist necessary in order to deliver the arts curriculum?
T5: No, no, no I wouldn't say, no: that's my opinion. But it is helpful, you know; some people might be quite timid of doing things, or they might think: 'oh I'm not very good at that'. Most people, anyone can do art or drama - that's my own philosophy, you know, you can do it. You got to stop being scared and you've got to just plunge in. And it helps if you've had any in-service, you'll always take advantage of any in-service that you've got…
119 They described amassing and delivering a very broad range of arts skills themselves; one teacher described covering flute, piano, voice, guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, drums and harmonica in her music classes. Only one teacher suggested that the demands of learning to teach individual instruments in this way might be an excessive challenge for someone without a music background, prompting some debate. Some pointed out that typical class sizes in SEN schools made access to a full range of instrumental specialists impractical, others emphasised that eventually time constraints limited the number of instruments they could familiarise themselves with
120 The group strongly endorsed the idea the arts teaching skill for SEN were best learned 'on the job'; indeed there were divergent views on whether special needs teaching could be taught. While they generally felt that their training had not fully prepared them for the demands of SEN teaching (some had trained for mainstream schools and then moved to the SEN sector), they reported finding their colleagues to be tremendously supportive in their teaching, and expressed a strong vocation for SEN teaching as essential.
Curriculum and guidelines
121 Teachers in this group found it important that the arts should not be regarded as discrete in SEN teaching from other curricular areas of literacy and numeracy. They found cross-curricular approaches to be beneficial:
I think it crosses over most of the curriculum. Personally I use a lot of art, visual art maybe just to emphasise something, a problem that's in language because when you see they're actually doing it their selves, hands on…
122 They did not raise any issues with the curriculum content, but expressed strong dissatisfaction with guidelines:
I: … I would be interested to know what you think of those [elaborate curriculum] guidelines, or such as they are, I mean are they?
T5: I hate them tooth and nail, [laughing] which I think they're, it is dreadful, I'm speechless which doesn't happen often but -
T2: I mean sometimes these people haven't been in a special needs school.
T4: This is true, this is true.
T2: Well it's been my experience that they still think in the mainstream which is totally different.
Resources and management
123 At the SEN group, participants generally reported finding their management positively oriented towards the arts, with a sense that arts activities were at the centre of school life:
…a lot of it will depend also I think on the management you have at the school. As I said, we have, we're very arts orientated in my school so we're really given a very free rein on how to work with the children.
124 However, there were specific aspects of the job in which some teachers found their head teachers more supportive than others did. One teacher expressed gratitude to her head teacher for the flexibility she was afforded in terms of time outside the school for networking or seeking resources, which she saw as vital to her teaching. However, others criticised the way teaching demands or lack of staff cover at their school hindered staff development:
… part of my remit is the sort of continuous professional development coordinator in the school, and I have the sort of interviews with the staff on: where would you like to go, what would you like to try? This sort of thing, and it comes in over and over again: 'I want to meet with other colleagues that are doing things', and I will say: 'Well I can set up you up with…'. Having been in two other special needs schools before this, in different authorities, I know the specialists now: 'I could do this meeting' and everything. And then the day comes, and they can't go because somebody's off and they haven't got anybody to bring in.
125 One participant who specialised in music at her school felt that she was 'lower in the pecking order' for CPD than staff who taught literacy and numeracy. The teachers also stressed the importance of good communication from managers about CPD opportunities relating to the arts as they became available.
126 Most participants also felt their teaching would benefit from access to better resources in terms of space, materials and staff. One school, for example, had to timetable for the use of rooms in the community hall next door to deliver arts teaching, some of which were empty and not necessarily conducive to teaching. Transport costs for visits to museums and theatre shows were seen as prohibitive for many schools. Some participants would have liked to see more instrumental tutors available, on a par with mainstream schools, but felt that their head teachers did not 'shout loud enough' to secure this.
Assessment and accountability
127 The SEN teachers, like others, were aware of both management and parents being focused on assessment, but perceived some challenges in dealing with this:
…you have to be able to, you know, have it, what you were saying, the evidence and everything. You can't just talk off the off the top of your head, and if you get inspected the written work the management have to submit for an HMI is phenomenal, you know, never mind what class teachers have to do.
128 One participant felt that assessment was too geared towards the end product of children's work in visual art; she considered SEN pupils' main achievements to be in the process of artistic production. To this end, she used photographs to document the children's working practice as extensively as possible, and sought to assess through 'observation and questioning'.
we are now using our photographs as evidence that we have done this work, and the children have it, you know have the experience, because sometimes to get the children to do things is just impossible. I mean we do our best to adapt things, and we try and overcome barriers that the children will have, but sometimes with the best will in the world it's just impossible. So it still gives them the experience, but to assess them is perhaps usually done through observation, and questioning
129 An audit tool for Expressive Arts was mentioned as having been helpful, but was described as now being in need of updating.
130 In some accounts of in this group, assessment was seen as secondary to the point of arts teaching, the main rationale being its laissez-faire nature:
T2: I think because a lot of the children obviously have learning difficulties, they're going to perceive a high level of failure, whether it is or not, within language and within number and that sort of thing. Expressive arts is where you can't make a mistake, you know it's a great moral booster…
T4: Inclusive it really is true.
T2: …it doesn't matter if you're in a wheelchair if they have a wee bell strapped round your hand and you can make a sound, you know..
Involving professionals
131 The SEN group made reference to a wide range of professional artists or organisations who had performed for or worked with their pupils on projects, all of which were seen as greatly enhancing provision for their pupils. These included Sounds of Progress workshops and performances and a Celtic Connections Festival project to send traditional musicians into the schools; Scottish Youth Theatre, Scottish Mask and Puppet Theatre and Giant productions; visiting art & design students organised through a local college; and Why Dance workshops and a dance residency. Most participants saw their cultural coordinators as central in bringing many of these opportunities to the school. The projects were seen as invaluable for what they brought to the school - the Celtic Connections project, for example, was praised for allowing children to experience unfamiliar instruments and sounds in close proximity:
I think where an art specialist is invaluable is that she will for instance bring things like instruments that we can't, like the harp - she'll bring specialist instruments in, which you know they wouldn't get to hear.
132 They also spoke of the benefits to themselves of observing or working with visiting professionals:
…when Sounds of Progress were in I thought that what they were doing with the children were so effective and yet so simple, and I thought: 'yeah I can do that'. Whereas my understanding of drama was that when I was at school - you know, 'pretend you're a tree'…
Meeting the costs of such projects was, however, an issue for some schools.
How the arts are valued
133 Participants at the group reported that the arts were taking an increasingly large part at their schools, and generally felt the Expressive Arts were 'rated highly'. Pupils' art work on the walls was felt to be particularly prized by visitors to the school and parents, and some found that their head teachers actively sought an ongoing programme of displays. However, one participant felt that not all schools went beyond a superficial appreciation of the outcomes of arts teaching, and that management had a big part to play in determining this:
..that was why I went from music into drama and movement and everything because the head teacher was a former PE teacher and he could see the value of it, and it was integral to the whole part of the, every other part of the curriculum. Then I moved to another one [school]where it was: 'Oh well the expressive arts can be music at Christmas time and put pretty pictures up on the walls' and it was very much an also-ran.
Benefits of the arts
134 The expressive arts were seen to have considerable benefits for pupils with special educational needs. The most frequently cited of these were raising self-confidence and self-esteem through, for example, the opportunity to pursue imagination or shape an individual identity, and a sense of ownership in tasks where they were not challenge to identify or provide 'correct' answers. The arts provided a valuable outlet of self-expression. Inter-school projects with pupils from mainstream schools using the arts were also of great benefit to all children:
… it lets them [the mainstream children] see how difficult it is for our children to do anything at all. The barriers that they have to overcome before they can do the simplest of things, and the children become, the able child of the mainstream becomes very attached to our children. So it's very nice then, you know it's very successful. It's also, for our children going out into a different environment it's good, because some of them live very sheltered lives and are very seldom out, so it lets them see other children and how they operate within their school environment as well.
135 Arts subjects also involved work that could encompass a wide range of special needs, which was important given the mixed characteristics of classes in most schools. The opportunity to challenge physical restrictions was also seen as important:
I had a boy who came from a main stream school, who was told he couldn't play with his guitar, an electric guitar, and he was doing Standard Grade Music, and he'd got, he could only use that thumb and that finger. And he passed his standard and foundation, because we worked it out. And he also was a great sport, and was into sport and things, so he applied a lot of the stuff that transferred onto music to problem solve it, and that redeemed, just released him: fantastic.