The benefits of an arts-rich education
Between 2021 and 2023, I worked as the senior researcher on the Researching the Arts in Primary Schools project, RAPS for short.
The team and I are now pleased to share the final report.
The main part of my role involved whole-day visits to 41 primary schools in England. These included:
Six schools in London
Four in Birmingham
Two each in Newcastle, Plymouth, Bradford, Ipswich, Liverpool, the Kent coast (Margate and Ramsgate) and the Cornwall peninsular (Newlyn and Nancledra).
In each school, I interviewed separate focus groups of Year 4, 5 and 6 students, and groups of children involved in arts clubs, arts councils and arts-related extra-curricular activities. I also interviewed classroom teachers who taught arts subjects, arts lead teachers and senior leaders. I revisited around half of the schools for a second round of whole-day during which I surveyed Year 5 students and did follow-up interviews with arts lead teachers and senior leaders.
I had guided tours of the schools, sometimes by the children. These primarily focussed on art displays and spaces where the arts happened. I got to see lots of artworks, sketchbooks, sculptures, paintings, collages, textiles, puppets and mannequins and murals. I also got to experience rehearsals and performances of instrumental music, singing, choral speaking, dance, drama and musical theatre. The schools also showed me a wide range of other arts and creative works such as films, animations, photographs and light boxes.
Overall, the project collected the following data:
Arts-rich school survey (n = 76)
Interviews with 854 children, 150 adults, mostly teachers and SLT
A survey with 151Classroom teachers from 16 schools
A in-person survey with 1017 Year 5 children
Documentation from 41 schools
Photographic survey of 41 schools
Comparator performance data from 22 RAPs and 44 EEF family schools
You will be pleased to know that the vast majority of the visits were done on public transport (train, bike, one bus).
I clocked up 12,000 miles of travel, more than the distance from Nottingham to Sydney!
The main findings of the report are included in the Executive Summary:
Arts-rich primary schools are highly diverse. There is no one way to be arts-rich. However, there are patterns across the schools that can inform other schools and the school system more generally.
Arts-rich schools offer art and music to all children every week and every year. They also offer other expressive arts subjects. Arts-rich schools offer a wide range of extra-curricular arts activities and special events; these are complementary to the regular arts programme
The expressive arts are integral to the schools’ identities and their philosophies. They all see the expressive arts as integral to a broad and balanced curriculum.
Commitment to the expressive arts does not come at the expense of other subject learning. The majority of the arts-rich schools we studied did at least as well as, if not better, than equivalent schools and schools in their local authority. Children’s success across the full range of subjects was recognised in their inspection ratings.
Key to the schools’ arts-richness was the commitment of senior leaders, and the appointment of specialist staff with expertise. Specialist staff taught an arts subject, planned the arts curriculum and supported classroom teachers.
Arts-rich schools go against the grain of research evidence that most primary classroom teachers do not feel confident teaching expressive artssubjects: generalist classroom teachers in arts- rich schools felt confident in teaching a range of expressive arts subjects.
Arts-rich schools are notable for the depth and density of their arts leadership. Children and governors contribute to this depth and density by working with arts specialists.
Arts-rich schools have strong, ongoing relationships and partnerships with artists and cultural organisations. These add to the specialist expertise within the school and enhance children’s learning.
To accompany the visits, I wrote blog posts (artsprimary.com) for each of the 41 schools. These contain many more examples of primary art as well as information about the schools and how they do their particular brand of arts richness. They also contain links to arts organisations, networks and programmes with which the schools were involved. Start here and enjoy finding out about the diversity of arts-richness in the project.
It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with Profs Pat Thomson and Chris Hall. I learned so much about research on this scale, interviewing children and school staff, and the many benefits of an arts rich education to children. It was clear that these benefits extended to teachers, the wider school, families, local communities and further.
It was inspiring to have the opportunity to conduct the visits over those two years and to be immersed in primary arts, Thanks to all of the fantastic teachers, senior leaders, visiting artists and, of course, those many, many children for sharing their experiences, emotions, approaches and of course, their art.
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