National Partnership for Culture recommendations: Scottish Government response

1. Education and Learning

1.1 The Scottish Government should guarantee the equitable provision of cultural education both in formal and informal education for young people.

The Scottish Government shares the aspiration that all young people experience high quality education in all the arts. The Curriculum for Excellence framework (more information on the Curriculum for Excellence framework) is flexible to ensure the expertise of school leaders and education practitioners is valued and allows them to translate the curriculum to meet the needs of their learners. The Scottish Government's commitment to this empowerment agenda means that schools and education practitioners have the flexibility to include the arts. This is complemented by the Scottish Government's support for Youth Music Initiative.

We have committed to begin scoping of the new youth arts strategy over the next year, which will provide an opportunity to explore how to further achieve equitable provision. To ensure sequencing with the programme of education reform, including the review of the curriculum, the Scottish Government will take forward a review of the expressive arts curricular area beginning at the beginning of the 2022/23 Academic Year.

To deliver on this recommendation, we will carry out cross-portfolio engagement to scope where culture may be able to link in to the Place Standard tool (more information on the Place Standard tool), developed for children and young people to promote equitable engagement in place issues.

1.2 Relevant agencies should be charged with developing a national plan to embed artists and other creative practitioners in all schools, in ways that align with the curriculum.

The Scottish Government cannot fully commit to the development of an additional national plan, as this would require significant additional resource which may be to the detriment of the delivery of other youth arts initiatives. We will explore other opportunities to scope whether any of the established initiatives around the Creative Learning Plan could be scaled up – for example, the National Creative Learning Network and the Creative Learning Network Fund – to coordinate regional collaboration and partnerships and to deliver initiatives and creative activities.

Scotland's Creative Learning Plan (more information on Scotland's Creative Learning Plan) is in place to promote more creative teaching practices and provide support for creative initiatives within local authorities, schools and places of learning. Creative Scotland, as part of the review of the plan, are improving how arts organisations, artists and creative practitioners see themselves reflected in, and relate to, the current plan and improving stakeholder accountability to the vision, aims and outcomes. We will work closely with Creative Scotland and Education Scotland on the delivery of the Creative Learning Plan.

Three recent pieces of sector-led research, commissioned by Creative Scotland, which explore the broader arts education and delivery in Scotland across different art form areas, have a broad degree of commonality with the NPC recommendations. We will scope the potential to take forward the learnings and recommendations from these reports.

We will also explore what opportunity there is to strengthen links between Architecture and Design Scotland and the cultural education agenda, in terms of working with young people and promoting cultural excellence.

1.3 Greater support and guidance should be provided to education professionals and young people to help demonstrate accessible pathways into careers in culture.

The Scottish Government will build on existing strong links with other workstreams, such as Developing the Young Workforce (more information on Developing the Young Workforce) and we will seek ways to further promote culture based education and career pathways. This recommendation should also be considered by the Scottish Funding Council as the national strategic body for funding teaching and learning, and by Skills Development Scotland in their role in delivering Scotland's national careers service. We will facilitate a discussion with each stakeholder.

We will engage with work already underway on further strengthening partnerships between schools and the tertiary sector, which is being taken forward as part of the Scottish Funding Council report 'Co-Creating the Learner Journey' (more information on Co-Creating the Learner Journey).

We will also commit to exploring opportunities, through multiple reform programmes, to ensure the sectors we promote through, for example, Foundation Apprenticeships (more information on Foundation Apprenticeships), are in line with current skills priorities. This will be evidence based, closely linked to the skills agenda and in line with the planning for Skills Audit Scotland Report.