A brave new world for creativity? What are Labour promising for the arts?

Sir Keir Starmer announced his government's victory against the backdrop of the Tate Modern; a metaphor for optimism for creatives across the country.

But what does a new Labour government mean for art teachers? Is our optimism mis-placed or do we genuinely have reason to be hopeful?

According to Labour's manifesto, we can expect a well-needed revamp of the National Curriculum, placing creativity at its core. This signals a return to a more skills based education that recognises that the attributes that are valued by employers go far beyond an individual's competency with just words and numbers. Those of you who are old enough to remember the proposed Labour national curriculum that was quashed before its implementation into statutory policy by the incoming Conservative government, will remember that the ethos was much more about children 'doing' and 'experiencing' than 'knowing' and 'remembering.' Engagement was at its heart and I for one, was disappointed that it never saw the light of day.

The current National Curriculum, conceived around the importance of knowledge, has (in my humble opinion) been the death of creativity in schools. The National Curriculum for art which consists of a whopping seven bullet points, provides very little support for generalist teachers without a specific specialism in art. One would be forgiven for thinking that the Department for Education did not really have a clear idea of what they wanted children to learn in art and the lack of any subsequent guidance or policy compounds that thought. The rhetoric around education has consistently left art conspicuously absent. Last year's Ofsted Research Review that provided a rather more concrete vision of primary art, arrived significantly after many of the other subject reviews and still implied that the government and Ofsted were taking a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to all of the foundation subjects. You only need to look at the assessment guidance section of this report to see that Ofsted place a much higher value on a child's ability to write about art than to actually produce anything artistic.

The Labour manifesto makes it clear that the new government recognise that the arts teach children skills and qualities valued by employers as well as acknowledging the value of 'art for art's sake' in terms of reengaging children with their learning and reinstating schools as enriching and motivating places to be. I have also been heartened to hear Sir Keir talk about the way that the degradation of the arts in schools has stood to provide the most significant disadvantage to those children from less wealthy backgrounds. If you cannot afford extra curricular tuition or expensive art supplies at home, you can no longer assume that schools will step in to redress this imbalance as the curriculum has been significantly narrowed. This has resulted in a limited talent pool within the arts that is particularly worrying for a country like the UK that is so reliant on creative output. With our creative industries growing faster than any other sector, it's about time that our education system prioritised the skills that children really need for their futures.

So what do we need from Labour in practice?

• I would like to see a new National Curriculum that embeds creativity throughout. Not just an improvement to the statutory provision in terms of quality and quantity of art, but a recognition of the benefits that art can imbue into all areas of learning.

• We need to embed art into education in a way that goes beyond just taught content. The significant health, well-being and social benefits of art need to be integral to any improvements to educational approach.

• Teachers need to be supported in art. They should no longer be responsible for seeking out and sourcing their own CPD; time and investment in quality training needs to be a statutory part of ongoing teacher professional development.

• The culture of testing in primary schools needs to be reformed. For as long as schools are league tabled on children's performance in such a narrow field of education, schools will have no choice but to continue ploughing all of their time and resources into just english and maths.

• Ofsted need to show genuine understanding and appreciation of the uniqueness of art.

We need the new Labour government to lead by example. The arts need to be championed. Schools need to prove to children that art can be a viable, prosperous and lucrative career.

Time will tell if Labour's commitment to arts education in their manifesto transfers into tangible action. But for now, I have hope.