Parties jostle over axeing of Creatives in Schools

Wednesday, 19 June 2024

National’s Erica Stanford, the education minister, came under fire for the Government’s decision to axe funding for the Creatives in Schools programme.

The education minister has blamed the education ministry for the Government’s discontinuation of the Creatives in Schools programme that was lauded by educators and other political parties.

As part of Parliament’s new scrutiny week, Education Minister Erica Stanford faced questions in an estimates hearing on Wednesday about the decision to scrap the programme, which funded professional creatives to partner with schools and kura so they could share their specialist artistic knowledge and creative practice with students.

Engagements were in depth and lasting between eight and 20 weeks, and aimed to enhance the wellbeing of students.

Stanford said: “I asked ministry officials to hand to me things that they believed weren’t giving us the value for money that we needed, to be able to invest in the things that absolutely raise achievement. … The ministry came to me of their own volition and said, here is something we think we can offer up for savings because it’s not getting the outcomes based on all the data we have ‒ qualitative and quantitative.”

But the minister hit a snafu when she said the programme was brought in as a response to the pandemic, and had to defer to a public servant to respond to Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan, who pointed out the programme began in 2019 pre-Covid.

Labour’s Jan Tinetti, pictured, the former education minister, took issue with Stanford’s assertion that she used strong evidence to guide her decisions.

Stanford said the Government wanted to prioritise things like structured literacy, raising achievement and closing the equity gap in schools, and repeatedly mentioned the coalition’s desire to use strong evidence to inform its decisions.

But both Xu-Nan and Labour’s Jan Tinetti took issue with the latter assertion. Xu-Nan asked what programmes had to do to prove their value, given the evidence that had been published on the Creatives in Schools programme which praised its efficacy and recommend it be continued.

Stanford said the Government’s focus on reading, writing and maths was not to say other areas of the curriculum were not important. In an emailed statement to The Post, she said there were still artistic programmes outside the classroom which were available to students.

Xu-Nan told The Post that cutting the programme, amounting to cost savings of between $2.8 million and $3.2m a year, showed the Government’s disdain for the arts.

National’s Paul Goldsmith, the arts minister, said on Tuesday that long-term sustainable careers in the arts started in schools.

“This programme was a great example of how teaching arts in the modern education environment helps build social connections and cultural identity ‒ the kind of things that support a student’s confidence in overall learning,” Xu-Nan said.

But National’s Paul Goldsmith, the arts minister, said the Government was deeply committed to the arts, and said characterisations by other members were “ludicrous”: “My vision is New Zealand is as well known internationally for its arts and creativity as it is for its dairy products and beautiful scenery. … I am currently devising a comprehensive arts strategy, something the previous government never bothered to do.”

Goldsmith had on Tuesday in his own select committee grilling said that long-term sustainable careers in the arts started in schools.

Labour’s Rachel Boyack found irony in the minister’s comments: “I am disappointed that the Government has cut this programme, as it supports our schools to develop our creative talent. The Government needs to do more to support people to develop careers in the arts sector, not take programmes away that can support the arts as a valid career pathway for young people.”