Today the Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) publishes its 2026 annual Report Card to provide a comprehensive understanding of barriers and progress for all Arts subjects for school pupils in England. It also presents a detailed analysis for each Arts subject.
Alongside this year’s Report Card, today CLA is also co-publishing a significant body of valuable new evidence. Rapid Evidence Reviews into Dance, Drama and Music education have been co-commissioned with the Royal Shakespeare Company, alongside an overarching analysis of all three Reviews (and the existing Review of Art, Craft and Design).
The publications were launched at a parliamentary event on 13 May hosted and chaired by Jo Platt MP. Speakers included Derri Burdon and Sally Bacon, CLA Co-Chairs; Jacqui O’Hanlon, Deputy Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and CLA Evidence Associate; and Geoff Barton CBE, Chair of the 2025 IPPR Inclusion Taskforce and RSC Trustee.
A number of sector colleagues spoke in response to the reports, including Naveed Idrees, Head of Lift Feversham primary school in Bradford; Baroness Keeley; Ed Harlow, secondary music teacher and President of the National Education Union; Sir Anthony Seldon; Catherine Sutton, Head of Programme, Education, Paul Hamlyn Foundation; Erica Love, CEO, Culture Central, West Midlands; Laura Nicholson, Head of Children and Young People’s Dance, One Dance UK; Henry Ward, Director, Freelands Foundation; Michele Gregson, General Secretary/CEO, National Society for Education in Art and Design; Bridget Whyte, CEO, Music Mark; and Tina Ramdeen, Associate Director of Young People, the Roundhouse, and CLA Trustee.Dr Lynsey McCulloch, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal Shakespeare Company, also introduced presentations from the authors of the Rapid Evidence Reviews: Greta Gauhe, Jennifer Kitchen and Natalie Nazier.
Keep an eye on our social channels for shareable updates which you can use to spread the word.
CLA Annual Report Card 2026
This year the numbers provide a slightly more positive picture in some cases and a less encouraging picture in others. CLA continues to tell the overall story for all Arts subjects over time since the EBacc – the school performance measure which excluded Arts subjects – was first introduced in 2010, and also to provide year on year analysis (2023/24 to 2024/2025).
Thanks to a new Teacher Tapp primary survey of the Arts in primary schools, we can now see how the ‘Arts entitlement gap’ in the education system starts in primary and has been travelling upwards as children progress through the system.
This edition lands in the context of welcome education system reform and a new government ambition to revitalise Arts subjects. The 2026 Report Card makes clear that change will take time to deliver.
New primary school findings include:
- 47% of independent school primary teachers report having more than two and a half hours of Arts per week timetabled, compared to 6% of state school primary teachers.
- Around one in four primary teachers have less than an hour of Arts timetabled per week.
- 28% of primary teachers report that the number of Arts hours they teach has fallen over the past two years, with 8% reporting these hours have decreased significantly.
- Disadvantage plays a role in differences between primary schools: almost a third (31%) of teachers in schools with the highest proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) report a reduction in the number of Arts taught hours in the prior two years, compared with 22% of teachers in primary schools with the lowest proportion of pupils eligible for FSM.
- The majority of primary schools have subject leads in Art & Design (89%), Music (84%) and Design & Technology (78%); only around 9% of primary schools have a Drama lead and 5% have a Dance lead.
- 43% of primary teachers reported that their school works with no external cultural partners (artist or cultural organisation) to deliver their Arts curriculum.
The ‘Arts entitlement gap’
Latest government data continues to indicate that where a child grows up and their socio-economic status are significant social determinants in whether they will access/pursue Arts qualifications – and in the type of qualifications they will select (and sometimes in which Arts subject they choose at A Level). Entrenched socio-economic factors remain significant determinants in Arts subject take-up at 14, 16 and 18. Latest findings on the ‘Arts entitlement gap’ are that:
- Schools in the most deprived fifth of local authorities are more likely to have no entries in some Arts subjects at GCSE: 54% of schools in the most deprived fifth of local authorities have no GCSE Music entries, compared to 21% of schools in the least deprived fifth of local authorities.
- Year 11 pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) are under-represented in all Arts GCSE subjects, while pupils eligible for free school meals are over-represented in entries for every Arts Level 2 vocational qualifications. Dance has the lowest participation rate for FSM-eligible pupils at GCSE, and Art & Design has the highest.
- The regions with the highest percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals – the West Midlands and the North East – have the lowest proportion of Arts GCSE entries.
- Pupils with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) are under-represented in most Arts subjects at GCSE, but not in Art & Design or Drama; participation for vocational entries at age 16 is more consistently positive.
- At A Level, the most disadvantaged regions have the lowest Arts take-up (the exception being London, which is an outlier); aside from London the smallest proportions of all A Level entries are in the West Midlands and the North East.
- Arts A Level entries make up 3.8% of all entries in the most deprived fifth of local authorities; they make up 5.9% of entries in the least deprived fifth of local authorities.
- Students eligible for free school meals were under-represented in A Level Music, Dance, Drama, and Design & Technology in 2024/25.
- Pupils with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) are under-represented in most Arts subjects at GCSE, but not in Art & Design or Drama; participation for vocational entries at age 16 is more consistently positive.
- Black and Asian students are under-represented in every Arts A Level.
Arts teaching workforce:
Welcome increases in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) applications for Arts subjects between 2023/24 and 2024/25 are set against significant falls in ITT applications for Arts subjects since 2010, and a recent marked surge in the number of teachers with no post-school subject-relevant Arts qualifications.
- Just under 23% of all expressive Arts teachers have no subject-relevant post-A Level qualification. The largest increase in the number of teachers with no subject-relevant post-A Level qualification has been in Music, with this figure increasing by 10% between 2023/24 and 2024/25, followed by Art & Design (9%), Design & Technology (6.6%) and Drama (2.5%).
- With the exception of Music, in 2024/25, the acceptance rate for Black and Asian applicants to Arts ITT routes was mostly slightly below the average rate across all secondary subjects.
RAPID EVIDENCE REVIEWS FOR ARTS SUBJECTS
Alongside this year’s Report Card, today CLA is also co-publishing Rapid Evidence Reviews into Dance, Drama and Music education which have been co-commissioned with the Royal Shakespeare Company, currently the only performing arts organisation with Independent Research Organisation status (granted by UK Research and Innovation).
The Curriculum and Assessment Review called for the government to embrace a variety of evidence, including robust longitudinal data and research. In 2025 the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and CLA co-commissioned Rapid Evidence Reviews in Dance, Music and Drama. An existing Rapid Evidence Review of Art, Craft and Design (published in 2022) will be updated during 2026 but in the meantime has been incorporated into an overarching analysis of the new Reviews.
A Rapid Evidence Review, or RER, is a research method designed to quickly gather, analyse, and summarise existing research on a given topic. These Reviews have been developed in a collaboration between the CLA and the Royal Shakespeare Company through the RSC’s role as an Independent Research Organisation, and with the support of the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, which brings together eight leading universities across the Midlands.
The Rapid Evidence Reviews have been published alongside the 2026 Report Card edition. The four RERs collectively provide a substantial evidence base of 1,175 studies: 463 studies for Art, Craft and Design; 71 studies for Dance; 351 studies for Drama; and 291 studies for Music. They span different methodologies, contexts, age groups, and geographical locations, though primarily focused on English-language research from the US and UK.
We have never before had such a comprehensive body of evidence for arts subjects. They reveal that each discipline is a powerful support for holistic development, touching every aspect of a child’s and young person’s growth. The four expressive art forms develop social learning and build connections between young people through the collaboration inherent in music-making, dance, art making, and performance. The expressive arts act as languages that transcend cultural and linguistic differences, breaking down social barriers and creating inclusive environments where young people from diverse heritages and contexts find common ground and mutual understanding.
Each expressive arts discipline offers distinct knowledge and skills, but the research reviews consistently demonstrates that the benefits of Art, Craft and Design, Dance, Drama and Music education extend far beyond the development of artistic practices.
Agency and personal development were the most significant benefits across all four reviews. The four art forms offer distinctive yet complementary pathways for empowerment and active citizenship. They each deliver substantial cognitive benefits that are relatively consistent across art forms. Identity formation benefits from the approaches offered through the pedagogies of the different art forms, and health and wellbeing benefits span both physical and mental dimensions across all four disciplines.
All four expressive arts disciplines offer alternative pathways to success and engagement for children who may not benefit from other academic subjects. The Reviews also all support the CLA Arts Education Capabilities Framework, which provides a shared language and understanding of the seven personal and social benefits that expressive arts subjects and experiences bring to children and young people, enabling them to achieve and to thrive: agency; wellbeing; collaboration; communication; empathy; creativity and interpretation. They also outline a future research agenda.
Using the new Report Card and Rapid Evidence Reviews
We now have more data and evidence on arts education available to us than ever before. The education and cultural sectors can use this data and evidence to support programme development and planning, evaluation and case-making.
You can access the new Report Card here.
You can access the Rapid Evidence Reviews here.
You can also find the Reviews on the Royal Shakespeare Company website here.
