Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is chair of the Royal Shakespeare Company
Artists from different disciplines coming into schools and attempting to boost an element of children’s education is nothing new. Their input, often seen as injecting fun into the classroom, tends to be welcomed as a positive, if nebulous, optional extra.
But there is a persistent degree of scepticism, too. Does anything that these arts world types do with the kids actually improve their learning or help develop skills for employment? Where is the evidence that any of this works?
There is undoubtedly a need for something to make an impact. The National Literacy Trust has found that 46 per cent of disadvantaged 11-year-olds in England left school in 2022 unable to write at the expected level. More than 185,000 children were growing up without the early literacy and communication skills they need to thrive.
The OECD, World Economic Forum and others tracking productivity and growth all point to the importance of fostering the kinds of skills and attitudes that the arts can develop in young people. But again, this only makes a general argument.
Over the past 15 years, the Royal Shakespeare Company has developed an approach to teaching Shakespeare inspired by the rehearsal room — with young people using their whole bodies to explore the text. Now, it has designed a way to obtain hard evidence for the impact of these methods in schools. It has also, crucially, transformed the way money from donors can be deployed in a targeted and effective manner.
An expert group chaired by Oxford academics helped the RSC develop a project to test what difference the combination of Shakespeare’s language and RSC teaching made in 45 state primary schools across England. All had above-average pupils eligible for free school meals. They were randomly assigned either to an intervention group working with the RSC or a control group.
Teachers had five days of training with the RSC and then delivered 20 hours of Shakespeare lessons to 9- and 10-year-olds. The results were clear: statistically significant improvements in the language development of children in schools using our methods.
The pupils wrote and spoke more. Their writing was longer. They used more detailed and complex language. They employed richer, broader and more sophisticated vocabulary and were better at expressing emotions. The improvement after using the RSC methods was up 24 per cent.
The research found other significant differences: the children were more confident with language and saw themselves as good learners and problem solvers. If you can crack Shakespeare, you can do algebra.
For me, as someone who went on to forge a career in finance, government and business, Shakespeare changed my teenage horizons. His works gave me role models in the absence of live ones and the courage to change the course of my life. This study shows us that Shakespeare still has that power — if it’s taught in the right way.
The RSC team is working with Nesta, the UK’s social innovation agency, in part due to concern about extreme pressures on arts funding — we need to broaden the pool of people who understand the difference that the arts can make. Together we’ve developed a funding model, new for this sector, under which the RSC will only get paid by donors for education projects if it can prove that pre-agreed impacts have been made.
The money will be used for programmes in 350 schools over the next two years. We’ve already started in Skegness, Corby, Hartlepool, Coventry and Peterborough. But we would like to do more work with other arts organisations and ensure that donors feel confident about funding arts education.
The UK has a dismal record on making sure our cultural riches belong to every child — changing it should matter to all adults. To borrow from our house playwright: “O this learning, what a thing it is.”