Further decline in Arts Education 2020-2021
- Theatre Workout
- Oct 18, 2021
- 2 min read
There has been another significant drop in the number of arts GCSE and A Level entries, part of a worrying trend from recent years, but hardly surprising as so few students have had any practical arts activities since March 2020.
Read the full report from the Cultural Learning Alliance here.
The result: far fewer arts GCSEs and A Levels are studied across England’s schools than a decade ago.
-38% decline in arts GCSE entries 2010 to 2021
-1% decline in arts GCSE entries 2020 to 2021
+2.4% increase in GCSE Cohort number 2020 to 2021
-31% decline in arts A Level arts entries 2010 to 2020, -1% decline 2020-2021
Although there has been an overall decline in arts subjects, there are a few positives to note. There has been a slight increase in GCSE Art & Design, and GCSE Music takeup, and while there has been a 3% drop in GCSE Dance, there has been an 8% increase in A-Level Dance.
GCSEs
England only results 2010 2020 2021 % change 2010 % change 2020
to 2021 to 2021
Art and Design Subjects 172,504 190,400 195,578 +13% +3%
Dance** 15,884 9,130 8,848 -44% -3%
Design and Technology 270,401 88,872 81,774 -70% -8%
Drama 81,592 57,808 56,739 -30% -2%
Media/Film/TV Studies 63,808 34,657 32,528 -49% -6%
Music 46,045 34,665 35,202 -24% +1%
Performing arts 23,505 8,996 8,688 -63% -3%
Total 673,739 424,528 419,357 -38% -1%
A-Levels
England only results 2010 2020 2021 % change 2010 % change 2020
to 2021 to 2021
Art and Design subjects 42,577 38,907 39,293 -8% +1%
Dance** 2,261 1,116 1,203 -47% +8%
Design and Technology 16,519 9,167 8,343 -49% -9%
Drama 15,144 8,668 8,640 -43% 0%
Media/Film/TV studies 31,032 19,508 18,810 -39% -4%
Music 8,790 5,032 5,039 -43% 0%
Performing arts 3,666 1,060 1,152 -69% +9%
Total 119,989 83,458 82,480 -31% -1%
The table format makes it really obvious how uneven the declines are — D&T and Performing Arts dropping off a cliff feels like a policy choice as much as a pandemic effect. I’d be curious what the regional split looks like too, because I bet the “recovery” isn’t evenly distributed. I was reading something unrelated on https://stylelooklab.com about how small constraints compound over time, and it weirdly maps onto what happens when schools lose specialist staff for a single year.
Seeing Drama and Performing Arts down like that makes me think about the knock-on effects for confidence and communication, not just “arts careers.” And when schools cut courses, it’s usually the kids without outside lessons who lose out first. Kind of random, but I was playing with this site recently and it hit me that the appetite for creative stuff is clearly still there — it’s the opportunities in school that are shrinking.
The “far fewer practical arts activities since March 2020” line really lands — it’s hard to pick Drama or Music if you’ve barely done any of it hands-on for a year. Also, that cohort size increase alongside falling entries makes the decline feel even more stark. Slight tangent: I think I first saw the CLA report referenced on hrefgo and it sent me down a rabbit hole of how different sectors track participation.
What worries me is the long-term pipeline effect: fewer GCSE entries now means fewer confident students auditioning for youth theatre, bands, and later conservatoires in a few years. It’s not just “subject choice,” it’s whether schools even run the classes and ensembles that make arts feel normal. Odd comparison, but messing with classical ciphers like https://caesarcipher.org/ciphers/vigenere reminded me how quickly skills vanish when you don’t practice them regularly.
The tiny upticks in Art & Design and Music are nice, but it still reads like access is narrowing to whatever a school can timetable cheaply (or whatever survives accountability measures). The Dance numbers are interesting too — fewer at GCSE but more at A-Level suggests people are only sticking with it if they’ve already got external support. When I need a brain reset after reading stats like this, I end up on BlockBlast for ten minutes, then come back feeling even more annoyed about what kids are missing.