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Press release: Creative partnerships stimulate creativity in pupils

Pupils now need to be encouraged to apply their creative skills across all areas of their work

Schools involved in Creative Partnerships have stimulated pupils’ creativity and established the conditions in which pupils can further develop their creative skills, according to a new report published today by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted).

Creative partnerships: initiative and impact, found that most Creative Partnerships programmes in the areas surveyed were effective in developing in pupils some attributes of creative people: an ability to improvise, take risks, show resilience, and collaborate with others. However, pupils were often unclear about how they could apply these skills independently to develop original ideas and outcomes. Although their creative achievements were emergent rather than advanced overall, the conditions had been established in which further development could flourish.

Good personal and social skills were developed by most pupils involved in the programmes, including effective collaboration with other pupils and a maturity in their relationships with others.

Miriam Rosen, Ofsted’s Director of Education, said:

“Creative Partnerships have fostered creativity and the pupils involved have developed some of the skills which often define creative people. The challenge now is to ensure pupils develop the confidence and initiative to develop and apply these skills so that they work and think more creatively beyond the programmes.”

The partnerships, introduced in areas of deprivation in 2002, represented a fresh start for a small but significant minority of pupils. Opportunities to work directly in the creative industries, for example when pupils worked with fashion designers to design a new school uniform, motivated pupils and inspired high aspirations. Pupils whose creative abilities developed included those who had previously been unconvinced by approaches to learning or the value of education. Attendance and behaviour improved and for some pupils this signalled the start of a return to schooling.

Today’s report found that pupils benefited from working with creative practitioners, such as writers, environmental designers, entrepreneurs, artists and performers. The schools visited also showed that many pupils improved their key skills such as literacy, numeracy and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

However, programmes were less effective than they might have been because of uncertainty about pupils’ starting points and because activity that was insufficiently demanding of pupils’ creativity went unchallenged.

Teachers also learned through opportunities to work alongside pupils and had discovered how to think more creatively when approaching familiar tasks. These included teachers who had previously lacked belief in their own creativity and ability to inspire creativity in others.

Headteachers in the schools surveyed were committed to innovation; their flexibility and support enabled creative practitioners, teachers and pupils to try unfamiliar approaches. Several schools had developed a member of staff as the ‘creative ambassador’ who looked for additional opportunities to develop creative approaches.

Creative practitioners were very well trained by the Creative Partnerships delivery teams. Although they were more familiar with working in the creative industries they were trained to work effectively in schools. In some schools creative practitioners worked with teachers to plan more opportunities to stimulate creativity. Good collaborative planning between subject areas developed in the majority of primary and secondary schools.

Recommendations include:

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) should:

• work together with Arts Council England to establish a framework that aims to give more pupils the opportunity to work with a creative practitioner.

Local authorities should:

• use local knowledge strategically to help Creative Partnerships direct resources, and support and challenge specific schools where learning remains dull, underachievement stubborn, or the creative development and achievements of young people constrained.

Creative Partnerships should:

• support schools by developing a systematic approach to monitoring that clearly identifies creative achievement, defines different stages of creative development and indicates more clearly the impact of targeted intervention.

Schools should:

• identify as an integral part of school self-evaluation the specific impact of Creative Partnerships programmes on provision by evaluating how effectively the school enables all pupils to discover and deepen their creativity.

Creative practitioners and industries should:

• seek ways to inform teachers, pupils and parents of the creative work done in programmes outside school to make clear the opportunities and challenges of involvement and employment in the creative industries

Mrs Rosen added:

“The programmes helped pupils to develop creativity so that their enjoyment and achievement are enhanced and they can contribute to the economy and society.”

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Notes For Editors

1. Creative partnerships: initiative and impact is available on the Ofsted website. The report evaluates the effectiveness of Creative Partnerships initiatives in 37 schools covering six areas of the country.

2. The DCMS set up Creative Partnerships in 2002 to increase opportunities for all children to develop creative skills ‘by enabling children, teachers and creative professionals to work together in both education and cultural buildings’. The initiative aimed to bring cohesion between education and creative and cultural sectors initially in areas of England where significant forms of deprivation were known to exist.

3. Ofsted is a non-ministerial government department established under the Education (Schools) Act 1992 to take responsibility for the inspection of all schools in England. Its role also includes the inspection of further education, local authority children’s services, teacher training institutions and some independent schools. During 2001, Ofsted became responsible for inspecting all 16-19 education and for the regulation of early years childcare, including childminders.

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