Museums and schools: enabling quality cultural engagement for children and young people
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Museums can be magical places, where children and young people encounter a treasury of incredible collections that bring learning to life. All children and young people should have the chance to visit and be inspired by museums. This is the aim of the Museums and Schools programme, which is funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and managed by the Arts Council. For the past six years the programme has helped connect museums with local schoolchildren, targeting areas with high levels of deprivation and low cultural engagement.
Museums ensure that the activities and workshops offered are linked to the national curriculum and support classroom learning. Teachers have often commented that the programme offers children and young people the opportunity to learn in new and exciting ways, bringing fresh creativity to the classroom. The programme also aims to build long-term relationships between cultural organisations and children, who are encouraged to come back with their families. For example, the SS Great Britain museum in Bristol has a ‘Golden Ticket’ scheme that gives visiting children free access for their entire family.
The activities have opened [the students’] eyes to cultural experiences and learning in a fun environment. Some had never visited a museum or gallery. Importantly this offer is local, rather than requiring travel to elsewhere.
- Regional Museum Partner
Last year, we commissioned SQW to conduct an independent evaluation of the programme, capturing its impact and making recommendations for its development. It makes for encouraging reading. Since the project’s inception, the ten original museum partnerships have hosted 431, 283 pupils, with 83% more visitors in the final reporting year than in the first. In 2016/17 the programme supported 117, 899 visits – 63% of which were pupils visiting a museum for the first time. Over the years, the programme has expanded to include additional partnerships with the same level of funding; at the time of this evaluation the number of partnerships had grown to 14 (it is now up to 18) and the average cost per visitor has dropped from £18.58 to £11.68, showing how the programme has been able to significantly increase its value based on the same financial investment.
Importantly, the report also describes the benefits of the programme for teachers; how it has helped improve their knowledge and teaching practice, through formal training and observing different teaching styles. Museums too have seen positive outcomes, from staff development to sharing practice and collections with their national museum partners.
Teachers can work with artists, have a place to escape and think creatively about curriculum design, and explore [the] use of art to teach maths, science or modern foreign languages
Arts Council England is committed to giving everyone the chance to enjoy the riches of our national art and culture. We believe that a quality cultural education should be available to all children and young people. This is an area that I feel personally very strongly about, as I believe it’s intrinsic to the future of our arts and cultural institutions, and of great importance to the wellbeing and prosperity of our children, our communities, and our nation. The stories museums tell are the keys to understanding who we are; but museums are also laboratories of creative thought and practice. We need to use all our creativity.
The programme is one of several initiatives we are undertaking to increase support for cultural education and highlight the importance of creativity in the lives of young people. These include the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education, which is conducting research into the impact of creativity and creative thinking, both within and beyond the education system, and will contribute to the development of our 25-Year Creative Talent Plan.
I am delighted that DfE continues to invest in the Museums and Schools Programme; it has had a real impact on the provision of cultural education for children and young people. Drawing on the insight and recommendations offered in this report, we will work with DfE to improve the delivery of the programme to give even more children and young people the opportunity to enjoy a trip to a museum, and all the joys that come with it.
Find out more
Case study: Tees Valley partnership Making a Mark programme
Learn more about the cultural education programmes we support
