Opinion — Art classes as important as other subjects and compulsory

The claim that painting and drawing deserve the same status as mathematics or languages, and should therefore be obligatory for teenagers, contains two separate ideas. I disagree with the first but largely accept the second: art is not as fundamental as the core subjects, yet it earns a required, if modest, place in the high school timetable.

Art undoubtedly develops capacities that other lessons barely touch. A student working on a drawing has to observe closely, make decisions with no single correct answer and persist with a piece that is going badly. Nevertheless, this does not place art on an equal footing with literacy and numeracy. Reading, writing and mathematics are gateway skills: a pupil who is weak in them struggles in every other subject and in most careers, whereas a pupil who cannot draw is disadvantaged in very few. Importance, in other words, is a matter of how much else depends on a subject, and by that measure the core academic subjects come first.

It does not follow, however, that art should be optional. Schools make physical education compulsory without pretending it matters as much as science, simply because a well-rounded education requires it. The same reasoning applies to art. If art is left as an elective, the students who drop it tend to be those under exam pressure or those who have already decided they are 'not creative', and they are precisely the ones who would gain most. A sensible arrangement would be one or two lessons a week, treated as a non-examined subject so that it offers some relief from that pressure without eating into the time needed for examined courses.

Art classes, then, are not equal in importance to the subjects on which all other learning rests, but equality is the wrong test of whether something should be compulsory. A small, ungraded amount of art deserves to remain part of every high school student's week.