One-off arts projects in schools can liberate students from a culture of 'closed answers', but without radical reform, and a proper policy for arts in education, such work only goes so far, writes Rosita Boland.

THERE ISN'T a lot of respect for the arts in our post-primary education system. For all we regularly tout the fact that we've produced four Nobel Prize winners for literature, that traditional music has long been marketed as a cultural attraction to our international tourists, and that each Irish summer sees an ever-increasing range of well-attended arts festivals around the country, the truth is the arts are given short shrift when it come to our formal education system.

Unless a subject is specific to an exam, then there seems to be little room for it on an already crowded curriculum. While engagement with the arts is a mandatory part of the curriculum for primary school children, this all disappears once those children become teenagers, and become locked into the time-hungry system of State exams.

And while Creative Engagement, a recent national scheme of arts projects from stone carving to film-making in some schools around Ireland, has had very positive effects, in the absence of radical reform it is unsustainable. The question of who has responsibility for developing the arts in post-primary education is tricky. A special committee of 10 was appointed in September 2006, bringing together the Departments of Education and Science, and Arts, Sports and Tourism for the first time with a commitment to furthering the arts in education.

The committee met 12 times between September 2006 and May 2007, with a brief to identify areas where the arts could be brought into secondary schools, and to recommend how this could be achieved. Its report was complete by the agreed deadline of May 1st last year and submitted it to the Arts Council. From there, the report went in July to both Arts and Education departments. Almost a year later, nothing has been published, nor any of the report's recommendations made public or discussed in any way.

In early June, the Department of Arts stated: "The report by the Special Committee on Arts and Education is primarily a matter for the Arts Council. Since the presentation of the draft report, meetings have been taking place between officials from this Department, the Department of Education and Science and the Arts Council to consider the recommendations of the report.

"An inter-agency work group is currently examining the report with a view to identifying ways of giving practical effect to the crucial recommendations of the draft report. It is drawing up specific actions designed to respond effectively and efficiently to its conclusions with the intention of realising, as far as practicable, the conclusions of this work."

Interestingly, the Department of Education took a different view of where the responsibility lay for the long overdue publication of the report, stating that it was "a matter for the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism/Arts Council". This month, the Arts Council said to The Irish Times that it would publish the report "soon", but did not give an exact date.

ONE OF THE people who sat on this Special Committee was Derek West, retired former principal of Newpark Comprehensive School in Dublin. With Belinda Mollen, he is the co-author of a report called Emerging Models of Arts Practices in Irish Secondary School - An Evaluation of Creative Engagement 2006-2007, which has just been published by the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD).

For the last four years, there has been an ongoing series of one-off arts-related projects in various post-primary schools around the country. Collectively, these are known as Creative Engagement projects, and were the initiative of the NAPD. Creative Engagement received financial support from both Departments, Arts and Education - the same departments to which the Special Committee report was sent last July.

The idea behind these projects was to act as forms of pilots to show how creative engagement with the arts could be successfully woven into the busy timetables of schools.

The NAPD report focuses on some of the projects carried out in schools over this period, assesses their success, and makes recommendations for how the arts could be brought into the post-primary curriculum in the future. Given the similarity in subject, it's likely that there will be some overlap between these recommendations, and those in the long-fallow report that the Arts Council will be publishing "soon".

The Creative Engagement grant money available to schools ranged from €5,000 to €200, based on the estimated costing of the project provided by the school. Some 51 proposals were received in the academic year 2006-2007 from the State's 750 secondary schools.

Of these, 32 were selected for grant aid. The previous year, there had been 42 proposals and of these, 21 were chosen.

Some of the projects that were carried out included: stone-carving a six-metre limestone frieze for the school grounds of Newpark Comprehensive, Blackrock, Co Dublin, under the guidance of artist Ciarán Byrne; working with Macnas members to make images to illustrate four Irish legends at Presentation College, Bandon, Co Cork; creating a Buskers' Corner where students are encouraged to play music and perform at Old Bawn Community School in Tallaght, Dublin; and film-making at both St Fergal's College, Rathdowney, Co Laois, and Letterkenny Vocational School, Co Donegal.

The report contains feedback from students, facilitators and teachers as to how each of the projects worked out.

While the feedback on the success of the projects themselves was mainly positive, lack of time was mentioned by almost everyone involved, as these projects were mostly done in after-school hours.

West and Mollen examine the benefits to the students by participating in the projects, seeing it as "liberating, because it has taken them away from a culture of closed answers, predictable answers, thinking inside the box and focusing on set syllabuses, to a world of collaborative activity, of being listened to and having their ideas respected; a world where there is no one correct way of doing things, where problems are challenges".

Among their findings were that the projects drew in many students who were not taking music and art as subject choices, and thus reached a much wider range of people as a result.

The authors point out that post-primary education is defined by the exam system, which demands results. Creative Engagement projects, which are outside the curriculum, are thus "in the difficult position of being both lauded and, at the same time, marginalised by the education system".

AMONG THE RECOMMENDATIONS West and Mollen make about the sustainability of Creative Engagement is the recognition and support of the Department of Education, the Department of Arts, the Arts Council, and NAPD.

About the Department of Education in particular, they state that there is now a need for that department to not only provide "further annual funding and recognition, but for intense engagement with development of an arts-in-education curriculum".

They also repeat an aspiration first published in an earlier NAPD report, that "the Department of Arts would be proactive in working with the the Department of Education and the Arts Council to further the arts-in- education agenda."

Unsurprisingly, the report concludes that while Creative Engagement has served a useful function during the last four years, it is not sustainable in the long term.

"There has to be a major reform of the curriculum that allows for arts activity and possibly even rewards it with credits," it states.

There is little doubt that the forthcoming report from the Arts Council will be studied carefully by all those involved in post-primary education to see if there are indeed any recommendations within it for just this kind of significant curriculum reform.