Engaging with a variety of artforms

Developing artistic skills, knowledge and understanding

Increasing cultural understanding

Sharing arts experiences

Becoming discriminating arts consumers and contributors

The arts and pupils' education

Investing in the arts can transform pupils' educational experience. The arts:

• stimulate total involvement and commitment from pupils;
• enable all pupils to succeed and develop self-esteem;
• show that learning can be fun;
• encourage respect for other people's contributions;
• challenge pupils to consider complex issues, thoughts, feelings and actions;
• help pupils to think in different ways and to use different forms of intelligence.

All of these factors can raise pupils' attainment across the curriculum, improve their attitudes to learning and improve their behaviour. This, in turn, contributes to school improvement (for more on this, see The arts and school improvement).

However, the arts are also vital in their own right. Effective teaching and learning in the arts helps pupils to:

• engage with a variety of artforms, giving them an opportunity to explore different thoughts and feelings, and to develop their own interests;
• develop artistic skills, knowledge and understanding, so that they can make and respond to artworks and access a range of arts-related careers;
• increase their cultural understanding by exploring and challenging values and meanings;
• share arts experiences and develop their social skills, sensitivity and sense of responsibility;
• become discriminating arts consumers and contributors in life beyond school.

These points, recognised by a wide range of artists and educationalists, form the basis of an agreed set of aims for arts education.