Curriculum Review: Creative UK welcomes scrapping of EBacc, but warns against ‘leaving creativity at school gates’ in call to join dots post-16 

Creative UK has welcomed the Government’s Curriculum & Assessment Review as a major step towards restoring breadth and creativity in schools. The review includes scrapping of the controversial Ebacc (English Baccalaureate), a performance measure for schools that was widely criticised for squeezing out creative subjects in secondary education. 

Whilst roundly welcoming the proposals put forward by the Review, Creative UK – the national membership body for the UK’s creative and cultural industries – also warns that plans outlined in the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper risk undoing the progress of the Curriculum Review if the two are not properly aligned. 

Creative UK warned that changes set out in the Post-16 Skills White Paper and the Office for Students’ new funding guidance could narrow access to creative study. The phasing-out of applied general qualifications before ‘V Levels’ are fully established, uncertainty over which subjects qualify for new maintenance grants and reduced high-cost funding for arts and design courses all risk weakening routes into the UK’s creative industries, one of the Government’s high priority growth sectors. 

Creative UK’s own research shows that public understanding of the economic value of creativity strongly shapes support for creative education. In its 2025 report, ‘Perception & Potential: Public Attitudes Towards Creativity in the UK,’ Creative UK found that young people from lower-income backgrounds are less likely to view creative careers as stable or attainable, underlining the need for clear, consistent progression routes and visible investment across all stages of learning. 

Creative UK has consistently called for prioritisation of creative education, and in their 2024 Manifesto identified the need to ‘grow the workforce of tomorrow by prioritising skills and education’ as their first priority. 

Caroline Norbury OBE, Chief Executive of Creative UK, said: 

The Curriculum and Assessment Review makes some vital first steps in giving schools permission to value creativity as a critical part of the curriculum. The Government has scrapped the Ebacc and acknowledged the importance of a well-rounded creative education. In doing so, the Government has shown that it is willing to back the creative pipeline that we must build in order to maintain our world-leading status in the creative industries. 

This is vital and welcome news, but we can’t build a pipeline of creative talent that then leaks at the school gate. Reform only works when the stages connect. If government ensures that post-16 policy builds on, rather than cuts across, what schools have just regained, we can create a system that educates for imagination and equips for impact and that would be one of the most powerful investments this country could make.