Children’s education in the arts is in a “terrible state” thanks to an obsession with exams and league tables, the award-winning novelist Philip Pullman has said.
The author of the His Dark Materials trilogy urged the government to make theatre visits for schools “a firmly established part of the curriculum”, saying he was concerned about falling numbers of children being taken to plays and concerts.
“I do worry what happens to children when they’re deprived of these things by these blasted league tables and this crazy assumption that we’ve got to test everything,” he said.
“We do hear this from theatres that we’re not getting any children because the schools don’t want to let them out, because it takes time away from their lessons. That’s a terrible state to have got into, absolutely terrible.”
According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the proportion of primary school-age children who had visited the theatre in the previous 12 months fell from almost half (47.1%) in 2008-9 to less than a third (32.3%) in 2014-15.
“It should be a firmly established part of the curriculum that children should visit theatres and concert halls,” the author said.
He said teachers, parents and adults also had to ensure children were taken to see theatrical productions. “Theatre is one of those things that children will love if they’re helped to get there to see it. No child will find his or her own way to the theatre.”
Pullman has been an outspoken critic of government policy in this area, saying in August that an education in the arts was “of incalculable worth in what it means to be a human being”, and calling the government “philistines and barbarians”.
Pullman’s fantasy series for children and young adults has sold millions around the world and won numerous awards, including the Whitbread book of the year in 2001 for The Amber Spyglass, the third in the trilogy. The three novels were also adapted into a play which premiered at the National Theatre in 20013, winning two Olivier awards.
He praised fellow author JK Rowling for her new play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is scheduled to open in the West End next year and which he said would help to introduce children to the theatre.
However, he said it would be “a pity if people are going to be priced out of it”. Tickets for the production cost up to £130 each, but such is the demand they were being offered for up to £2,950 on resale sites after a batch released for sale earlier this week rapidly sold out.
Pullman said gadgets such as tablets and e-readers were “quite efficient”, but “nothing beats that pure joy of turning a page and having something physically there in your hand”.
Pullman was speaking to mark the publication on Friday of the 200th edition of the children’s comic the Phoenix, which he said was a “marvellous way of helping children to read”.
The 200th edition, which features a cover by the children’s laureate Chris Riddell, will feature a taster of a new comic strip by Pullman and artist Fred Fordham called Philip Pullman’s John Blake, about an English boy from the 1920s and his time-travelling schooner.
The strip will run for 30 weeks in 2016 before being published in book form in 2017.
Also included in the issue are strips from readers Jordan Vigay, 14, and 11-year-old Jonny Toons.
The Phoenix was launched in 2012 and has been voted the second best comic in the world by Time magazine. It is the first independent British comic to reach 200 issues since 1969.
