The authors looked at policy attention, policy goals and policy instruments and interventions in primary and secondary education. How active have European governments been in implementing the Seoul Agenda goals in policy? In this article the authors reflect on the results of the informal survey and relate them to the Seoul Agenda to draw recommendation for the near future.
Conclusions- Visual arts and music are the most commonly taught art disciplines in primary and secondary schools.- In several countries music education is stimulated with additional programs.- Political attention for arts education becomes less present the higher the level of education is.- The policy goals aimed at influencing schools and cultural organisations show a big variance between the countries.- The most mentioned goals in policy are to ‘create arts education at every primary school for all pupils and ‘apply arts education throughout primary schools to cultivate a new generation of creative and innovative citizens'.
- Policy goals related to the first Seoul agenda goal (Ensure that arts education is accessible as a fundamental and sustainable component of a high quality renewal of education) most countries find moderate important to very important.- Of the policy goals related to the second goal of the Seoul Agenda (Assure that arts education activities and programmes are of a high quality in conception and delivery) varies greatly.- The policy goals related to the third goal of the Seoul agenda (Apply arts education principles and practices to contribute to resolving the social and cultural challenges facing today’s world) score different in every country.
Recommendations- Further research is needed on cultural education in the non-formal and informal setting and the relationship between formal and non-formal cultural education to learn how the goals for access, quality and challenges are met there. And to possibly proof how in arts and cultural activity formal and non-formal learning can collaborate effectively.- It would also be interesting to investigate the development of cross-discipline cultural education – is this the way that cultural education is developing? If so, is that due to efficiency because of the pressure on the curriculum or because art is changing and therefore the way we teach it?- Further research is also needed to investigate how the teachers are supported to deliver cultural education.