The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

distributed equally and equitably among these eight areas ofexperience of which the aesthetic and creative is one. Whateverpatterns of organisation are used, the same point is tobe noted — that the arts stand foursquare with the rest andneed parity of provision.109 The arts Some subjects act as umbrella headings under which a numberon the of areas of understanding and experience can be tackled.timetable English not only provides for the practice and understandingof the literary arts but also, through them, for moral education.In art and music there can be much reference tomeanings from the world of religious experience, and so on.The purpose of the timetable is to provide the greatest numberof pupils with the greatest number of opportunities forlearning. One possible model which combines a number of thepoints we have made comes from the OECD (see Figure I). 4This also gives some indication of how provision of timemight be managed throughout the secondary school.110 Other We have indicated some amounts of time. How it is organisedpossibilities: can vary considerably. One alternative to single or doubleblock periods is block timetabling. This does not produce extratimetabling time for the arts, it makes a different use of the time available.In place of one or two periods of drama a week, forexample, a class or a group may have one or two days ofdrama in a block each half-term. The advantage in this is infacilitating more sustained and concentrated work. Thedisadvantage is in leaving much longer gaps between sessions,although some would argue that the benefits of the moreintensive work outweigh those of shorter, regular sessions.It is here that the differences between the arts are significant.Dance and music, for example, require regular work.Schools may find the greatest benefits lie in a combinationof regular sessions and periodic 'arts days' to allow work ofmore intensity to take place.111 Creative In some schools the arts timetable is based on a roundaboutarts system where a faculty or department distributes an allocateddepartments proportion of time between its specialist disciplines in aregular cycle. So, for example, a group may have a block ofdrama, followed the next week by a block of music and soon. There are also opportunities here for co-operative workbetween disciplines. The following example from a school inDevon illustrates another approach.68'The standard allocation of time to creative arts facultiesin new comprehensive schools ranges from six—eightperiods a week and this time has to be shared between