Trade Unions excluded from Government Culture and Education panel

Five trade unions have written to the Chair of the Government’s ‘Cultural education plan expert advisory panel’ today, to highlight the failure of the panel to engage with education and arts unions in the development of a Cultural Education Plan.

The panel, made up of 22 people, has been overseeing the development of a new plan to improve cultural education for young people. Yet it does not include any representatives of the arts and education trade unions, nor have any been approached to provide evidence, even though they represent hundreds of thousands of members across the arts, education and entertainment, many of whom will be involved in delivering the Plan.

The letter is addressed to Baroness Bull CBE. It has been signed by the general secretaries of the National Education Union, Equity, Musicians’ Union, Bectu and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, and points out their “disappointment that, despite terms of reference which require the panel to represent “those responsible for delivering cultural education and wider related sectors such as arts”, no trade union representatives in the arts, entertainment or education were invited to participate since the panel was established in July 2023.”

Commenting on the letter, Equity’s General Secretary Paul W Fleming, says:

“The fact that representatives of those involved in delivering the arts, education or entertainment have not been invited to input into this process beggars belief.

“The complete lack of engagement calls into question the robustness of any recommendations which the so-called ‘expert’ advisory panel makes to government in advance of the proposed Cultural Education Plan.

“If you want expert advice, you’re best off listening to the hundreds of thousands of world-class educators and creative practitioners working every day to deliver the arts, culture and education. You simply won’t have a meaningful Cultural Education Plan without them.”