By David Roy
Australian students in years 11 and 12 are increasingly turning away from creative arts subjects.
An analysis of national figures shows that between 2015 and 2023, Year 12 enrolments fell by 39 percent in drama, 38 percent in dance, 16 percent in music and 14 percent in visual arts.
We also know there are different patterns across different states and school systems.
For example, earlier this month, The Sydney Morning Herald reported NSW public school enrolments in drama fell from 2403 in 2016 to 1441 last year (a drop of about 40 percent).
Across private and Catholic schools, enrolments dipped from 2321 to 1751 (a drop of about 25 percent) over the same period.
Why are students turning away?
There is no single explanation, but curriculum priorities and university entrance pressures provide some clues.
Education policy has increasingly emphasised science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), sometimes positioning these disciplines as more “valuable” when it comes to employment than the arts.
A 2024 NSW parliamentary inquiry identified the prioritisation of STEM subjects, job-readiness and perceptions of future earnings as factors contributing to the devaluing of creative arts education.
Students’ ATAR concerns compound the problem. The NSW inquiry also heard some students and parents believe that drama or music will not scale well and disadvantage university entrance:
students are dissuaded or discouraged from pursuing their passions […] for fear of being scaled poorly and the pressures around achieving a high ATAR.
The committee recommended a “myth busting” campaign targeted at students, parents and schools to provide accurate information about how creative arts subjects are scaled.
There have also been curriculum changes to drama and music, which teachers have argued limit student choice and creativity.
These can all have a compounding effect. Falling enrolments mean smaller classes, which lead to subject closures and fewer choices for the next group of students coming through.
What are students losing?
An analysis of national figures shows between 2012 and 2022, the proportion of male Year 12 students taking an arts subject fell from 22.2 percent to 15.8 percent. For female students, it fell from 37.6 percent to 26.9 percent.
These represent broadly comparable proportional declines of around 29 percent each. So this is not simply a story about boys abandoning the arts. But the gender dimension should not be ignored here.
Subjects such as drama offers opportunities to explore emotion, vulnerability and perspectives different from one’s own.
Through characterisation, collaborative performance and negotiating creative differences, students can practise empathy, emotional communication and shared responsibility.
These experiences can help challenge toxic masculinity and restrictive expectations that frame vulnerability as weakness.
Research on senior secondary drama classrooms shows students can negotiate gender expectations through dramatic characters and classroom practice.
Drama cannot dismantle these attitudes by itself, but it creates valuable spaces in which they can be explored and challenged.
These are demanding subjects
Drama, music and visual arts are also academically demanding disciplines. They require interpretation, analysis, experimentation, critical judgement and sustained practice. They also require performance under pressure.
These are not alternatives to academic learning – they are forms of academic learning. A systematic review of educational drama research, for example, found it can have potential benefits for students’ critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration.
These skills particularly matter in an age of artificial intelligence, where students need to learn how to question and evaluate information and exercise creative judgement.
In the arts, the process of making and revising is itself an important part of learning.
The question is not whether every student should study drama, music or visual arts. It is whether young people should lose access to these important forms of learning because our education system signals that other forms of knowledge matters more.
David Roy is a Lecturer in Education, University of Newcastle. This article was first published by The Conversation
