Crackdown on ‘dubious’ under-16 stage schools

Published Wednesday 5 July 2006 at 13:20 by Nuala Calvi

Leading education figures have declared war on unregulated dance and musical theatre schools for the under-16s which fail to meet basic standards of teaching and health and safety.

The Council for Dance Education and Training plans to introduce a nationwide scheme to monitor thousands of evening, weekend and summer schools in the UK and tackle the problem of unqualified tutors and staff who have not undergone Criminal Records Bureau checks.

The organisation says it has received calls from parents of children under the age of ten who have been left playing on the street without supervision after classes have finished.

CDET director Sean Williams told The Stage: “Up and down the country many schools are very dubious - they are claiming to give education in dance and no one has given them any external seal of approval. We get a lot of enquiries saying, ‘Do you know about such and such a school?’, and no one has heard of it.

“They are not monitored because they aren’t part of state provision. That’s a huge gap in the monitoring of education. This is long overdue.”

In September CDET will introduce a new kitemark for under-16 training, with schools asked to declare publicly that they have signed up to terms and conditions covering pupils’ physical and emotional safety.

Set up in 1979, the council is the national standards body for vocational dance courses and is responsible, along with the National Council for Drama Training, for accrediting musical theatre courses. However, the new kitemark will be CDET’s first for the pre-vocational sector.

The organisation will urge all parents enrolling their children in performing arts schools to check that the institution has the kitemark and if they do not, to find out why. It will cost £100 per school and it is hoped that it will give parents a means of redress if the organisations fail to deliver on their promises. However, Williams stressed that schools could have legitimate reasons for not enrolling on the scheme.

Welcoming the move, Linda Jasper, director of Youth Dance England, said: “There is a real problem in terms of making sure we have regulation. There are some very highly qualified teachers doing very good work, but equally there are no safeguards for the public at the moment.”

CDET is receiving advice from the Royal Academy of Dance on what the terms and conditions should cover but they are likely to include having a health and safety policy, qualified teachers, CRB-checked staff, proper dance flooring, public liability insurance and access to appropriate medical care. The final list will go to the organisation’s board this month.

The NCDT said it too would look into the standards of pre-vocational training in the near future but with the emphasis on widening participation and cultural diversity within drama schools.