Another good wheeze!

The new Minister of Culture, Andy Burnham, is announcing that after talks with Ed Balls, Minister for Children, plans are being made for all secondary students to have 5 hours every week on their timetable of "High Culture".

Consideration is so far advanced that they will shortly be inviting bids from Local Authorities to run pilot schemes.

And there will be extra finance to sweeten the pill - at £15 per student per year - you might get a good theatre visit, or even two, out of that, so the school will have to cover the other 38 weeks from present resources?

You would have to be a philistine to oppose this in principle, but there are several very important questions to raise.

Given that students will have a promised 5 hours of sport each week, all have cookery classes and there will be special citizenship classes, how will these all be fitted in without further diluting ordinary "academic" classes? High Culture may also involve peak- loading problems, as they make the promised films, prepare art exhibitions, go on visits, etc.

What will be the position of music and art classes, as well as English literature, especially for those who which to take examinations in these subjects? At the very least, it looks as if the High Culture and conventional arts classes may have a competition/coordination problem.

The recent estimate by the National Literacy Trust is that there are 5.2 million adults, or about 16% of all adults, who are functionally illiterate, that is that their command of English is at or below that level expected of an eleven year old child. (Even British graduates have been rejected by potential employers, in preference for foreign graduates, because of a lack of competence in English and Mathematics.)

We have been told endlessly that our education standards are slipping. However worthwhile the 5 hours a week on high culture, the Government's first priority is surely to deal with literacy and numeracy, and restrict high culture to the subject classes, - art, music and English, until such time as we can restore literacy and numeracy to what they were a generation or two ago.

It may be exciting for a young person to be behind a film camera, or directing creatively, but this must not be at the expense of basic education for them or others in the school. Perhaps the high culture could be after school? Here I suspect that £15 per year is not going to able to pay for sufficient teaching hours to enable five hours per week of classes.