The Most Important Skill Children Will Need Isn’t Coding
Last night I was watching Newsnight on television and Jack Clarke, a co-founder of Anthropic, the AI company, was being interviewed. A very laid-back chap about to become a billionaire as Anthropic floats. He was very clear that the future does not lie with coders because the AI can now code its own development. He was pointing out the frightening implications of AI being able to build its own next generation of more powerful AI. He said what companies like theirs look for are people from liberal arts backgrounds and philosophers. What young people need to be encouraged to do is to have a hobby — become really keen on something and get knowledgeable about it, be curious, ask questions.
I always think it is exciting to meet a child who is asking questions. Sometimes they can be embarrassingly personal — how tall are you, why do you limp, are you rich, why did you come here? To an adult they can sometimes seem inappropriate but they are just curiosity, not judgemental. It is the same fascination with facts that makes a boy want to know how many guns the Belfast has, what sort they are, how far they can shoot, or why some ancient Romans wore heavy armour and some lightweight. Or why the little girl wants to know what the ancient Britons had for tea and did they make cakes. Or another child wants to know why guinea-pigs eat their droppings, or one cow has bigger tits than another.
The important thing is that the child is asking questions. In our art workshops, our artists get bombarded with questions: why does charcoal smudge, or watercolours run, why is some clay harder to work than other, or why does paper fall apart when wet? It is the stimulation to curiosity, the asking of questions, the wanting to know — that is surely what education is all about. Yes, there are facts to be learnt, and sometimes that means hard work, but knowing why the facts matter is crucial to wanting to do the work. Who developed the concept of zero and what did people do and think before they understood the concept? What difference does that make to maths? Even small children can be stimulated by what they don’t know; really abstract thinking requires some emotional and mental maturity, but stimulating the development of that maturity starts early.
A major evidence review co-commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, published in May 2026 and drawing on 1,176 studies, concluded that arts education builds ‘agency and personal development’ above all else — and that this, not attainment narrowly defined, is “the fundamental component of a well-rounded educational experience that supports human flourishing in its fullest sense.” Curiosity, in other words, is not a side-effect of arts education. It is the point.
Recent blogs have focused on the damage being done by screens to the development of children’s brains and I am not about to repeat that this week. I thought instead I would tell you a few stories about children we are working with (names changed).
Malia helped create a sculpture exhibited at the Sculpture at Kingham Lodge professional arts show. Greeted as an exhibiting artist — her hand shaken, told what an honour it was to meet her — she beamed. For the next two weeks she told her parents every day: “I’m an artist.”
A class of post-pandemic four and five year olds arrived unable to verbalise, biting and kicking, unable to sit or socialise. Through art materials provided by CATS, the children began to express their feelings, to chat, to sit calmly, and to work together. The teacher said simply: “It was art that made everything possible.”
Theo had not wanted to go to school post-pandemic. He was nervous and anxious. The one day of the week he started to attend was the day that began with drama. He then stayed for the whole day’s lessons.
Zania had been part of a project to decorate a school hall. A big cavernous space, we shrank it with a huge net from which we hung wires down which were attached acrylic butterflies and hummingbirds. As the children walked or played below, the birds and butterflies twisted and turned above them. Every child had painted at least one of the mobiles. Zania, a refugee, turned to the teacher beside her and said: ‘You see those ones, those blue and yellow ones — they’re mine. Now I belong here.’ For a child who had fled a war and arrived in a country where she did not speak the language, an art installation had done what no lesson could: it had given her a place.
Sixty children made a dragon head — big, red and fierce. Behind it trailed a long body made out of paper they had stuck together. Once filled with the children the dragon came to life, maybe more like a centipede than the dragon St George fought, but nonetheless roaring and waving his head fiercely at passers-by. It was not just Chinese culture that the children learnt about — it was about co-operation and the fun of achieving together what none could have done alone.
It is that shared experience that is so important in music-making. Every musician knows that the impact of an orchestral piece is quite different from his or her solo playing. A child will practise hard to make sure his drum beats or squeaky string or trumpet blast comes at just the right time — so that together they have played a tune, made music.
When we introduced African drumming and dance it was because we thought it was a good thing for children to learn a bit about another culture, another way of moving. Similar reasoning to learning ballet, which several of our schools do. What was really encouraging was the impact the dance had on SEN children like Philip. Initially he hung back, disconcerted by the noise and confusion, but after a few weeks feeling the beat the time came to create their own dances. The children took turns creating a routine, teaching it to their peers and then all doing the routine together. The impact on Philip was huge: this was the first time in his life that all his peers had done what he told them to do, what he had created. The boost to confidence was surprisingly long-lasting across other subjects, not just dance.
When you are told you have got it wrong, no matter how old you are, it is a blow. If self-confident and old, you live to fight another day, you correct the mistake, you try again. As a child it is easy to just be demoralised. The sums were wrong, the spellings were original — do more! How dull and how frustrating. What if they are put to one side for a while and something is created — something unique and original, that the world has never seen before — and it is your contribution to the group’s creation, as good as everybody else’s? Doesn’t the impact of that, the sense of being as original, as creative, as good, make a difference to the day? It produces a totally different willingness to tackle what is difficult, because maybe something original and one’s own can result.
And for those who still worry about exam results: the University of Nottingham’s RAPS project, which tracked 40 arts-rich primary schools over several years, found that 77% perform as well as or better than comparable schools academically — and that 36% perform well above their local authority average, compared with 28% of schools without arts-rich provision. There is no penalty attached to having an arts-rich curriculum. Creativity and attainment are not opposites. They grow from the same root.
The man from Anthropic was right that the future belongs to curious people rather than coders. But curiosity is not innate — or rather, it is innate, but it can be crushed. What kills it is the relentless message that you are wrong: the sums are wrong, the spellings are wrong, try again. What keeps it alive is the experience of making something that has never existed before — something that is yours, and that the world has never seen. That is what arts education does. Not as a luxury. As the foundation of everything else.
Christopher Stockwell, Trustee Cotswolds Arts Through Schools
Next week: If Jack Clarke is right that AI changes everything, what does that mean for how we educate children under eleven — right now, in the schools we have today? We look at what the evidence says, what the government’s own reviews have found, and what it will cost us if we get this wrong.
