A response to RECENT PRESS
By Gregory Perry, CEO of AAH
In June of 1897, several newspapers in the US reported that Mark Twain was gravely ill and could be dead. When a reporter contacted Twain’s household in London, where he was living at the time, Twain responded that reports of his death had been exaggerated. Though a humourist, he was not greatly amused by the reports.
One was reminded of this when reading the stories in the past week or so about the critical condition that the art history A-level is in. If, like Twain, art history had a body, it was motionless, possibly cooling, in need of CPR if not the last rites.
The stories appeared as part of the coverage of the Courtauld’s announcement of its planned project at Somerset House and its interest in bolstering art history education – both of which we celebrate. Most of them zeroed in on one statistic about art history A-level education: that the number of schools teaching the subject had decreased by 34% (122 to 80) from 2016 to 2025. This led to claims of the a ‘decline in the history of art’ and a ‘dwindling interest’ in our subject, similar to that experienced by Classics 40 years ago which is now, in contrast to art history, ‘strong and healthy’ (the Times 28.11.25). Apollo Magazine noted that the subject of art history is ‘endangered’ at the A level (5.12.25).
What the outlets didn’t report is that the number of students sitting for the A-level exam in art history has virtually stayed the same since 2016 – in that year 839 sat for the exam; in 2025 the number was 838. This hardly reflects a dwindling interest in our subject or one that is in decline or endangered. Further, at the university level, new enrolments in art history have decreased by 2% since 2016 when the uptake of a number of other arts and humanities subjects, both at the A level and HE level, have dropped precipitously.
The statistics show that our subject, rather than dying, has somewhat miraculously held its own after the 14-year bludgeoning of the arts and humanities under the previous government and the decrease in the teaching of the arts at the pre-university level.
The biggest threats to our subject come not from a lack of interest but from the financial difficulties in the education sector and the privilege given to STEM subjects by HEIs and schools at the expense of arts and humanities ones. This has led to swinging cuts in the arts and humanities including course reductions, departmental closures, and redundancies. Art history has not been spared from these damaging actions. The present government, while offering welcome support for museums and galleries, needs to do more than it has to put universities on sound financial footing and to treat arts and humanities subjects with equal emphasis to the STEM ones. This has not been the case with its recent withdrawal of bursaries for teachers of art and design (at £10k each) while leaving intact the bursaries for those studying to teach some STEM subjects (at £40k each). In addition, under the government’s Lifelong Learning Entitlement, maintenance grants will be given to students taking nine STEM and STEM-related subjects and only one, architecture, in the arts or humanities.
While we continue to make the case for the value of the arts and humanities, we should recognise the resilience of our subject and the continuing interest in it. We also want to thank those partner organisations and initiatives which have mightily contributed to our subject being sustained against the odds in recent years. Perhaps most notably is the Art Teachers Connect programme at the University of Leeds which provides various means of support for art teachers to introduce art history at the secondary school level; Articulation, now at the National Gallery, which helps students from across the UK to develop research and oracy skills using works of art; the online A-level in the history of art offered at the National Extension College (co-created by the AAH) which has helped to address the geographic disparity of where the A-level is taught, and, Art History Linkup, already mentioned in a couple of the articles around the Courtauld announcement. We are grateful to the people who have created and driven these initiatives and to the funders who have sponsored them. They have all contributed to the interest in our subject being sustained in the face of significant challenges.