Painting Education in UK Higher Education: 1950s until today

Painting education in the United Kingdom has been deeply influenced by the shifting policies, institutional reforms and socio-economic contexts since the 1950s. This essay examines what this meant for the painting curriculum and how it impacted the experiences of painting educators at Higher Education level. Tracing the shift of painting from a vocational subject post-war, towards its overt academization through which it is taught as today, we will show that whilst these reforms broadened intellectual engagement, they led to painting education moving away from skill, introducing new tensions between tradition and innovation in art education. While the Coldstream reforms (formally known as the First Report of the National Advisory Council on Art Education), introduced in the 1960s to reshape British art education have received considerable attention, the subsequent period from 1975 to 2005 remains a critical blind spot in historical accounts of painting education. Exploring the changes across these time periods addresses how institutional and economic policies have not only affected painting education but also the trajectories of graduates in their professions and the experiences of painter educators. 

Through this historical overview, we gain a deeper understanding of the specific values of painting education historically and what sets this apart from the current neo-liberalised field of art and design higher education in the UK, which somewhat undermines some of these values. By doing so we address the relevance and need of painting education today, and examine how painters form crucial relationships with institutions, locations, and practitioner networks through their education, affirming why art schools should remain the centre of a discussion around cultural and creative industry strategies and funding that is directed towards this.   

While we highlight the specificity of painting as a medium in our analysis of education changes, we acknowledge that this has a crossover with fine art as its broader disciplinary subject.

The post-war period saw a formalisation of arts education in Britain, driven by the Ministry of Education’s efforts to realign art training with industrial needs. This resulted in the creation of the Intermediate Examination in Art and Crafts and the National Diploma in Design (NDD) in 1946 (MoE 1946). Students would need to complete a two-year general art education culminating in the Intermediate Examination, and then they could progress to the NDD which involved a further two-years of studying a specialism which was assessed via a final examination of practical work. 

The NDD focused on instruction in the acquisition of specific discipline-based skills that were taught by highly skilled teachers in workshops, via projects and exercises. There was not a subject titled ‘Fine Art’ at this time, and instead a student who had interests in studying art would need to pick a single ‘specialist’ discipline or two disciplines (a main and additional subjects). These disciplines included Painting; Mosaic; Stone Carving; Etching; Lithography; Sculpture or Pottery.  

The course curriculum is often described by painters who studied it as being rigid and narrow, with some, including painters Jeffery Steele and Jack Smith, describing it as diametrically opposed to their artistic aspirations (Steele 2019, Smith 1996). A key issue was that students were being trained to complete an examination, which was set by the Ministry for Education, and that this left very little room for students to demonstrate creativity, experimentation or self-expression. 

Painting was taught in life rooms where students would work together on their individual artworks. David Sweet, who studied at Hull Regional College of Art during the NDD period, recalled a life-room environment structured around communal visibility and peer-led exchange, where paintings were visible to all. In this setting, discussions about technique and composition emerged organically, and if an educator recognised a skills gap, they would devise short projects to help students to meet the required outcomes (Sweet, 2018). This account hints at a productive tension within the NDD: while the curriculum was narrow and externally assessed, the teaching methods in practice still enabled dynamic forms of studio learning and shared experimentation.  

The Ministry of Education examined the practical work from all NDD courses centrally, which meant that colleges and schools had very little input into assessments, student works were literally wrapped up and sent for assessment (Peacock 2018). The limitations of the NDD became increasingly apparent by the late 1950s; with critics arguing that its vocational focus failed to prepare students for the changing cultural landscape. In response, the government set up a National Advisory Committee on Art Examinations (NACAE) to provide better governance and oversight in the administration and provision of art and design education in Britain (Strand 1987, 7). 

Changes to NDD included a focus on vocationalism, external assessment structure, and a lack of engagement with contemporary artistic developments, causing pressure for its reform. The experimental practices of artist-educators influenced by alternative modernist models led to experimentation with German strategies developed at the Bauhaus during the 1920s, and the growing cultural influence of American Abstract Expressionism collectively challenged the ministry’s traditional view of what art education should be. These ideas were radical for the time; due to the strict figurative curriculum promoted by the NDD, other art schools' curriculum remained virtually unchallenged by exterior developments.  

As dissatisfaction with the National Diploma in Design (NDD) deepened, art educators and policymakers sought a model that would better reflect and adapt to the changing landscape. These discussions culminated in the creation of the ‘First Report of the National Advisory Council on Art Education’ in 1960, (more commonly known as the ‘Coldstream Report' named after William Coldstream who chaired the advisory council). This report marked an important turning point in UK art education, as it recommended replacing the NDD system with a new Diploma in Art and Design (Dip.AD) qualification, introduced in 1963, that moved student studies away from a vocationally focused training toward a more liberal, student-centred approach that prioritised intellectual and creative development.  

A defining feature of the report was that it set out new requirements for the inclusion of art history and complementary studies, and that this would account for 20% of students’ overall marks. This new requirement was framed as an effort to support students’ intellectual development and ensure that they gained proficiency in written and spoken English (1960, para 17, 26). To implement this all institutions were required to establish new departments to deliver complementary studies and art history, which were staffed independently from the studio provision. However, this generated a new logistical challenge as there was a national shortage of qualified art historians, leading educational historian Clive Ashwin to describe it as ‘the great famine of art historians’ (Ashwin 1988, 16). Studio staff, meanwhile, were gradually becoming resistant to this bifurcation of intellectual and practical teaching. Young painters who began teaching in the late-1960s and early 1970s, have argued that these separate programmes failed to address modern and contemporary periods of art, and that their creation allowed studio staff to disengage from discussing historical or theoretical contexts with students, letting them off the hook (Sweet 2018) and creating a binary false separation. 

The review process for those wishing to gain accreditation for the new qualification was described as draconian (Ashwin 1975, 104), and writer/ artist and art educator Maurice de Sausmarez noted that it left schools and colleges with a sense of disorientation which he referred to as ‘diploma daze’ (Macdonald 1970, 355). A key issue was that the report's phrasing left room for significant interpretation, particularly around the subject of drawing, which remained mandatory and foundational across all disciplines. It was unclear for many educators if this was traditional academic drawing or more abstract explorative approaches associated with basic design pedagogy, which caused uncertainty and division in teaching practice (Westley 2013, 15). This led to core design approaches gaining influence within the curriculum of the new foundation courses developed in British art schools (Macdonald 1970, 368). The artist-educators associated with including basic design in their practice became influential and their approaches were taken as exemplary by many art schools, which created a demand for those who taught and studied on basic design courses (Crippa 2013, 53, 60). 

With this shift in pedagogical priorities came a transformation in the physical and spatial organisation of art schools' studio provision. The traditional life-drawing room, which had been central to British art training for centuries, was increasingly displaced as many art schools adopted a model that restructured the communal workspaces into private cubicle-style studios, or semi-private workspaces.  Alternatively painting studios were restructured to have a thematic focus. A key example of this shift was at Chelsea School of Art (1963), where painting was no longer taught in a single unified studio but instead divided into specialist studios dedicated to different stylistic approaches. The teaching of Figuration, for example, was split between a life room led by Francis Hodgkin, a Euston Road School-inspired workshop (Myles Murphy, Euan Uglow, Craigie Aitchison), and a Pop Art-focused studio (Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones). Later, artist-educators Anthony Whishaw and Leon Vallencourt introduced an alternative figurative workshop with a broader definition of figuration, enabling a variety of ways for it to be taught, from theoretical to practical and explorative. These thematic studios were perceived to help students connect to ongoing and relevant discussions about painting, but some painter educators who visited Chelsea during this time were critical of this approach describing it as the creation of “mini academies” that replicated the very limitations the Dip.AD aimed to escape (Cina 2018) and explore beyond rigid confinements.  

The Coldstream Report also created new subject areas including fine art, graphic design, three-dimensional design and textiles/fashion, which caused some concern. To many labelling the ‘art’ component as fine art was regressive, as it seemed to favour more traditional fine art disciplines such as painting and sculpture, while offering little in terms of support or recognition for newer forms of artistic expression. An important shift was the emergence of conceptual art movements in the late-1960s, such as ‘Art & Language’, which actively resisted traditional media hierarchies and promoted critical inquiry as practice. The report also continued to stress the foundational importance of painting and drawing to all studies across art and design – a recommendation viewed by many as reinforcing existing hierarchies and devaluing disciplines like graphic design, textile design, and industrial design. 

In response to ongoing criticisms, the 1970 Coldstream Report attempted to refine and clarify its predecessor’s aims. While it strengthened the requirement for academic engagement, it also removed the discipline specific definition of fine art and instead defined the subject of fine art as an attitude rather than an activity. Within this context, painting, while still present, was no longer the assumed core of art education and was placed in a broader context. It now existed as one among many modes of artistic investigation, and the idea of ‘fine art’ became increasingly fluid and open-ended. The report de-emphasised the strict divisions between different media and allowed for the creation of a more fluid exploration of ideas across various forms of artistic practice.  

In 1975, the Dip.AD was phased out and replaced by the BA (Hons) degree, aligning art and design education more closely with university-level standards and assessment models. The new degrees were accredited by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) as the polytechnics did not have their own degree awarding powers. This transition to the degree challenged the balance of practical studio work with academic study by aligning art and design education more closely with university-level standards and assessment models. This began the mounting pressure for educators in fine art to navigate the demands of a degree framework that increasingly privileged written outcomes and measurable learning objectives over open-ended experimentation.  

In the 1980s and 1990s, where and how painting was taught was once again reshaped by several different government interventions and periods of institutional change. These reforms fundamentally altered how art schools operated, both financially and pedagogically.  

In the 1970s, the Conservative government’s concern over what it perceived as excessive spending by local authorities on education prompted a cap being placed on the financial support they provided to local authorities for education spending (Shattock 2012, 125). This led to the introduction of funding models that tied institutional income to student numbers (privileging quantity), the subject area (as some subjects were more expensive to teach than others), and a student's research activity.  

To assist local authorities in reducing costs, the government established the National Advisory Body (NAB), which evaluated higher education provision across the UK. While technically advisory, the NAB's recommendations, particularly those from its Fine Art panel, had a significant impact. 

This fine art panel, which was made up of heads of department and artist-teachers, required each fine art course in Britain to submit a short paper on its future strategy. After examining these papers, the fine art panel were concerned that many of the courses would struggle to maintain the quality of education if they continued their emphasis on discipline-specific study (i.e. painting, sculpture, print) due to a lack of adequate resourcing. 

In the late-1980s, this shift led to staff managing larger student cohorts with fewer resources. Contact hours diminished, and the number of specialist staff decreased, placing strain on teaching quality. The teaching methods, including the tutorial, long the cornerstone of art school teaching, had become increasingly over-relied upon. While valued for its ability to foster individualised learning, this one-to-one tutorial model struggled to scale within increasingly stretched institutions, leading to uneven student experiences and overburdened staff. The inaugural Group for Learning in Art and Design conference Not Sitting with Nellie (1989) highlights how many within education were questioning the effectiveness of conventional teaching methods. Another pressure for those teaching in HE was the growing requirement for them to engage in research activities. Initially, many fine art staff successfully submitted activities such as exhibitions towards institutions' Research Assessment Exercise (later the Research Excellence Framework). However, requirements gradually changed so that their practical submissions were harder to justify as valid with more standard academic formats being required. This resulted in fine art staff becoming out of sync with the direction of HE and frustrated that their professional practice was not considered a valuable research contribution.  

In 1992, the transformation of polytechnics into universities accelerated these changes. These newly designated universities could now award their own degrees, and this brought about a new layer of administrative responsibility and institutional standardisation. This change slowly redefined the role of the art educator, as service provider, and the student, as customer (Thompson 2009). Institutions during the 1990s, explored how to provide greater student choice whilst simultaneously enacting cost-saving measures and avoiding duplication. During this time many universities chose to adopt modular, and credit-based frameworks, promoting student choice but often undermining the coherence and value/ clarity of discipline-led study. Despite these concerns, some painters in the early 1990s embraced modular teaching strategies as a way of presenting students with more control over their studies. Modularity presented a way for educators to challenge the over reliance of tutorials and group critiques within fine art education and presented a way that allowed tutors to share their relevant research and practice-based knowledge with students. 

With the introduction of tuition fees in 1998 under New Labour’s government and their steep increase in 2011 under the Conservative Lib-dem coalition, art school education became much less accessible to students from different backgrounds, arguably mostly alienating those from working class backgrounds, with  recruitment to the courses being increasingly filled by international students who conveniently pay higher fees.  

These developments continued the path towards standardisation of the fine art curriculum started in 1992 with polytechnics becoming universities, as painting further integrated with the university-based higher education system to secure its educational relevance on the higher education market, most recently needing to meet quality standards by the new university regulator OfS (Office for Students) set up in 2018. 

Turps Art School developed a non-accredited post-graduate programme of peer and mentor support with studio space provision, initially based at a housing estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. Although this is also a fee-based course, they provide their students with the community of practice, and a local social environment of events that are lacking at some formal art schools. Their initiative can be seen as a response to the standardisation efforts discussed earlier, and the desire for creating an autonomous space for professional painters to facilitate emerging painters development of their practice via educational strategies that they encountered earlier in their careers in HE.  

With a similar amount as Turps charges for their fee (£6,800 as of 2025-26), their fees are broadly comporable with the rental costs for a studio space in London. Without academic accreditation for their alumni, their time at the organisation does not contribute towards the formal requirements for entering some professional fields such as teaching, which is a key area of income for painters. In comparison, however, to institutional Master programmes, Turps is at least £6000 cheaper, while some top-end providers charge £17k for home students (UK residents), and £39.7k for international students. This alienates the majority of applicants and talented painting graduates, unless they receive a scholarship or seek crowdfunding to attend these institutions.  

The nostalgia around the lost value of local art colleges in nurturing art scenes, may also signal a resurging interest in understanding local patterns in teaching and practicing painting, and how place and being at a specific institution with a more adaptable/ responsive curriculum can shape practice and lead to specific painting outcomes (Jacobi, 2020).  

As painting education and practice requires physical studio space, the networks that form at art school, and the studios which this scene inhabits, create a scene that's inherently has and requires an important relationship with and impact on their places, towns and cities. Whether place impacts the work directly or the artists’ livelihood, Fully Awake as a research project paves the possibility to investigate this connection as well as the connection between curriculum and painting outcomes through understanding the conditions in which painting evolves. The co-location of artists in a place has an important impact on the local culture, through painters setting up artist studios and developing artist-led spaces and exhibitions that attract audiences beyond their community of practice. This has been addressed in sociological and geographical literature through its impact on gentrification, and artists becoming increasingly aware of their role within this, in particular as their visual culture becomes instrumentalised for uplifting an area and increasing property values, which leads to the displacement of artists whose studios are redeveloped.  

Because painters rely on physical space for their practice they are increasingly exposed to this economic dynamic, and teaching painting can open more of a dialogue around these aspects for an enhanced professional development practice to support painting students, graduates and lecturers facing precarity. This is just one example of an urgent issue that teaching painting can address, along with recognising how the challenging economic and political environment marginalises artists from low-income backgrounds, especially if they want to progress onto postgraduate fine art education for which there is limited funding. Drawing back to the policy changes discussed earlier, we can see how economic pressures and policy changes meant fine art education and the painting discipline within this, had to adapt and be innovative, either applying the changes, or finding modularity's to work within new confines while embracing new and nostalgic ways of teaching to enable art students to learn on their own terms, in community and connection to their faculty. This was also beneficial in response to changes in culture and society. The financialisation of the higher education sector paralleled with increasing economic and social inequality however requires a more radical response, as we feel these conditions pose an existential threat to painting education as it is becoming less accessible, more standardised and lacking quality and meaning in its provision.  

In the face of this and intensifying demands on career outcomes in art and design education enforced by the government, painter-educators need to address the value of painting education speaking through the languages of sociology, geography and economics to make the case for its economic and social value.  

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