Arts and cultural education is important in its own right for the social benefits it brings, but it is also an important factor in addressing issues of poor social mobility and the national skills shortage. While we welcome the Government’s efforts to introduce a National Plan for Music Education and Cultural Education Strategy, we have heard that education policy in the main can have a detrimental effect on the provision of education, training and skills development in this country. We remain concerned that cultural education is still seen as of lesser importance to the curriculum, which feeds negative perceptions of careers in the creative industries, discourages people with necessary skills from pursuing those careers and compounds issues of social mobility within the sector. (Paragraph 94) 58 Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda