What your child actually learns this year

What these subjects are for, and the work that genuinely exists in them.

The building blocks shared across art, music, drama and sport, and why they are taught as one subject.

Line, shape, colour, and the discipline of looking properly before drawing anything.

The pulse underneath music. The part a child feels before they can name it.

Track and field alongside building a picture out of many pieces. An unusual pairing, and a deliberate one.

The tune itself: how notes are chosen and ordered so a line of music holds together.

The rules, the positions and the skills, taught as a sport rather than as a free period.

Tie and dye, printing and painting on cloth. Design that then has to survive being worn and washed.

A real instrument, properly taught. Fingering, breath, and reading the notes.

Poetry written and spoken aloud, where the sound carries as much as the words do.

Serving, passing, and the teamwork that makes a rally last longer than one shot.

The dances of this country, taught as technique and as inheritance.

Weaving, by hand. Patience, pattern, and a finished object at the end of it.

Water confidence and stroke technique. For many children the most useful thing on this list.

The games played here before imported sport arrived, and the real skills inside them.

How to say why something works, in words that go further than liking it. The skill that turns a hobby into a subject.