Voices is the Dorset Echo's weekly youth page - written for young people by young people.

This week Billy discusses why art is important in the curriculum.

Intelligence is defined as the ability to apply or acquire knowledge or skill. This can refer to everything – learning how to tie your shoelaces or learning about polyphonic novels.

Students are expected to learn and while they are still learning, they are expected to choose their GCSEs.

But students wanting to pursue a creative subject in some schools can not. Out of 1,200 schools that responded to a BBC survey, a third said they have cut lessons in art, music, drama and design technology.

That is 400 schools in the country that are denying students the right to acquire knowledge or skill in a subject that they love - and this number is rising.

The government outlines that ‘the arts are crucial to a broad and balanced curriculum’, yet schools across the nation are unable to educate pupils in these subjects that are loved by so many.

Creative subjects being diminished in school is deeply disappointing because it is making society less vibrant, less diverse and less unique and we need to preserve the diversity that we live in today. If not for ourselves the for the generations to come.

The arts are such a good way of showing diversity and such a good way of protesting our opinions, to make the world in which we live better. So why are we restricting the next generation? We need to use the creative subjects to our advantage not cast them aside as pointless.

By Billy Sullivan