the term creativity, as tom says, is so often held up with the arts, but when if you think of your ideal employee for a research and development team for new pharmacuticals, you would want someone who is creative, they may not be able to dance or to string a poem together, but to think of new ways tackle the war on cancer for example, takes creative thinking.
so when the government neglects to encourage creative thinking in pupils, it is not just a loss to the arts world, that the next generation of employees will be uncreative, but it will have, and has since the thatcher years, have an effect on the whole economy (slightly melodramatic maybe, but you see my point!)