Live Music

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Keeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend on an excellent opening speech. My focus today is on the pipeline of musicians and the music teachers needed to train them—a pipeline damaged by young people’s lack of access to music in state schools. Our Labour Government inherited an education system where music had been squeezed out of the curriculum by the EBacc, which, from 2010, incentivised schools to focus on subjects excluding music and arts. This damaged music teacher recruitment and the take-up of music at A-level and GCSE.

A-level music remains in crisis. Only 4,635 students took it this year—a record low, down 41% since 2013. GCSE music entries are around 27% down since 2010. Music teacher training and recruitment have fallen by around 51% since 2010-11 and it remains a shortage subject. Even last year’s welcome rise in the number of trainees came with a warning: the number of music teachers with no relevant qualification beyond A-level rose by 10% in a single year.

Teach First found that schools in the poorest areas are three times more likely to lack a trained music teacher, and 17% do not offer music A-level at all—more than triple the rate of schools in the most affluent areas. The Social Mobility Commission found that children from the poorest backgrounds are three times less likely than wealthier pupils to learn an instrument, sing in a choir or play in an orchestra.

UK Music has warned that fewer trained teachers and a shrinking A-level cohort are damaging the industry’s talent pipeline. Without music in schools, music in the economy, culture and society will be seriously impacted. This Labour Government have rightly committed to scrapping the EBacc, but now we face the task of rebuilding music education, particularly in state schools in our most deprived areas. I urge my noble friend the Minister to press DfE Ministers to do all they can to reverse this decline we inherited by rebuilding the music teacher workforce and restoring the bursary for music teacher training, so that every young person, whatever their background, has the chance to choose music.