Schools: Music Education

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, on this timely and important debate and on his powerful opening speech. I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, whose desire to master the harp fills me with admiration. I declare an interest as chairman of a charity set up to mark the 150th anniversary next year of Hector Berlioz’s death, which has education as one of its aims.

As we have heard—I am afraid we have heard a lot of what I am going to say—music is a great UK success story. It contributes £4.4 billion to the economy through exports, touring and the earnings of countless UK performers, composers, ensembles, conservatoires and promoters. Employers are crying out for the creative and other skills which music is particularly good at developing—teamwork, discipline, commitment, resilience, communication and leadership among others. Music also contributes to communities, fostering a sense of identity and social engagement, from the BBC Proms to local brass bands, choirs and festivals. It also contributes enormously to personal satisfaction and well-being. My life would be immeasurably poorer if I had not been lucky enough to go to schools where I had to sing, to struggle with the piano and to learn about music—even if the results were less impressive than for many of your Lordships and probably not even on a par with the noble Lord, Lord Lexden.

I therefore find it alarming that the availability of high-quality music education seems to be getting narrower rather than wider, with a growing opportunity gap between children at independent schools or receiving private music tuition and those at state schools, particularly in less prosperous areas. There is a real danger that we are reaching a tipping point where we lose the enviable position we have built up in music over the years because we are failing to nurture the potential talent and skills needed for a new generation to maintain it. Already, leading UK conservatoires are finding that a growing proportion of their applicants come from the independent sector and many university music departments are having to resort to the clearing process to fill their courses.

The national plan for music education was launched by the coalition Government in 2011. It set out the laudable aspiration that children from all backgrounds and every part of England should have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, to make music with others, to learn to sing and to have the opportunity to progress to the next level of excellence. To help schools deliver this admirable aim, the network of music education hubs was set up across England and, to the Government’s credit, they have continued to fund the hubs, albeit at a lower level than before. That is the good news—a considerable improvement, as we have heard, on the situation in Wales, the so-called land of song.

However, the national plan is falling far short of its goals. Music is supposedly an entitlement for all pupils up to age 14 in schools that follow the national curriculum, but we have heard the evidence that an increasing number of schools have reduced or completely removed music in the curriculum. The number of music curriculum staff is declining: the average in state schools is now 1.67 full-time equivalents. Tellingly, it is 2.57 full-time equivalents in independent schools. I suggest that the reason for the low current vacancy rate for music teachers in schools cited by the Minister yesterday may be that schools are not recruiting music teachers or are even reducing their numbers.

Fifty-nine per cent of respondents to the Sussex survey highlighted the EBacc as having a negative impact on the provision and uptake of music and more than 200 leading organisations have signed up to the “Bacc for the Future” campaign, seeking reforms to the EBacc. I cannot understand how, in the teeth of ever-growing evidence, the Government persist in asserting that the EBacc as currently constituted is not seriously harming music education. Ministers yet insist that all schools, including academies and free schools, should provide high-quality music education as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. I have no doubt that that is their intention. However, the fact is that it is not happening, and it is often schools serving the most disadvantaged children and least well-off areas that are doing worst.

As the Minister said yesterday, the best schools combine high-quality cultural education with excellence in core academic subjects. Those best schools recognise the importance of music education: it is all the other schools I worry about, for which the current balance of incentives against which they are held to account is giving them the wrong signals and leading heads to focus their limited resources on the EBacc, at the expense of music and creative subjects. I wholly endorse the demand for the EBacc to be rethought to include arts and creative subjects.

Another welcome step would be to ensure that Ofsted inspections take full and proper account of schools’ music education programmes, in line with the comment of a hub leader in Yorkshire that:

“Music and the arts are so crucial to a child’s learning that I cannot conceive the circumstances in which a school can be outstanding without music and the arts being at least good”.


I was encouraged by the recent speech of Amanda Spielman, the Chief Inspector of Schools, proposing to introduce a new quality of education judgment while reducing the focus on outcomes. I also welcome the appointment of Susan Aykin as lead inspector for the performing arts at Ofsted.

Let me end with some other suggestions. First, there should be a statement soon about the future of the national plan for music education beyond 2020. I hope the Minister will be able to commit not only to a continuation of the plan, including ongoing financial support for the hubs, but to its extension: through covering wider age groups—below age 5, for example; through investing more in the music education workforce, which is underpaid, under-resourced, underappreciated and overstretched; through a greater focus on children and schools facing barriers to progress; and through reinforcing the importance of music in the school curriculum. Hubs are funded to augment and support schools’ basic music provision. There is wide divergence in the quality of services they provide. I have had some involvement with the outstanding Bristol hub—Bristol Plays Music—but many others are struggling.

My second suggestion is that the Minister should look at ways for the Government to put their mouth where their money is, so to speak, by encouraging more sharing of best practice across hubs and working with Music Mark, the association of which 95% of hubs are members. Such encouragement could include promoting take-up of the many excellent resources available from charities and others to support music education in schools and hubs—Ten Pieces from the BBC, the ABRSM’s Classical 100 resources and the LSO Discovery programme, to mention three in the classical music field. The current Music Commission inquiry, led by Sir Nicholas Kenyon, will perhaps provide ideas on how to pursue this goal in its recommendations.

My final suggestion is for the Government to be more proactive in exploiting the potential of music and creative education to help achieve wider policy goals, such as addressing future skills needs, delivering the industrial strategy or reforming technical education. There is plenty of research data to inform this, which will no doubt soon be supplemented by the findings of the Durham commission, set up by Arts Council England and Durham University to identify how creativity and creative thinking can play a larger part in the lives of young people, and the “Music in Society” inquiry recently launched by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It is high time we recognised that music education should be seen not as a drain on government resources but as an essential investment in the future of our economy, our communities and our citizens—all of them, not just those lucky enough to afford proper access to it.