Access to Musical Education in School

Lord Polak Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng—and, if I may, the three teachers who inspired him—for initiating this debate. I went to King David High School in Liverpool, a Jewish state school, where music was one of the top criteria for getting in. We had a school of 500 pupils, with four orchestras. You knew on the first day of the new term that if a child was not carrying a violin case then they were a pianist.

One of my closest friends is a lawyer, Stephen Levey, who has a real passion for music—so much so that, in his mid-50s, he left the law and became head of music at Immanuel College, Bushey. The inspiration that he shows to the pupils, as I have seen first-hand, is quite remarkable. For him to have left the law to do that and to follow his passion means that that passion is passed on. Maybe I should ask the Minister if she can find a way to have Stephen cloned, because clearly we are short of passionate music teachers. My own grandchildren go to Sacks Morasha school up in Finchley. I learned today that, since last September when the music teacher left, there has been no specialist music teacher at their school.

I shall concentrate today on a charity that I have got involved with—I am not a trustee but have just got involved—called Restore the Music. In many different ways, it does things that my noble friend Lady Fleet talked about. A friend of mine, Gordon Singer, who moved from the US to manage a hedge fund here, and Polly Moore, who left her work as a commodities broker, met and created this charity. In my view, the Restore the Music model is an answer to some of the lack of funding and resourcing of music departments. That model is quite simple: a capital grant programme funded by the private and charitable sector; the delivery of grant awards between £10,000 and £20,000 directly to schools; and a focus on highly socioeconomically deprived areas. The spending of the grant is bespoke to the school, allowing the teacher to build their own vision for their own school and their pupils.

That model gives young people a place in school, as we all know, to find their voice, to find their place and to follow their passion. As the charity says on its website, a young person in school is a young person not on a street or in a gang. I went to a “battle of the bands” that it did at a school not far from here a couple of years ago, and I was particularly moved by the 15 or 16 year-old guy who stood up, holding his electric guitar and ready to play, and said, “If I wasn’t holding this electric guitar, I’d be holding a knife and I’d be in a gang”. It does so much good, as we all know.

Over the last five years, the charity has funded 125 schools with £2.2 million in London, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham. I repeat that it is unique because it is bespoke to the schools; the schools are told to build a solution that fits their community. I ask the Minister if she will meet the founders to see not only how they can be supported in expanding their work but if they can be helpful in ensuring that the £25 million, which is extremely welcome, will be spent in the best way.