Music Education

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Adam Jogee

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell]

That sounds like a very sensible suggestion, and my hon. Friend now has it on the record. We will make sure that it is raised in the appropriate way.

We continue to support the crucial music hubs programme, for which grant funding of £76 million has recently been secured for the full academic year 2025-26, up until the end of August 2026, following the outcome of the spending review. We will confirm longer-term funding as part of the spending review process, which is ongoing. To widen access to musical instruments, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby rightly raised, from the current academic year the Government are investing £25 million in capital funding for musical instruments, equipment and technology. Those instruments and technology must be put to good use, so we will take his concern on board.

For some pupils, in particular those facing disadvantage and with additional needs, the barriers to accessing music education can be particularly high. That is why we are also investing in a new programme to pilot targeted support for children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with special educational needs and disabilities. The Government’s music opportunities pilot offers pupils across primary and secondary schools the opportunity to learn to play an instrument of their choice or to sing to a high standard by providing free lessons and supporting young people to progress, including by taking music exams. The Government are investing £2 million to support the pilot over a four-year period up to 2027-28. It is backed by a further £3.85 million from the Arts Council and Youth Music. The pilot is delivered by Young Sounds UK in 12 areas of the country as an expansion of its successful Young Sounds Connect programme.

I saw for myself the impact of the pilot on a visit to Mountfield primary school in Washington, where I had a lovely time chatting to the children about the difference that accessing music education had made to them. Indeed, for some of them it was why they came to school. The impact was evident. We will use the pilot’s findings to inform future policy on widening music opportunities, but it is a really rich start.

[Adam Jogee]

Will the Minister accept my invitation, from one Newcastle MP to another, to follow up on her visit to the school in Washington and come and see the formative impact that music has at St Mary’s school in Newcastle-under-Lyme? I am sure she would be very welcome.

[Catherine McKinnell]

As my hon. Friend will know, I am a big fan of Newcastles. It would be nice to come and see the other one, as I have never been; I would love to accept his invitation if there is an opportunity.

High-quality teaching is the in-school factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s outcomes. That is why, as part of the Government’s plan for change, we are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and our colleges, where they are needed the most, over this Parliament. To support that, we are offering a teacher training incentives package for the 2025-26 recruitment cycle worth £233 million—a £37 million increase on the last cycle. It includes a £10,000 tax-free bursary for music.

We are seeing positive signs. The 2024-25 initial teacher training census reported that 331 trainees had begun courses in music, up from 216 in 2023-24. We have also agreed a 5.5% pay award for teachers for 2024-25, and a 4% pay award in 2025-26, meaning that teachers and leaders will see an increase in pay of almost 10% over two years. We have expanded our school teacher recruitment campaign and we are allowing planning, preparation and assessment time to be undertaken at home to give more flexibility to the profession.

We are also working hard to address teacher workload and wellbeing, and to support schools to introduce flexible working practices. We have the “Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff” service, developed alongside school leaders, with a workload reduction toolkit to support schools to identify opportunities to cut excessive workload.

I spoke on teacher recruitment at the Schools and Academies Show just over a year ago, prior to the general election, when I was the shadow Minister. After I finished speaking about our vision of unlocking opportunity for children to access art, music, sport and enrichment at school, I said hello to a gentleman who had been patiently waiting to speak to me. He introduced himself; I asked him what he did, and he said, “I’m a music teacher. To be honest, I had taken the decision to give up and do something else, but after listening to you today, I think I’m going to hang on.” I thought he should definitely hang on—we need more people like him—and that we had injected a sense of hope that this Government would care about music and enrichment. Now that we are in government, I hope that he is still teaching, along with many others, and that he knows that we are determined to deliver our vision to unlock access to music for all children. I hope our brilliant teachers feel supported to have a rewarding and fruitful career inspiring the next generation of musicians.

We know that enrichment opportunities like music and the arts help young people to gain skills and strengthen their sense of school belonging, supporting them to thrive. That is why we are supporting schools to plan a high-quality enrichment offer, with a new enrichment framework developed in collaboration with a working group of experts, including from school, youth, sports and arts organisations. The Department is working closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and we are committed to publishing the framework by the end of 2025. It will identify what a high-quality enrichment offer will look like, reflecting the great practice that already exists in schools and providing advice on how to plan a high-quality enrichment offer more strategically and intentionally, including how to make use of specific programmes to increase access to sport and the arts.

In addition, under the first ever dormant assets scheme strategy, which was announced last month, £132.5 million will be allocated to projects to increase disadvantaged young people’s access to enrichment opportunities, including in music, to boost wellbeing and employability. The fund will be delivered by the National Lottery Community Fund, with which the Government are working to design the specific programmes that will be delivered.

We recognise the importance of specialist training in supporting young people to pursue the most advanced levels of music education. That is why we continue to provide generous support to help students to access specialist music and dance education and training: we are committing £36 million for the academic year 2025-26. As several hon. Members have mentioned, this important scheme provides means-tested bursaries and grants to enable high-achieving children and young people in music and dance to benefit from truly world-class specialist training, regardless of their personal and financial circumstances. The scheme supports students to attend eight independent schools and 20 centres for advanced training that provide places at weekends and evenings and in the school holidays. The bursaries support more than 2,000 pupils per year, with about 900 pupils attending one of the schools.

The Government continue to provide such generous support because we recognise how important it is. All families earning below the average relevant income of £45,000 a year and making parental contributions to fees will continue to benefit from the additional financial support in the next financial year, so they will not be affected by any VAT changes introduced in January 2025. Any future funding will be determined as part of the post-spending review process.