Music and Dance Scheme

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an important point. There is an enormous amount of expertise in the schools supported by the music and dance scheme, as there is in other parts of the system. The priority here has to be to bring in as many different organisations and voices as possible, in order to design the national centre for arts and music in a way that delivers the objective of broader and more equitable access to arts education in state-funded schools. That will need lots of voices, lots of contribution, and of course the ambition that the Government have already put into it.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, please allow me to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, in her role as executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives:

“Creativity and the expressive arts should be part and parcel of every child’s education from primary school”.


Please also allow me to quote the Prime Minister:

“Every young person should have access to music, art, design and drama. That is our mission”.


Perhaps the Minister can help us understand why Ed Sheeran, backed by Elton John, Eric Clapton and hundreds of other artists, wrote to the Prime Minister just three months ago to say:

“The time to act is now. State schools … have seen a … decrease in music provision … How many more venues need to close, how many music programs need to be cut before we realise that we can’t just celebrate success, we have to protect the foundations that make it?”

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Well, I do agree with the words of my noble friend Lady Longfield. I am sure that she, like me, is dismayed at, for example, the big fall-off in young people able to take GCSEs in those subjects over the period of time that the noble Lord was in government, and that she is dismayed about, as the noble Baroness said, the numbers of teachers that we are losing in this particular area. This Government have a commitment, not only through the national centre for arts and music education but through our investment in our schools and teachers, and our commitment to a new national curriculum available for all schools, and an entitlement for all children. I only wish the last Government had been as committed.