Music Education

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Aberdare]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of music education hubs and the National Plan for Music Education.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord’s Question for Short Debate is now being taken as last business, the time limit for the debate becomes 90 minutes rather than 60 minutes. Speeches should therefore be limited to seven minutes, except for the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the Minister, which remain limited to 10 and 12 minutes respectively.

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this short debate on the national plan for music education, even if it is somewhat later than might have been anticipated. I put down my Question last June, before the Government’s announcement of extra funding for the plan, but I believe there are still issues about its funding and delivery that are worthy of debate. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have put down their names to speak and look forward to hearing what they have to say from their often much more knowledgeable standpoints than I can claim as a mere music consumer, albeit a passionate one, and now also a singer in the Parliament choir.

The second paragraph of the national plan, published by the Departments for Education and for Culture, Media and Sport in November 2011, says:

“Our vision is to enable children from all backgrounds and every part of England to 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”.

That is indeed a visionary commitment, and one in which the Government should take pride. The challenge now is to ensure that those ambitious aims are delivered.

The plan’s central element is the creation of a network of local or regional music educational hubs across England. The devolved regions are, of course, not covered. These hubs, 123 of them, are responsible for co-ordinating the delivery of music education in their areas, working in partnership with schools, local authorities, music teachers and others. Their central government funding comes from the DfE but is administered by Arts Council England, which oversees them. In addition to the four core roles spelt out in the vision, the hubs were given three extension roles—to provide training and CPD for schools staff, develop instrument loan schemes and offer access to large-scale or high-quality music experiences for students.

I do not plan to rehash the case for the value of music in schools, which is rightly taken pretty much as a given in the plan, but one message coming through strongly to your Lordships’ Digital Skills Committee, on which I sit, is the central importance of creativity to the UK’s future skills base and competitiveness. There is nothing like music for learning creativity, as well as other key skills such as team work, communication and discipline. The main question for us today is whether the plan is on track to achieve its aims and what government and others can do to increase its success.

I shall raise some issues relating to the hubs and their performance to date. Perhaps inevitably, these start with finance. Up to July, central government funding for local music education services, going back before the plan was launched, had been declining year by year, from a total of over £82 million in 2010-11 to £58 million in 2014-15, and no announcement had yet been made on funding beyond that. Furthermore, DfE published a consultation document suggesting that local authorities should not use any of the education support grant that they received from the department to support music education activities in schools. So the announcement later that month that funding for the year to March 2016 would be increased by £18 million, with £17 million of that going to hubs, was excellent news, especially as the ESG proposal was dropped at the same time. The Government deserve warm congratulations on this, at least as far as it goes.

However, there remain some important questions. How and when will the £75 million for 2015-16 be allocated to individual hubs? Will the extra money be dedicated wholly to fulfilling their existing roles? What will happen after March 2016? For hubs to be able to plan ahead properly, they need assurance that they will continue to be funded, preferably at the 2015-16 level, up to the end of the plan period in March 2020. A commitment of that kind was given by the Prime Minister for youth sport in February, so why not for music?

Central government funding represents only one-third of total funding for hubs across the board, although it ranges from 13% to 100% for individual hubs. Schools provide another 31%, with the remainder coming from parents at 17%, local authorities at 8% and other sources at 10%. With local authority funding declining from £25 million in 2010-11 to £14 million in 2012-13, and likely to continue to do so, and with parents seen as unable to contribute much more than they already do, confidence in the level and continuation of the central government funding commitment becomes all the more crucial.

There are other concerns. The performance of hubs is patchy, with some doing much better than others in building partnerships, raising funds and engaging schools, students and parents in stimulating worthwhile and effective activities within the four core roles. I am not aware of much evidence of initiatives to share good practice and encourage weaker hubs to learn from and emulate those that do better, so I was encouraged to receive a briefing from the Mayor of London’s office that outlined the excellent work that hubs in London are doing, with support from the mayor and his music fund, and which expressed the willingness of the GLA to work with DfE, the Arts Council and local authorities to develop a high-quality training programme for music hub leaders. The mayor and his music education task force will launch a London music pledge next month, which includes CPD and new resources for teachers. Another exemplar is the Greater Manchester music hub, working effectively with nine music services in partnership with three local orchestras and the Royal Northern College of Music. London and Manchester may be special cases, but that seems to be just the sort of good practice sharing that is needed. What will the Government do to promote it?

There is worrying evidence, too, that students from poorer socio-economic groups and areas, and children with special educational needs, are not benefiting as much from the music education services on offer. Disadvantaged children are under-represented in ensembles and choirs. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, led a debate in July focusing on the fact that young people with disabilities are considerably less likely to be involved in musical activities than other students.

Access to instruments is another problem. Some of your Lordships may have seen the recent Channel 4 programme, “Don’t Stop the Music”, in which the pianist James Rhodes encouraged people with spare or unused instruments to loan or donate them to schools. Few hubs offer instrument loans at present, but perhaps they could be encouraged to link in to schemes like this.

Another concern is a growing shortage of music teachers. The Henley review recommended the creation of a primary teaching module, but since this has no funding attached to it, few potential teachers are taking it. Finally, the absence of music from Ofsted’s inspection framework means inevitably that schools give less priority to their music education activities than they might otherwise do, particularly as current league tables do not measure arts subjects.

Although it is outside the ambit of this debate, I am especially sorry to learn that the land of my fathers, albeit a few generations back, Wales, the so-called land of song, has no central funding for music services at all and that children there are 10% less likely to learn an instrument than those in England. What a disastrous failure to capitalise on what should be such an asset for Wales.

The national plan for music education is a visionary plan, with enormous potential educational, musical, cultural, creative and economic benefits. Of course I do not expect the Government, let alone the Minister today, to fix all the issues I have highlighted at a stroke. But should they not be blowing their trumpet rather more fortissimo to promote the success of the plan and to find ways of fixing these concerns? It would be interesting to hear something about the views of the plan’s monitoring board on the progress being made. This has now been transformed into a cultural education board. I hope that the Minister will confirm that this is not a step towards converting music education hubs into cultural education hubs.

The national plan for music education should be actively driven forward as a developing success story, which will help to cement and enhance the UK’s leading world position in music and creativity. I urge the Government, Arts Council England and the Minister today to be even more positive and energetic in supporting and advancing it. It would be sad indeed if the plan were allowed to fall short of its vision because of a lack of energy or commitment, when its success is so important to us all.