Schools: Music Education

Lord Borwick Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, we are all different; what a great thing that is. Some children have an aptitude for music and some are very enthusiastic, but others are not. Beyond the very basics we require in the education system, it is important that we offer students the choice to learn music. However, the more a curriculum or subject is forced on some students, the more they may grow to resent it, meaning bad grades and disruption. The great student musicians should get great music teaching, just as the budding historians should get great history teaching. It is important that we find the things that pupils excel in and nurture them.

Of course, we want our children to have good careers. I was once asked by my son when he was a child whether he should learn the piano or the recorder. I asked a friend of mine, an eminent QC in the planning Bar who is also an accomplished brass instrumentalist, “Tell me, what is the most economically sensible instrument to learn?” He said that there was a shortage of bassoonists, which would lead a good player to principal status in the time that a fiddler would make it to 32nd violin. He said that the only better-paid musician at the time was the man who played the taxi horn.

As some noble Lords know, I had an interest in taxis then and do so now as the chairman of the manufacturer for Mercedes of the Vito London taxi. Apparently, there was only one owner of a Parisian taxi horn in London, vital for the “American in Paris” suite, the wonderful work by Gershwin. He demanded that he would only rent it to the orchestra if he were employed to play it. He solemnly pressed the button, perfectly in time, dressed in white tie and tails, and was paid the minimum rate for a full orchestral performance. On a per-note basis, he is definitely the winner.

I have done many of the Peers in Schools visits. I should pay tribute to the great work of Gina Page from the Lord Speaker’s Office. She has the complex job of making sure that we Peers are in the place where we are supposed to be at the correct time. From my experience as a Conservative Party Whip, I know just how difficult that job can be. That said, I am told that the purpose of these visits is to teach 16 year-old pupils about the House of Lords. I am convinced that the real objective is not to educate the pupils but to educate the Peers on quite how difficult teaching is. I am certainly grateful for the education.

Music teaching, to the extent that it is about an instrument and not singing, is about personal tuition. More accurately, it is about the ability of the teacher to inspire the pupil to practise. The old story has the traveller ask, “How do I get to the Albert Hall?” The reply is: “Practice, practice, practice!” Unfortunately, most kids are not very dedicated at practising anything and I am sure that many teachers would prefer that a child spent their time on academic revision for exams rather than musical practice. So if a child is learning an instrument at a basic level, a large part of the short lesson must be inquiring about last week’s practice and inspiring next week’s practice, rather than teaching new techniques.

This is where new software can help. I had a look at an investment in a software company some time ago. I never proceeded with it but I learnt how the quality of the listening skills of an iPhone or iPad, Alexa and OK Google are improving rapidly. Listening is complex, as anybody with hearing difficulties can tell you, but the ability of a small computer to distinguish a note perfectly is progressing well, even if the piano is not perfectly tuned. A good piece of software, of which there are several, can now listen to a student and thus inform their teacher for how long the student practised and indeed how many notes were right and how many were wrong. Rather than a peripatetic teacher driving for hours to teach the bassoon to a pupil, much of the teaching will eventually be done remotely. That will inevitably lead to a massive future reduction in the cost of music teaching in schools. What an inspiring future is coming our way; I am much more optimistic than my noble friend Lord Black.

But new software has to be developed. As we face the latest wave of technological change, it is crucial that we are educating our children with the skills of the future in mind. As I just mentioned, the role of music teacher can now to some extent be enhanced by clever software. Many children do not enjoy music and many have no aptitude for it. I enjoy it greatly but, unlike my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, I have absolutely no talent. We should remember that we must be educating those children like me to be developing music software, not using it.

When I went to school, all pupils were asked to sing a note, then a second note. I was asked a third question: “Can you sing any note at all?” The same problem must face schools in respect of uncommon languages, with an intake of pupils whose first language is not English. How does a school with a tight budget allocate small resources between teaching the glass harmonica or the harp and mastering a little-used language? There is no right answer, except to try to teach the pupils to love to learn. Perhaps the only practical answer is large classes learning to sing together, with the pupils with no interest in music—or my ability to sing—hiding in the middle and hoping that the teacher will be too busy to discover who is inept.

As with other subjects, the conundrum with music is how to afford specialist subject teaching, usually for individuals, while doing the general teaching of the core curriculum to an audience of widespread abilities and an even wider range of enthusiasm levels. One can make a good case for most subjects to be compulsory and taught to all. I fear that is unrealistic, but music is like most other subjects: it should be encouraged among those who show a talent and an interest. That will allow schools to prioritise their budgets accordingly.