Access to Musical Education in School

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this debate and congratulate him on restructuring BBC Radio 4’s schedule to put on “Rethinking Music, the Next Generation” just as I was driving home after dinner on Saturday evening. I thought it was extremely well organised of the noble Lord to make sure that we were all particularly well briefed for this debate.

Noble Lords across the House know that there are many schools across the country that deliver high-quality music lessons to pupils and offer high-quality co-curricular opportunities. Equally, as we have heard so powerfully today, in some areas of the country music provision may be more limited, and equality of access is vital, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, set out.

To address this and to improve music education in England, a refreshed national plan for music education was published in June 2022. I echo the thanks of other noble Lords to my noble friend Baroness Fleet for her great work in leading and shaping that plan, and for her continued ambition to see it implemented with maximum impact. The plan clearly sets out the Government’s ambitions to 2030: that every child, regardless of circumstance, needs or geography, should have access to a high-quality music education that affords them the opportunity to progress their musical interests and talents.

The expectations set out in the plan, starting from early years, are unashamedly ambitious. They are informed by the excellent practice we see demonstrated by many schools, music hubs and music charities around the country. We heard today from my noble friend Baroness Fleet about the work of the London Music Fund. I have been lucky enough to attend one of its events and was incredibly impressed and moved by what I heard. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, talked about the work of the Koestler Trust and my noble friend Lord Polak referred to Restore the Music. I would of course be happy to meet with the founders of the charity—the Battle of the Bands sounds like a great event. As the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley, and Lord Hampton, said, music helps to unlock not just our talent but our humanity, and, in choirs, orchestras and bands, that sense of being part of a shared endeavour. Certainly, my recent visit to the Harris Federation’s staff conference was exactly the kind of neck-tingling experience the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, described. Even though it was not my children who were playing, the choirs, bands and orchestra were extraordinary and very moving to watch.

As we heard from a number of noble Lords, when Ofsted published its recent music subject report last month, it highlighted that some schools do not allocate sufficient curriculum time to music. Schools are now expected to teach music at least one hour each week of the school year for key stages 1 to 3, alongside providing co-curricular opportunities to learn instruments, sing and form ensembles and choirs.

Higher levels of co-curricular participation have been reported this year, compared to May 2022. One of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest, was the importance of the involvement of parents. The survey data are due to be released any day now, but I can share with the House advance notice that 63% of parents in the survey in June of this year stated their child had received singing lessons during the academic year, compared to 52% in May of last year. Some 57% of parents stated that their child had received musical instrument lessons, compared to 43% last year. Some 40% had watched a live performance, and 35% had taken part in one, a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal.

Ofsted’s report also highlighted that curriculum quality of music provision is weak in some schools, with insufficient focus on musical understanding, sequencing and progression. To support schools to deliver a high-quality curriculum, we published a model music curriculum in 2021. According to a recent March survey of schools, some 59% of primary schools and 43% of secondary schools are now implementing this non-statutory guidance. The quality of curriculum was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I did not quite recognise the description that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, gave of music hubs as enforcers of the curriculum. It is non-statutory guidance, and that model music curriculum was put together by a panel of real experts in this area. I very much hope that it does not feel like it is being forced on people.

In partnership with their music hubs, we also invited every school to have a music development plan from this school year. The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, asked about equality of access and the emphasis on each school having its own plan. That requires schools to consider how they will work together to improve the quality of music education. Our sample survey of school leaders in March showed that slightly under half of schools already had a music development plan in place. Of those without a plan, nearly half reported intending to put one in place in the current school year.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, asked about the reduction in the number of music hubs. As the House will be aware, there was a re-competition of the music hub programme, led by Arts Council England. That competition is currently under way. This will enable hub lead organisations to become more strategic and build a wider number of strong partnerships, so that children and young people receive high-quality support in every local area, including particularly those areas where provision may currently be limited. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, raised the importance of partnerships in this area.

As a number of noble Lords highlighted, we know that it is incredibly important that there is access for all levels of participation in music across the country. As part of levelling up, our plan is to provide an additional £2 million of funding to support the delivery of a music progression programme that will support up to 1,000 disadvantaged pupils to learn how to play an instrument or sing to a high standard, and over a sustained period.

A number of your Lordships quite rightly raised the importance of the quality of teaching, including my noble friend Lady Fleet and the noble Lords, Lord Boateng and Lord German. Of course, this remains the single most important factor in improving outcomes for children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Just to clarify, I should say that close to 100% of hours taught in art, design and music are taught by a teacher with a relevant post A-level qualification. However, we are updating our teacher recruitment and retention strategy to build on our reforms to make sure that every child has an excellent teacher, including in music.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest, asked how we are going to encourage more teachers. For those starting initial teacher training in music in the academic year 2024-25, we are, as the House heard, offering £10,000 tax-free bursaries, which we hope very much will attract more music teachers into the profession and support schools in delivering at least one hour of music lessons a week. We are also establishing four national music hub centres of excellence, which will focus on inclusion, continuing professional development, musical technology, and pathways to industry. We plan to appoint all the centres by the autumn of 2024.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of children with disabilities, particularly those who are visually impaired, blind or deaf. The national plan makes clear the importance of music being fully inclusive, and indeed it was widely praised by charities representing children with special educational needs and disabilities. The capital grant will emphasise the use of this funding for pupils with SEND, including blind and partially sighted pupils, and including the use of Braille or large print—in fact, that is across the whole curriculum, of course, not just for music—and we will consider how the capital funding could be used to provide Braille music machines in particular.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, talked about how music would be included in the advanced British standard. Of course, as he is aware, we will be consulting extensively on this, but I have seen in the documentation that has already been published that there are examples of possible combinations of major and minor subjects, and music could appear either as a major or a minor in future.

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, talked about the importance of a strong musical and cultural offer in all the regions of this country. I remind him of the incredible focus that was put on exactly this point through the cultural recovery fund.

My apologies; as ever, I have run out of time.

Again, in relation to location, I mention to the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, the BRIT School North, a new 16-to-19 academy being opened in Bradford that will have a creative curriculum specialising in music and production.

There is still a lot to do to make our vision for music education become a reality, but I hope that in some way I have been able to reassure the House that together our reforms will lead to concrete action that every school and academy trust can take to improve their music education provision. As we have heard from all your Lordships this evening, studying and engaging with music is not a privilege; it is a vital part of a broad and ambitious curriculum, and our reforms ensure that all pupils will have access to high-quality music education and all the knowledge, joy and connection that brings.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I put a plug in for the Parliament Choir; it is always looking for new members.

Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Coles (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a harrowing privilege to serve on the committee that produced this report. Before moving on, I pay tribute to the highly consultative but steely chairing of this inquiry. It has been extremely well done, and we are all very grateful to the committee clerk, Sam Kenny, and Tom Burke and Claire Coast-Smith, who have really backed us up and have been tremendous.

Going back a little bit, many years ago in my late teens I spent a number of vacations working in a home for children in care. The local authority was the LCC, now redundant, and the model of care, now redundant, was a large campus with hundreds of children, based on the public school model of houses, playing fields, a chapel and a lot of open space. Since then, we have moved on; we have moved people back into the community by and large and have provided local services—standards have improved. But here we are at a moment of inflection, when radical change is needed: just as it occurred all those years ago when we changed the model of care, we have to do it again. So we have this opportunity—and the MacAlister report showed us the way. However, as other noble Lords have said, it could be characterised as high on ambition and aspiration, but I do not quite see how it is going to happen. I shall return to the money in a minute.

I turn to the question of pace. It is wonderful— I sometimes wonder whether all government reports are like this: you commission a report, you buy a bit of time, you consult, you buy a bit more time, you run a pilot, you buy a bit more time, then it fades away—time and again. This, however, has to be different, because this is a critical group of people.

I want to touch quickly on four areas, which cover the generalities. First, there are 13,000 children in residential homes. That is still an enormous number. There should be better ways of caring for them. However, while we have them, we also need better regulation. We need to see what Ofsted is doing to develop that inspection framework. Another point is proximity. Those children are often sent away to care homes that are remote, and they are often remote because the property is cheap. In other services, proximity has become key. We should be moving the children closer, not only culturally but physically, to where they come from.

Other noble Lords have talked about voice. We heard about some very moving cases. It seems that, at both the micro and macro levels, the voices have not been listened to. We need to get out there. Again, the concept is there; we know that we need to develop opt-out advocacy services. We need to develop these things, and it should be a question of when, not if. It is easy just to say the policy.

Other Members have touched on workforce. How can we be 7,900 people short? That is bound to lead to bad care being provided. Similarly, in residential care, people are badly paid and the churn is colossal. There may be the right number of people for the CQC inspection, but the fact that some are coming and some are going obviously affects the quality of care. Can the Minister say when the shortfall in care workers will be eradicated? Are we paying enough? How do we get this level of temporary labour down. It is amazing—it is a sign of a bad system.

For me, perhaps the most important thing—beyond early intervention—is kinship care. The report touched on this. Some estimates show that there are about 150,000 to 200,000 in such care, as opposed to 57,000 in foster care. This is a worthy thing of course—it is how families used to do it; they would group together. In recent times, the funding has made that much more difficult; it is patchy and depends on the postcode. We need to see what we can do about that. A review is due, so let us hope it is comprehensive and has some money attached to it. If, however, it is another aspiration and another pilot, taking longer and longer, we will fail to grasp the opportunity. This is a terrible situation. Often, a grandparent is taking a grandchild, and it often means the grandparent walking away from their own children; they are separated from them. That is harrowing, and we need to back those people up as far as we can and as quickly as we can.

As others have said, it all comes down to being long on aspiration. It would be really helpful to put some dates on things, and then put some money behind it all, so that progress can be monitored rather than the can constantly being kicked down the road. Pace and ambition have been mentioned but, for me, it is about the practicality of how we do it. As ever, we know what to do; the fault often is that we do it only once. This is about taking forward a national programme.

I end quickly by quoting Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead—many noble Lords may have read it. She says in her dedication:

“For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who've lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you”.


I hope that the Government can make it for them as well and move on.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly interrupt to remind noble Lords that there is a five-minute advisory speaking time. There have been some wonderful speeches and we want to hear everyone in the fullness of time.

Vulnerable Teenagers

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

Before the Minister sits down, I wonder whether I might pick up one point that the Minister made. Mental health support in schools reaches a quarter of the children who need it at present and the aim is to increase that percentage—

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry, the noble Baroness was not here at the beginning of the debate, so it is not appropriate for her to intervene. She can certainly write to the Minister, who will respond in writing. Thank you.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to thank everyone for their contribution today. I am sort of feeling guilty, because I somehow manage to get a slot each time at the end of the business of the week, and people are not able to get back to where they want to get back to—so I apologise for that. I think it has been a really interesting debate. My noble friend Lord McConnell reminded us that this has been going on a long time. I was working with adolescents well over 50 years ago, and working professionally with them for a significant amount of time, too. But we are in different times, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, acknowledged. There are specific things going on now which I never had to deal with when I was doing detached youth work, or even before then working as a social worker.

This commission was set up at the end of Covid. We know that many children had been very lonely and stuck in their rooms on social media, which was corrosive and damaging, and through which predators were able to reach out to them. Some of them did not have any opportunity to engage in things such as the sports the noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about. For those nobody had noticed as a potential problem, they and their families were suddenly facing problems they had never imagined. We still do not know what has happened to thousands of the children who went missing because they were not in school or accounted for anywhere. When I was working, in those days, we did not have to worry about what they were seeing and what was being organised on social media.

Yes, there are problems that adolescents have always faced. My social work tutor used to say to me that the problem was that I had a very peaceful and happy adolescence, and maybe it would have been better if I had had a few more of the problems of the young people I was trying to work with. I was always quite grateful that I had not. We know that young people have always faced problems, but at the moment there are problems we really do not know how properly to tackle. Not being at school and not getting the resilience support and training—which, for me, is how we end up with real losses in terms of mental health—they do not know where to go or who to get it from. When I was starting, there were lots of people around who could be their youth worker, their mentor or their friend, but that has been hollowed out.

I know that this Minister thinks about and works on these things very carefully. The reality is that we all need to do that across the board and look for ways we can identify what is going on in our communities. We never thought there would be this sort of problem in many communities, and there is. As the report says, very often these young people are hidden in plain sight, and these problems are there. We have a responsibility not to give up on these kids and to make sure they have a future, and that their future family have a future in which the care and the relationship is there for as long as it takes.