Music Education

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, that this has been a very interesting debate. We have had a wealth of experience; musicians of every character from around this Chamber have contributed. We have had expertise at all sorts of levels. Perhaps I should also say that now, with the connection between the noble Lords, Lord Black, Lord Berkeley and Lord Lingfield, we have a system for handing in musical instruments and getting them repaired free of charge. I encourage all noble Lord to look in their lofts and in the backs of their cupboards to see if they can find one. I think I have a violin without any strings, so I will be coming to see the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, in a few days’ time.

I echo the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, when she talked about how this national plan looks at inclusion, progression and excellence. I say amen to that. It has been quite clear from the debate today that people want to say very little about the plan itself, as it has the essence of all good things. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on composition, but that is one of the factors I want to emphasise later on.

What people have been concerned about, of course, is what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said: delivery, delivery, delivery. There have been some very specific examples of when we hope this plan will be delivered. I know that the Minister has not gone away because his picture is in the front of this document, so it is there for perpetuity, he cannot escape and he is now going to be responsible for it. However, I understand that many of these things that we are talking about may be the responsibility of the DfE or of other Ministers, and certainly the Treasury has a hand in it all.

It has been clear in this debate that a national plan, no matter how sound it is, will only be as good as the sustainable actions that lie behind it to achieve its ambitions. In the past, the ambition has been quite patchy. When the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said that we might think of moving the ENO to Coventry, I looked at the figures for Coventry, and it had only eight A-level entries for music this last year—only eight. For a city which has a great cathedral with a great musical background—some of us in this Chamber have sung many times in Coventry Cathedral—that is a shame. It is one of the examples of the patchiness of the provision being made to us.

Inflation is also going to hit this. Many Members of your Lordships’ House have mentioned how the budget and its delivery matter, and how inflation has been biting away at the budget that has been provided. We have already heard about schools having that terrible difficulty of considering laying off teaching assistants and teachers because of the effect of inflation. It is a very real matter at present—all the headteachers I have talked to spoke about the difficulty of the budget—so clearly there is work to be done. To echo the point made by my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, unless the Minister is going to tell us that he has been very successful in getting the additional expenditure needed to cope with inflation, I imagine that we are going to have to look to partnerships to raise the additional money that we require. I hope the Minister will tell us how we can incentivise those partnerships. The noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, told us that business ought to contribute. That happens in London but it is not happening much around the rest of the country, so there needs to be some kind of incentivisation.

The third area, which many noble Lords emphasised, is about the fact that while the hubs are obliged to take note of this plan, deal with it and implement it, schools are not; they can avoid it. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said that hubs may have great plans, but if a school does not wish to implement them it need not do so. I would like to understand from the Minister what this new board will have in the way of powers. If it has powers over monitoring what happens in the hubs, that is one thing but, if it cannot deliver what the hubs want to achieve within the schools, that is much more concerning.

Rightly, music education does not start in secondary schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, it is right back at the earliest age that young people need to be involved in music. It is absolutely clear that this plan must apply much earlier. While she rightly said that it is not a statutory sector, clearly as soon as you get into the early years of infant school and primary education we hit the next problem, which is what hubs are trying to do but cannot succeed in because they have no role in implementing it. As the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, it needs implementation by statute or some other means to ensure that these two important parts of our education system—the hubs and the schools —are linked and have to work together. It might be said that this might be provided through incentivisation through funding, but it clearly has not happened because there are such patchy results around the country.

The other point of course is about staffing. The essence of good music education as everyone knows is good music teachers, but now that many specialist music teacher training courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels have closed, what is the Government’s assessment and how will they meet the laudable ambitions of this plan without the feedstock provided by good music education teacher training programmes? As the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, it is a vicious circle. We have the plans, and the plans have led to the present lesser take-up of music in schools, and therefore fewer people training as music teachers, and so it goes on. How does the Minister intend to break that cycle? It is a very important question, especially as the National Foundation for Educational Research found that only 57% of the Government’s target for music teacher training will be met this year. That was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Black. On the current plan, that number of teachers is not coming through. We are short of that number, so how do the Government intend to meet their ambitions in their plan if they cannot provide the teachers to carry out the actions they propose?

Then, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, there is a need to bolster the support that the Government provide for peripatetic workers. We say “peripatetic workers”, but we mean “peripatetic music teachers”. That is what we have always called them, and that is what we should continue to call them. Calling them a “workforce” downgrades them to an element which is not the same as a “teacher”. I never call them anything but a peripatetic teacher. They may not have a teaching qualification, but—goodness me—they have music experience par excellence. They have such an important role to play. The Welsh national plan for music provides protection in conditions and terms of work for peripatetic teachers. I think we should at the first stage call them peripatetic teachers, not workers. What will the Government do? Will they do what has been done in Wales and strengthen the role of these people simply by status? That status does not cost money; it just means that you get the thing in the perfect place.

I do not remember which noble Lord said it, but there is a problem about timetabling. It is difficult in schools, as you have to get the right timetabling for the right number of teachers and when you can get them to come in at certain times. That is something that certainly needs to be considered.

A point from me that has been amplified by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, is that music education, as the plan states, can provide students with

“experiences and skills which develop their creativity.”

That underplays the role that music education can play in developing vital personal cognitive skills that are transferable for future life. I will give two examples: timeliness and accuracy. Time runs throughout music. It changes, it flexes, it is an essential if you take part in a collegiate music activity. You have to work together in time. You have to be in time for your rehearsals and performances. Music trains you to work with time.

Accuracy is a vital component in anyone’s life and career. No one will thank you for playing a wrong note many times over, so you need to be accurate. Music requires you to take note of accuracy and performance trains you to value it. Those are two examples of how music education can play a much broader role in training in those competencies that are of value throughout our work and lives.

I would like to add a little strength to the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made about composition. Music is about listening, performance and composition. We underplay composition if we want the feedstock for the future—as I think the noble Lord put it. It seems that new technologies can help with this, because you do not have to get the inevitable pencil with the rubber on the end, which I have in my pocket, and a sheet of staved paper so you can rub out and correct. Now technology allows you, when you play an instrument, to translate the notes directly into music written on staves.

So we need to worry less about the competence of being able to write on paper, and more about the creative skills of creating sounds and music which stretch the minds of young people. You certainly used to be able to do that through improvisation, and jazz in particular, but you can do it through other music technologies as well. There is a very nice, neat couple of paragraphs on composition in this plan—it is about 10 lines—but if there is one thing it underplays, it is that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, made a point about international comparisons. Are we trying to produce a music education system which matches the best in the world? That is what we should be achieving, because in the past this country has had a tradition of world-class musicianship and, if we want to sustain that, we need world-class music education.

I have just a little anecdote. I was in Slovenia just two weeks ago and was asked to go into a primary school to talk to their English class—nothing to do with music at all—in English, which was quite interesting. They were 11 year-olds and they put questions to me, all in English. At the end of my talk about the United Kingdom and whatever else, I asked them how many of them played a musical instrument, and 75% of the class put their hands up. Of that 75%, each one of them was able to tell me which instrument they learned. They were speaking in English, and I did have a little trouble with the “saxhorn”. When I did not quite understand it, the young man of 11 years of age said, “It’s a bit like a tuba”—and I realised that it was a euphonium.

Parents pay €35 per month for eight music lessons. If they get through the grades further on, they get free tuition from the age of 15. That is progression for you, because they pay at the beginning, at the feedstock end, but, as they progress, the best have the opportunities available to them. I mention that as we need to look at international comparisons to make it work.

In conclusion, we have had a very interesting debate. I cannot let it pass without talking about touring. Many Members of this House, as the Minister will know, have been aggravated about this issue and will be taking it up. What we need is a carve-out in the TCA. It is very straightforward. That is what we are after and, if the Government are not going to take full steps forward on this—perhaps the Minister could tell us if the Government are trying to get changes in the TCA—we have a parliamentary assembly of the EU and these Houses of Parliament, of which some Members in this Chamber may be members. One of their roles is to be able to recommend to the Commission and the European Council changes to the TCA.

It looks as if the Minister is saying that is not the case. I am just saying that, if the assembly has the right to recommend, members might like to press that recommendation on others of our colleagues, to make sure that that happens.

In conclusion, this has been an excellent debate and I very much thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, for bringing it forward. She raised some very interesting issues and she has a plan—let us deliver it.