Music Education

Debate between Valerie Vaz and John Slinger

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Westminster Hall

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this incredibly important debate. It is vital that we discuss these issues in this House. I am one of those few MPs who has found a happy middle ground between orchestra and hip-hop. I will go into a bit of detail on that: I learned the violin from the age of seven, played in orchestras, and latterly ended up playing in rock bands—not playing the violin, but playing the guitar and the keyboard, and singing.

I know from personal experience that a background in music improves many aspects of our lives, such as discipline and creativity. It actually teaches people the value of hard work towards an objective, and it provides both hard and soft skills. I sometimes say to people—I mean this with no disrespect—that all too often music is regarded as sitting around the campfire singing “Kumbaya”. I am all in favour of doing that—indeed, I have done so. However, it is far more than that; it is so much more than the mere pleasure and enjoyment of creating the music. It is a stable bedrock to build one’s life on, but I fear that over the past 14 years the opportunity to do so has been stripped back by Conservative Governments.

Students of Paddox primary school tell me that their music department budget has been steadily eroded, and most of the existing music activities are the result of the passionate and dedicated music teacher, Mrs Pearson. A priority of mine as an MP is to give more of a voice to young people, so I am glad to do that. Vanessa from Paddox primary school’s student council explains that there is a strong mandate for an orchestra or band as an extracurricular club. Isabelle speaks for the silent majority of year 6 students, who are sceptical that body percussion music is an adequate substitute for the playing of actual musical instruments in the end-of-year production. Sally Ann, on behalf of many, strongly commends the benefits of peripatetic music lessons, and is dismayed that this is not an option available to everyone.

There is so much young passion for music, so much creative potential, and yet by the time they are in their mid-teens, precious few students take music qualifications, as was set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green. This all contributes to a downwards spiral in too many cases: a lack of space in the curriculum means few, or often no, music lessons for too many students; fewer students take up the subject, so fewer teachers become qualified; and university departments are closing because of poor uptake—they lack the placement opportunities because of a lack of lessons in the curriculum. The cycle must be broken.

After 14 years of the previous Government, the mean yearly budget for music departments in maintained schools was £1,800; in academies and free schools it was £2,200; in independent schools it was £10,000. The Labour Government cannot continue to allow 93% of the student population to be let down. Furthermore, the Conservative Government only allocated enough funding to cover 40% of the cost of music hubs. The remaining cost can only be covered by families, and inevitably this often means only the most privileged and economically thriving. According to the Independent Society of Musicians, the gap between private and state music education has become, sadly, a chasm.

I am really glad that this Government have made significant steps in the right direction: providing £25 million for instruments in schools this academic year; introducing the music opportunities fund, which will support 1,000 young people and children; and changing progress 8 measures to include creative arts subjects, an issue on which I have engaged with my hon. Friend the Minister. I know that she takes it very seriously and is doing great work; however, I respectfully call on the Government to go further.

Music has as much to offer young people as maths or science. I therefore endorse the recommendations of Birmingham City University academics and the ISM—let me put on record my gratitude to the Birmingham City University academics for the time they spent briefing me and for all they do to research this important area. They and the ISM recommend giving music teachers equal priority by increasing bursaries and recruitment, in order to put music at the heart of the curriculum in the upcoming curriculum and assessment review—I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is considering these matters very seriously. They also recommend reforming the EBacc to prevent music being sidelined, making GCSE and A-level music more accessible and appealing, and creating a sustained pipeline for music education.

We must fundamentally view music in a different light, adapting the motto “Sports for all” to “Music for all”. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that, representing the town of Rugby, I am a passionate supporter of sports. They provide people with wonderful lifelong skills. However, it is my personal view that a disproportionate amount of attention is given to sport in our educational settings and, frankly, in society in general. That needs to be reversed. We need a change, frankly, in the culture of our entire society. That goes beyond the powers of any of us in this Chamber, and indeed perhaps even those of Ministers, yet we must all engage in seeking, really, a revolution in people’s attitude towards music.

My dad began learning the trombone in his middle age, and his life has been transformed by the joys that music education and performance have given him. When we had a chat recently, he said that we perhaps should have a “duty of candour” not to abandon one of the most successful aspects of our creative life in schools and beyond.

Caroline Lumsden, my former violin teacher, agrees, saying that we must democratise music. We must make it available to all students, regardless of wealth, and recruit more specialist music teachers, especially in primary schools, because we all know that earlier intervention is better intervention. As I have mentioned, we must intervene at the very beginning of people’s lives and break any destructive cycles.

Caroline and her late husband Alan moved into the village next to the one I grew up in, creating a wonderful music school called Beauchamp Music Group, which started in her front room and then expanded into the dairy of the farm, which still contained dairy equipment. Latterly, they developed the barn into a space that even a full orchestra could play in and where summer courses could take place. That transformed my life. Even my academic abilities improved when I started learning the violin—probably not enough, but they improved none the less.

That experience added to the education at the superb comprehensive school I was privileged to attend, Newent community school. Its head, Mr Landau, was a true believer in music and gave huge backing to my music teacher, Miss Wrenn. She was head of music, and through her dedication and inspired leadership of that department, the students in that state comprehensive school were able to participate in peripatetic lessons. Lots of us took GCSE and A-level music. There was a brass band, a jazz band and a rock band. There were chamber concerts each term. There was a junior orchestra and a senior orchestra. We even wrote the music for one of the school’s dramatic productions and played in the pit orchestra. It was truly incredible and wonderful. However, I would imagine that latterly it has become harder for schools to achieve such a level of provision.

Thanks to those dedicated educators, thousands of young people’s lives were transformed. In a recent meeting that I helped to organise, the chief medical officer for Scotland, quite incredibly but aptly, described investment in the creative arts as a public health intervention. In my view, anything that we can do to invest in music education and the creative arts more broadly is also a hard and soft-skills intervention. It is an anti-crime, community-strengthening, child development and community cohesion intervention. It is an intervention in local economies and our exports. It is an intervention that boosts jobs. Going back to my “Kumbaya” point, it also drastically improves wellbeing, fun, happiness and joy in our lives as individuals and communities.

Yet despite the best efforts and the genuine belief of the Minister and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in this cause, there is a chance that the system simply does not quite get it. To be clear, that is in no way to denigrate the excellent work of my hon. and right hon. Friends the Ministers, who I thoroughly believe want to do everything that they can to improve music education. But, as I alluded to earlier, I think the broader system—society at large and parts of the media—do not fully get just how important music and creative arts education are.

I again thank my ministerial colleagues for all the work they have done. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green for securing this important debate. I conclude by saying that no student from Paddox primary school should have to give up their passion. No one should be denied the opportunity of a musical education. I challenge any hon. Member here to defy the mandate of Paddox primary school’s student council.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

The hon. Member has failed to take the opportunity to give us a verse of “Kumbaya”.