Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to allocate addition and (a) funding and (b) resources to the provision of music teaching in schools in (i) England and (ii) in Peterborough constituency.

The Department believes that music is an important subject and that all pupils should receive a high-quality music education. The subject is compulsory in the national curriculum up to age 14.

To support schools to deliver high quality music education for all their pupils, the Government has provided funding of over £300 million for music education hubs across England between 2016 and 2020, including £76 million in 2019-20, and further funding to support hubs with the additional costs under the teachers’ pension scheme. This is a significant increase over the £58 million we gave hubs in 2014.

The Government recently announced a further year’s funding for music hubs, to help thousands more children learn to play musical instruments, as well as continued support for a range of smaller music and arts programmes, totalling £85 million. We will also be offering an ‘arts premium’ of £90 million each year for secondary schools in England from 2021 to fund enriching activities for all pupils.

Peterborough is served by the Peterborough Music Education Hub. In 2020-21, we will be providing the hub with over £360,000 of funding to continue to support the city’s schools to deliver high-quality music education. In 2016-17, the last year data for which data is available, the hub provided individual lessons to over 2,500 pupils, small group lessons for over 1,000 pupils and whole class ensemble teaching to over 3,300 pupils. The hub also supported or delivered 215 ensembles. The Government trusts that with this announced funding, this important work will continue, both in Peterborough and across England.