Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the performance of school music hubs; and if she will make a statement.

In October this year, Arts Council England published the latest annual data on music education hubs. The report showed that hubs have been supporting an increasing number of children and schools. In 2014/15 they taught 631,223 children to play an instrument through whole class ensemble teaching, up from 596,820 in the previous year. They also worked with 86% of state-funded schools, 18,811 schools compared with 18,157 in the previous year. More details are included in the report, which is available on Arts Council England’s website.

Last month, we announced funding of £75 million a year until 2020 for the network of music education hubs to allow them to reach even more pupils and schools.