Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what mechanisms they have in place to ensure that all state-funded schools have universal access to the musical scores and texts required to support the delivery of the national curriculum for music.

High-quality music education must not be for the privileged few but an entitlement for all. It is an essential part of the broad and rich education every child deserves. It is a decision for schools which resources they want to purchase and use to support them to teach the national and wider school curriculum, including musical scores and texts.

The department buys copyright licences for all state-funded schools in England covering almost all their copyright requirements. Funding for this comes from the Core Schools Budget.

Purchasing these licences directly saves schools money and administrative time, while ensuring that intellectual property rights are respected.

The department appreciates the importance of educational licences to the music publishing sector and negotiate with Copyright Management Organisations to obtain licences for an appropriate range of content and usage at a fair and transparent cost.

Guidance and advice for state schools in England on copyright licences is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/copyright-licences-information-for-schools.