Music remains excluded from ‘generous’ teacher training bursary package

Music has been excluded from the Department for Education’s package of bursaries for trainee teachers for the third year running. 

The DfE’s ‘generous’ package of bursaries - amounting to £181m - was announced yesterday (11 October), with some ‘high priority subjects’ seeing increases in financial incentives.

£52m has been added to the teacher trainee bursary scheme for courses starting in 2023, but music and other arts subjects have not benefitted from the injection of funds.

The Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) - recently renamed from Incorporated Society of Musicians - has called on the government to reinstate the music bursary ‘to encourage more music students into the teaching profession’. 

Having recently published two music education reports, Music: a subject in peril? and The case for change, the ISM argues that the delivery of the new National Plan for Music Education is ‘threatened’ by the current teacher shortage.

Targets missed

In 2020, it was revealed that trainee music teachers would no longer receive the £9k bursary for the 2021/22 academic year. Other subjects also lost their bursaries in this announcement, but the government later U-turned on some decisions without reinstating music’s funding.

For the 2021/22 academic year, the target number of ITT (initial teacher training) recruits for music - set by the DfE - was 540. The total number of new entrants was 390.

The target for music in 2022/23 is 470, representing a decrease in 70 trainees, despite the target in 2021/22 being missed by 150 trainee music teachers.

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) forecasts that 57 per cent of the 2022/23 target for music will be recruited. NFER's analysis has also shown a 'strong correlation' between cuts in bursaries and a fall in teacher trainees. 

Meeting music targets not a ‘high priority’

Subjects that have received increased bursaries for the upcoming academic year include English, biology, chemistry, physics, maths, computing, modern foreign languages, geography, and design & technology.

Commenting on the lack of bursaries for music and several other subjects, NFER education economist Jack Worth wrote on Twitter that this ‘may suggest [that the] DfE does not see meeting these targets as a high priority’. 

The ISM’s Deborah Annetts said that the exclusion of music from the teaching bursary scheme is an ‘enormous disappointment’. 

She continued: ‘We have brilliant music teachers doing an excellent job across the country, but their numbers are falling, and without urgent action to recruit more teachers we will not be able to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality music education.’

‘Earlier this year the government published the refreshed National Plan for Music Education which stated that children in every school should have access to at least one hour of music education per week up until Key Stage 3, to achieve that target we will need more trained music teachers. We urge the government to reconsider their decision.’