Call to action: bringing the plight of music education to the attention of the NEU conference

I had already joined the MU Education Committee, attended Westminster briefings and Music Mark meetings, followed articles about music education in the press and written letters to papers. The public consensus seemed to be that music education was poor, with an implication or a declaration that it was the teachers’ fault. Worse, it was professional musicians who were making such pronouncements. (Two honourable exceptions were the singer-songwriter Rumer, who spoke about staff teaching in the portacabins at her high school, and composer Howard Goodall, who, on hearing how things had deteriorated, went on to discover, in a series of television programmes, how excellent teachers could be when they had the wherewithal – from accommodation to status.)