NPME response: ‘A national plan can be helpful if it incorporates national action'

While much attention has been paid to what people within the music education community think of the National Plan for Music Education (NPME), it is the response from educators not actively engaged in music that arguably carries more weight. More specifically, headteachers, as they are the ones who will make the wider decisions about a school's Music Development Plan. Without a headteacher's support, even the most enthusiastic, proactive primary music lead will struggle to deliver the ambitions of the NPME.

The day after the Plan was released, one primary headteacher, whose blog is followed by nearly 50,000 people, published a widely shared post entitled ‘Another damned expectation’, in which he wrote that he felt he was being ‘set up to fail’. Speaking to me now, Michael Tidd says that the concerns outlined in his blog are not specific to music: ‘It's unhelpful for the government to specify a national curriculum, but then to place greater expectations on schools via other means,’ he says. ‘I'm very much in favour of higher quality music provision, but that requires investment and expertise.’ Tidd's view of the Plan is that neither of these things are guaranteed. He continues: ‘What is needed is proper funding, ideally to train and employ music specialists who can genuinely deliver a high-quality education from a point of knowledge and expertise.’