Pipelines in music education

We often talk of pipelines or conduits in music education, but how do these function? Adam Whittaker, Luan Shaw and Martin Fautley of the Birmingham Music Education Research Group investigate the system's plumbing.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire students participating in a community engagement module - Firefoot Photography

The ‘pipeline’ in music education normally involves a trajectory running from instrumental and classroom music lessons as a child, through more advanced instrumental, vocal and academic study, then to higher grades, GCSE, A Level, vocational qualifications and degrees at conservatoires and universities. This is before careers in various aspects of music or music education. But what is this pipeline, and how does it function as a conduit from a young child taking their first faltering steps, perhaps in whole-class ensemble tuition (WCET), to them graduating from an institution of higher education?

While the metaphor is quite helpful in some regards, in others, it is not. It might be seen to suggest a kind of linearity of experience, an inevitability of choice, with the idea that young musicians are operating in quite narrow parameters. In reality, of course, young musicians have diverse musical interests and experiences which might lead them to conservatoires, or to something else altogether: playing in a ska band, being a singer-songwriter, creating techno tracks, or a combination of all of the above!