WCET: what are the aims?

Under the first National Plan for Music Education (NPME), published in 2011, Whole Class Ensemble Tuition (WCET) programmes proliferated across England, engaging over 700,000 children. Variously described as ‘First Access’, ‘Wider Opportunities’, ‘WCET’ and ‘WCIT’ – and referred to here as WCET – these programmes are characterised by a whole class learning to play the same instrument, or instruments from related families, at the same time. Usually these programmes are delivered by a music specialist teacher provided by a Music Education Hub (MEH). The aspiration in the original NPME was that this should take place for ‘ideally a year or at least one term’ across a year. From our years spent analysing the national MEH data returns, we know that the vast majority of WCET learning takes place in Year 4, and that there were indeed many children receiving this tuition over a whole academic year. However, behind these headline figures and aspirations, we know that the operationalisation of WCET programmes, ranging from the access children have to instruments through to the funding models by which schools can secure this provision, is significantly varied across the country.