Knowing who is doing what, and for how long, is pretty important in education. To help understand this, the DfE publishes School Workforce Data annually, and this provides an important source of information concerning teaching and learning in schools. It can tell us where teaching time is being focused, among other things.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, there are some important points to note concerning this analysis:
Caveats aside, we believe that there is much of interest here to music teachers.
The first point to notice is the amount of time for which music is being taught in secondary schools. Figure 1 shows the changing hours taught at each Key Stage from KS3 to 5 over the last 13 years. What is clear from this is that KS3 shows a varying trend, from 53,065 in 2018/19 up to 60,515 in 2023/24 – an increase of 7,450 hours in this five-year period. The DfE notes an issue with this data: ‘Teachers were counted once against each subject and key stage they taught, irrespective of the time spent teaching. Therefore, teachers may be counted against multiple subjects and key stages so sums of these categories may be greater than the number of secondary school teachers.’
Figure 1. Hours taught at KS3, 4 and 5
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