Music education: The Labour Party's view

Music education is my life's work. I don't make this statement lightly. Most teenagers engaging with the joys of music-making want to be rock stars, but I knew I was going to be a teacher quite early on. Before finding my niche in an inner-London primary school, I worked my way through a wide variety of educational settings: state, independent, selective, mixed, single-sex and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). I've even made this profession my hobby: I spend Saturday mornings working with ensembles at a local music hub.

So when the opportunity arose last November to meet with the Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, I wasn't short of subject matter to bring to the table. Should the Labour Party find itself in government in the not-too-distant future, that table is already looking as cluttered as most teachers' desks in the last week of the summer term. It's doubtless that by January 2025 the ministerial in-tray will overflow with a host of legacy issues; among these is an inspectorate deemed ‘not fit for purpose’ and found, by an inquest, to have contributed to the death of a headteacher. Add to this the lack of funding and (literally) crumbling infrastructure, and Phillipson could be forgiven for having bigger fish to fry than the concerns of a lowly music teacher such as myself. But this Member of Parliament cares about the detail as well as the bigger picture.

Music hubs

The forthcoming reorganisation of hubs – reducing their number to 43 – is definitely on the radar for Labour. The party will ‘look closely at the work being done to reform music hubs as it progresses’, Phillipson confirmed. She told me that the current government's own surveys show that music participation among children aged 10 is down by more than a third.

It's not surprising that Phillipson won't be drawn on a specific spending commitment for increased funding for hubs, but UK Music chair, Lord Tom Watson, is also making the case for change. Over fish and chips at The Labour Party Conference, he assured me that this music industry body, UK Music, is very ‘focused on the grass roots’. However many hubs there end up being, Watson wants to increase their funding, which ‘has been cut by 17% in real terms since 2011’.

These cuts are obvious to me as a rank and file teacher, with hourly rates falling behind inflation, no money to buy (or even hire) shortage instruments, and no budget for rite-of-passage experiences such as concert tours or visits to out-of-town venues that require coach travel. When I was a child, wind, brass, string and percussion ensembles made up of music service staff would perform in schools all over the borough and give life to GCSE and A-Level compositions. Now, some hubs (e.g. Berkshire Music Trust) are charging schools up to £1 per minute for tuition in order to make ends meet. With both school and family budgets stretched, it's ultimately the children who are missing out.

Unfair tax breaks

Phillipson is in no doubt that ‘musical opportunities are becoming increasingly the preserve of young people whose families can afford to pay privately, either through attending independent schools or from private music tuition’. Eton College, for example, has 70 visiting music teachers (VMTs) in addition to eight salaried full-time music teachers. Yes, you read that correctly – this is enough musically-qualified staff to service half a dozen state schools. (My own primary school is a glorious anomaly, with five VMTs and seven-tenths of my full timetable dedicated to music.)

The Shadow Education Secretary struck me as resolute in her determination to address the inequity of elite institutions receiving an 80% reduction in business rates while state schools do not. Being a keen amateur hockey player, she's visited enough independent schools and their facilities to believe the sector ‘will be okay’ in light of this policy change.

Teacher training

Labour intends to use the estimated £1 billion raised from this policy to ‘deliver a more enriching curriculum’ and recruit an extra 6,500 teachers. How many of these will be music teachers remains to be seen. UK Music is calling for an extra 1,000 to bring us back to 2012 staffing levels. As part of its Manifesto for Music, the umbrella body for the music industry claims that ‘the removal of the music teacher training bursary in 2020 has exacerbated the challenge of restoring teacher levels to their previous numbers’.

As someone who benefitted from a bursary to complete a PGCE and received a ‘golden hello’ financial incentive after one year of teaching, I can vouch for the appeal of these schemes. Bursaries are being reintroduced for the 2024/25 cohort, but there is evidence that these incentives were sorely missed. The Department for Education has revealed that, for 2023/24, the government met only 27% of its recruitment target for trainee secondary music teachers, according to its latest Initial Teacher Training Census.

Music uptake

Phillipson stressed the need to address the ‘drop in take-up of music at GCSE and A Level’. Music teachers will be all too aware that ‘accountability’ measures such as the EBacc, Progress 8 and (to a lesser extent) Key Stage 2 SATS have contributed to a reduction in the number of teaching hours given to music. This point is conspicuously absent from the UK Music Manifesto, but thankfully the Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) is leading the messaging on this through its #SaveOurSubjects campaign (launched in 2023), which calls for a review and reform of accountability measures. According to Deborah Annetts, ISM chief executive: ‘The EBacc and Progress 8 have done huge damage to arts subjects by incentivising schools to focus on a narrow group of subjects. Subjects like music that are not part of the EBacc are increasingly being squeezed out of the curriculum and uptake at GCSE has plummeted.’

The figures appear to back this up. From the introduction of the EBacc (2010) to 2023, GCSE and A Level music entries fell by 36% and 45% respectively. Labour's response has been to call for an arts subject to be added to the EBacc as an interim measure while a review takes place.

Making musicians

Such statistics mean that the pool of students becoming stellar musicians is also diminishing. Two members of Ezra Collective have been through my stable, and I dined out (literally) on this with Tom Watson, while highlighting the lack of musical opportunities available to students who can't afford private lessons. His reply, citing Scotland's removal of tuition fees for learning musical instruments at school, was full of hope. This is one of the issues a ‘commission for the nations and regions’ will address, as per page 19 of the UK Music Manifesto.

In addition, I shared with Phillipson the story of an extremely promising and hardworking 13-year-old flautist who I've taught since Reception. Having been fortunate enough to receive 100% subsidised small-group lessons at primary school, the child's family struggled to find the money for lessons in Year 7, and by Christmas they simply couldn't. It took a lot of emails and phone calls, but I eventually managed to find a scholarship that would last until the end of Year 8. In Year 9, another round of calls secured funding to support this young musician, who's since taken part in projects run by the London Symphony Orchestra. I can see her being a professional musician one day, but countless other students are not so lucky: the process is piecemeal, and relies on tenacious individuals.

I asked Phillipson what a Labour government would do to support young musicians in a similar position. The Shadow Secretary of State looked me in the eye and told me that she will work to ensure children like this can continue learning an instrument without their teachers having to scramble for funding.

Positive outlook

Call me naive, but I left our meeting with a sense of cautious optimism. Phillipson is on a mission to provide our students with opportunities: ‘the opportunities to succeed – regardless of where they were born or how they are educated’. She wants to ‘fix the damaged pipeline of creative talent as well as the future enjoyment of young people as audience members and happy amateurs’. She already knows that ‘subjects like music, which build confidence and skills such as communication, critical thinking, problem solving and teamwork, must be available to all our children, not just some’.

These are ideas that we, as a profession, have been desperate to communicate to those in power for decades.

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