Government HE reforms raise concerns for music education in England
Harriet Clifford
Friday, February 25, 2022
If proposals go ahead, ‘high return’ subjects will receive considerable investment and some young people will be barred from receiving student loans.
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Concerns have been raised within the music education community following the publication of a higher education statement and policy reform consultation.
The Musicians’ Union (MU) have said that they are ‘deeply disheartened’ that the government ‘ignores music and arts’ in its new higher education funding statement and makes proposals that ‘could threaten the future status and viability of music and arts courses’.
This announcement from the Department for Education (DfE) follows last year’s funding cuts to performing arts, creative arts and media studies at higher education levels, which were met with fierce opposition from the music sector.
Investment for ‘high-return’ subjects and ‘strategic priorities’
The government justified these cuts by stating that the money would be redirected to ‘high value’ STEM and medicine subjects which support the NHS and are in line with the government’s ‘strategic priorities’.
In this latest announcement, similar language is used and music and the arts are not mentioned.
The 81-page consultation document outlines an additional £300m ‘strategic priorities grant’ (SPG) and £450m ‘in particular to support high-cost, high-return subjects, such as sciences, medicine and engineering’.
Chris Walters, the MU’s national organiser for education, told MT: ‘Rewriting the National Plan for Music Education is all very well, but when it comes to much bigger education policy, music and the arts are rarely important enough to be mentioned.’
Putting up further barriers to access
Another area of concern is the widely-reported proposal that students who do not achieve a grade 4 in GCSE English and Maths will not be able to apply for a student loan. This is an attempt to clamp down on university courses with ‘poor retention, poor graduate employability and poor long-term earnings benefits’.
Arguing that this would exclude around one third of pupils from progressing to higher education, the MU states that creating more barriers to access would ‘compound the systemic inequalities’ and ‘beleaguer music and arts education at school level’.
Although ‘high quality technical routes’ at higher education levels have been proposed as an alternative for those excluded students, limited details have been provided and there are currently no arts- or music-based 'T Level' options (new technical qualifications equivalent to A Levels).
‘Failed’ low-earning graduates
The MU has also suggested that musicians will be affected ‘adversely and disproportionately’ by the proposed changes to student loan repayment, as they often ‘train for extended periods with no guarantee of high earnings’.
With the repayment threshold reduced from £27,000 to £25,000 and the repayment period extended from 30 to 40 years, it’s been reported that the highest earners could ‘benefit substantially’.
Chris Walters said: ‘This dense package of reforms is a further lurch towards the view that universities primarily exist to generate high economic returns. By targeting funding at “high-return” subjects, which the government defines as sciences, the reforms totally overlook the massive economic and cultural value of music and the arts.’
‘It is depressing to hear yet more rhetoric around “controlling” numbers of students who attend “pointless” courses with lower completion rates.
‘The government has displayed no understanding of the issues faced by disadvantaged students who, for various reasons, may rely on these courses. Nor does it understand that low-earning graduates have not “failed” – rather, they have entered creative careers that suffer from systemically low funding and wages.’
He added: ‘Overall, these reforms are about cutting spending and further imposing the government’s regrettable sentiment that music and the arts have no place as central strategic priorities.’
In a speech about the review which accompanied the consultation, higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan said: 'We think it is right that we have an open conversation with the public about whether we should to continue to allow pockets of poor quality courses to grow uncontrollably, while remaining fully committed to enabling choice, investment and growth in the rest of the sector.'
