Introduction

Music education in the UK has gone through an unprecedented period of change during the last fifteen years, benefitting from significant commitment and investment by two successive governments.

The music education sector¹ has engaged in a multitude of debates and interventions designed to improve the quality, reach and range of music opportunities for children and young people. The commissioning of the 2010 Henley Review² followed by the 2011 publication of the National Plan for Music Education³ (NPME) indicate a remarkable level of government focus on music education.

The launch of the Music Manifesto in 2003 marked a significant moment in the history of UK music education, bringing together for the first time a committed coalition of partners and practitioners from across schools-based music, community music, higher education, music industry and the cultural sector to focus on a single set of five goals.

Manifesto signatories worked together to:

• Provide every young person with first access to a range of music experiences;
• Provide more opportunities for young people to deepen and broaden their musical interests and skills;
• Identify and nurture our most talented young musicians;
• Develop a world-class workforce in music education; and
• Improve the support structures for young people’s music making

Of course the Manifesto didn’t spring from an empty space. The 1999 introduction of the Music Standards Fund had begun to reverse the decline in Local Authority music service provision triggered by the 1988 Education Reform Act, and David Blunkett’s 2001 commitment that every child should be able to learn a musical instrument instigated profound changes to pedagogy and classroom practice through what eventually became known as Whole Class Instrumental and Vocal Teaching (WCIVT). Beyond music, the publication of Ken Robinson’s All Our Futures report in 1999 had stimulated a new national debate about cultural education, and the establishment of Creative Partnerships in 2002 launched a fresh approach to partnership between the cultural and education sectors.

Music Manifesto provided the policy platform for Government to make major investments in three significant action research Pathfinders led by cultural organisations between 2005-2009, as well as establishing Sing Up, the national singing programme (2007 – 2011⁴); investing in piloting and establishing the Wider Opportunities (WCIVT) programme (2005 – 2011); In Harmony⁵, the Sistema influenced orchestral education programme (since 2007), and ten one year Partnership research programmes (2009 – 2011).

As part of the broader music education movement, Youth Music’s⁶ over a decade of investment in ‘out-of-school-hours’ music making has had a significant impact on partnership and practice. Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s contribution to the transformation of music education through Musical Futures and then Musical Bridges has been a key driver woven throughout this fertile period and has had major influence on both policy and pedagogy. Classroom practice has been refreshed and renewed by a greater focus on partnership delivery, drawing on the expertise and insights of community musicians and professional performers to a much greater degree than ever before, and it is clear that successful implementation of the Hub proposition will be dependent on sustaining the many effective partnerships that have developed over the last decade between schools, cultural organisations and musicians.

Innovative training approaches offered outside of conventional HE routes by leading independent music organisations have seen a new kind of music education workforce start to emerge. Some conservatoires and Higher Education institutions have re-designed their approach to training for musicians to take account of this more plural, diverse and musically inclusive paradigm.

However, despite this decade of creative investigation, and government investment of £870 million in music education between 1999 and 2011, successive Ofsted triennial reviews have identified consistent weaknesses in classroom practice and pupil achievement. Quality continues to be patchy, and despite concerted efforts, postcode lottery still plays a role in pupil opportunities. Reforms to the National Curriculum, to GCSEs, to teacher training and to the wider framework of schools management and structure are all likely to impact further on music education, making this a critical moment for reviewing and analysing the situation as it stands in order to propose strategic interventions that can both secure the gains of the last decade and ensure that they fulfil their early promise in the long-term.

This decade and a half of development has often been characterised by high levels of dissent about the key issues and the right strategies to resolve them. Notwithstanding that, the publication of the NPME went a long way to unifying the sector, however tentatively, around some ambitious propositions about continuing to improve music education and ensuring that high quality provision is available to all.

Against that background, the process of conducting this review has been both familiar and surprising. Familiar, in that many of the key issues identified as preventing children and young people having the best possible musical opportunities in schools are not new, and in many cases were identified for resolution in the Music Manifesto Report No. 2 (2006)⁷ and then again in the NPME; surprising, in that there is a high level of consensus across the sector around key issues and their root causes amongst colleagues who might have been previously associated with more divergent constituency perspectives.

The persistence of specific dysfunctions in our music education system – despite exemplary provision in parts – needs to be seen in the wider context of creativity, innovation and effective teaching and leadership which are also a feature of the landscape. There are brilliant examples of music in schools up and down the country, irrespective of differences in levels of local deprivation, which signal clearly what can result from the right blend of curriculum, pedagogy, partnership and excellent teaching /  leadership. However, the things that aren’t working are really not working, and if we don’t solve them quickly they’ll erode and undermine the positive progress that has been made.

So what are we in agreement about?

There have clearly been improvements in many aspects of music in schools over the last decade, specifically around inclusion, diversity
and range. Where music is good it is often very good, and characterised by creativity, engagement and above all musicality⁸ Some of our colleagues are exemplary at teaching music musically, at facilitating engagement in a wide range of musical experiences and partnerships, and at inspiring young people to become young musicians through the provision of in school and beyond school opportunities. Often they work with dynamic senior leaders who recognise, value and actively support high quality music in their schools.

However, we are also seeing highly variable quality of teaching and provision⁹, reducing opportunities for teacher engagement in regular continuing professional development (CPD) and professional networking, serious issues in respect of role models in initial
teacher education (ITE) and for beginner teachers, variable senior leadership commitment to music in schools leading to low
status and poor resourcing, and insufficient impact of research and evidence on all aspects of curriculum and pedagogy. Music Hub arrangements in many areas are still not delivering the planned benefits and there is a clear need for more structured support for schools, which Arts Council has now charged Hubs to address¹⁰ There is also widespread anxiety about future funding to Hubs, and about how they use their resources.

There is a lack of agreement as to the purpose of music education, both at the school level and at the policy level. Why are we doing it? Is it a practice worthy of attention in its own right? Is it a form of social engineering? This instrumental/intrinsic dichotomy is wearying, but if at school level there isn’t a clear philosophy underpinning music’s place and value then we see poor – or absent – opportunities for musical learning. We have a nine-year entitlement to music for all school pupils enshrined in the national curriculum¹¹, but for far too many children that entitlement is not fulfilled. Despite the sense of déjà vu we may feel in considering these findings, there are some important differences between where we are now, and where we were when the Music Manifesto Report No. 2 was published in 2006¹². We have enjoyed the single largest injection of public funding ever made into any subject area in UK educational history (albeit from a historically very low base) and through that, have been able to investigate, pilot and evaluate a range of innovations in pedagogy, planning and structures for music education that have generated significant interest from international admirers. There is now a strong and growing evidence base for us to draw on to inform planning for improvement, including research from the UK as well as from international sources.

And we have the National Plan for Music Education, which is a robust document against which to hold ourselves to account – which we don’t use enough for that purpose. At the time it was written of course, the National Curriculum was under review, and so it doesn’t detail how classroom delivery and curriculum requirements fit into the plan – a next key task for the sector is to weave that central music learning experience all children will access into the plan’s holistic vision. It’s our plan and we must use it to bring about the changes that we determine.

So as we consider the same familiar issues, we can come at these from a wider, better informed, more experienced perspective. It should be within our power as a sector to crack these intransigent nuts, provided that: we renounce organisational or ideological vested interests once and for all, use research and evidence to underpin our thinking, work together around agreed common principles and keep focused on children and young people’s development and well-being.