Local Authority Music Services
On 7th December 2005 the Schools Minister, Jacqui Smith, announced the latest funding settlement for schools. The announcement included amongst the small print a statement that the promised addition to the Music Standards Fund for 2007/08 is to be allocated to schools. This is contrary to previous announcements by her predecessor David Miliband and by Jacqui Smith herself in Parliament on 14th June 2005, which indicated that these funds would be allocated to local authority Music Services.
So what? The amount involved is a mere £26 million and this sum will still be used in music education, albeit if by a different route. The Government already provides central funding of £59 million per annum to Music Services through the Music Standards Fund and continues to show its strength of commitment to music education through its launch and continuing support of a Music Manifesto.
To understand the severity of the threat to music education posed by this seemingly minor change of mind, one needs to go back in time to the enactment of the Education Reform Act in 1988. For 30 years before that time, local authority Music Services had received secure funding and had delivered massive growth in the number of young people learning to play a wide range of musical instruments across the country. The delegation of funding direct to schools, occasioned by that Act, had the unintended effect of almost devastating local authority Music Services during the 1990s. Throughout the U.K. many cohorts of school children lost the opportunity to learn to play musical instruments.
There followed in the late 1990s an intensive period of campaigning by a range of organisations concerned with music education (most notably the Music Education Council, the National Association of Music Educators and the new-born Federation of Music Services) which focussed on two messages to Government:
first that the process of learning to play a musical instrument (including the voice) has immense general educational value and should be accessible to all young people;
and secondly that, unlike other subjects taught in school, instrumental tuition, if it is to be effective, needs to be organised at a level above that of the individual school.
The rationale for the second message reflects the complexity and diversity of instrumental tuition: the need for peripatetic specialist instrumental teachers (serving large numbers of schools within their areas); the vital importance of all forms of ensemble music making, including orchestras, bands, choirs, pop groups, chamber groups etc.; the need to maintain and ensure the fullest use of “banks” of musical instruments; the threats to “minority” instruments (e.g. viola, double bass, bassoon, oboe, tuba); the importance of quality assurance and continuing professional development for instrumental teachers; and, above all, the need for coherence and progression routes for students across all instruments and genre of music.
These messages hit the target and the Government response was significant. In 1999 the Music Standards Fund was established “to protect and expand local authority Music Services” and in 2001 David Blunkett, then Minister for Education, made the pledge that “over time, every child should have the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument”. In 2003 the Government initiated a number of pilot schemes through selected Music Services to provide “wider opportunities” for whole classes of young people to gain access to music in schools.
So, on the face of it, this seemed like a substantial Government response to recognised problems. In practice however the situation has been far from satisfactory. Over a short period of time it became clear that the central funding injected through the Music Standards Fund in 1999 was matched by a corresponding reduction in the funding provided to Music Services by their own local authorities. Thus the overall impact was to stem a tide rather than to remedy the underlying problem. The central funding furthermore had the effect of perpetuating the very inequitable distribution of funds as between different authorities, leaving many “black holes” across the country where instrumental tuition remained inaccessible to those who could not afford to pay.
With hindsight, it seems that David Blunkett’s entitlement pledge was given without any prior evaluation of the structures or funds that would be required for its proper implementation. To the prescient, his inclusion of the words “over time” had pointed up this fault line. It was only in 2004 that a commitment was finally given for any substantial additional government funding to honour the pledge and this £30 million is deferred to 2007/08, some six or seven years after the pledge was given.
The Wider Opportunities pilot schemes for whole classrooms were undoubtedly successful, introducing music to many young children who would not otherwise have had the chance to learn. However, no strategy has been developed for progression, i.e. to meet the needs of the many youngsters who demonstrate an enthusiasm or aptitude for instrumental learning and want to take their studies to the next stage, where they will inevitably require tuition either in small groups or on a one-to-one basis. With the focus being so strongly on maximizing access, the Government appears to have forgotten the crucial second message concerning the necessary structures (above the level of the individual school) for the successful delivery of coherent and progressive instrumental tuition. It is this neglect which has in turn contributed to the 7th December decision to allocate £26 million worth of the additional funding to schools rather than to Music Services.
The final outcome is that Music Services are liable to plunge back into the crisis conditions of the mid-1990s, with schools often opting to purchase the cheapest available tuition, rather than to provide the full variety of instrumental and ensemble opportunities and the proper progression routes available through Music Services. This threat is compounded by the fact that even the core Music Standards funding of £59 million per annum for Music Services is not committed beyond 2008. If action is not taken now to reverse the under funding of Music Services, there is a danger of a downward spiral, leaving them even weaker when it comes to fighting their corner in a zero-based funding review at that time.
There are many ironies in this situation. On the same day (7th December 2005) that the reallocation of funding was announced, the DfES published its survey of Music Services 2005, which was very positive about progress made over the preceding three years. It noted in particular a remarkable increase in the range of instrumental tuition provided by Music Services across many different genre of music. Viewed in the round, local authority Music Services represent by far the most significant country-wide force available to deliver the objectives of the Government-promoted Music Manifesto. It would be an extraordinary incongruity if they were allowed to wither through the diversion of central funding; and a denial of the entitlement of another generation of school children to learn to play musical instruments.