Features

NPME: All going according to plan?

Now we know that the long-awaited refreshed National Plan for Music Education is coming ‘early next year’, Claire Jackson takes a look back at the original NPME and provides a whistle-stop tour of what’s happened since its publication in 2011.
Visual generation/AdobeStock

'Great music education is a partnership between classroom teachers, specialist teachers, professional performers and a host of other organisations, including those from the arts, charity and voluntary sectors,’ wrote the then secretary of state for education Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey, minister for the now-defunct Culture, Communications and Creative Industries in the introduction to a 55-page document entitled The Importance of Music: A National Plan for Music Education.

‘For this reason the creation of a National Plan is necessary to help us to bring together all of this expertise in a focused way for the benefit of children and young people across the country,’ concluded the editorial, ushering in a government policy that saw, among other things, the start of music education hubs and a significant redistribution of funding. The National Plan for Music Education (NPME), first unveiled in 2011, is about to be updated following an extensive period of consultation. In the wake of some of the toughest teaching conditions in recent history, can the NPME 2.0 address some of the shortcomings of its earlier incarnation?

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