September seemingly marked the beginning of a brave new world for music hubs, with new Hub Lead Organisations (HLOs) in place covering new geographical areas … Except, of course, it didn’t. The ‘new’ hubs are by and large being run by the same organisations that are now expected to deliver more stuff, over larger areas with (in real terms) less money; and all of this without the ability to forward plan, thanks to yet another short-term funding deal. As pretty much everyone in the sector has said from the start, it is difficult to see how these changes were designed to make things better for children and young people.
NPME Goal 1: All children and young people receive a high-quality music education in the early years and in schools
Of course, music hubs will continue to do their best to serve their local communities, but they can’t, and never could, be solely responsible for the success of the NPME. That’s why it was so encouraging to see schools given a much more prominent role in the 2022 NPME compared to the 2012 version. Schools are the first and, in many cases, only point of contact with children and young people; they hold the statutory responsibility for their music education, therefore schools’ involvement in the NPME is vital to its success. The music curriculum within schools provides the foundation on which music hubs can build opportunity within their areas, and by working together, hubs and schools have a strong chance of improving musical opportunities for the many, not the few.
I would encourage colleagues in schools not to see the NPME as something that they ‘have to do’ to tick boxes for the DfE (for a start, it’s non-statutory!), but view it instead as the foundation of a child’s core entitlement to music throughout their education. The process of music development planning should help you identify what you are currently doing well, and where improvements could be made, to ensure that you are always striving for the highest quality of provision that is relevant in your own context. This might not look exactly like the examples given in the NPME, and that’s okay. This is about you, your pupils, and your school community. Share your plan with your music hub and find out how they can support you to deliver and extend your offer to pupils.
NPME Goal 2: All music educators work in partnership, with children and young people’s needs and interests at their heart
Outside schools, the community music sector, arts organisation outreach and private providers all have their part to play in the NPME ecosystem. For too long there have been too many initiatives and projects carried out unconnected to each other, worsening the ‘postcode lottery’ approach to music education. Almost every day I hear stories of individual projects that are going to ‘change lives’, and well they might – but wouldn’t it be better if these took into account all the other opportunities and activities on offer in the local area first? I’m not saying for a moment that music hubs should gatekeep or control all the activity in their area; but it is vital that different organisations don’t work at cross purposes with each other.
Projects, however well thought-out, will always only ever be a sticking plaster for a bigger problem. Unless you can guarantee to keep a project running forever, there will always be new cohorts of children coming up the ranks who miss out.
If you are an organisation proposing a project, it’s essential to have a dialogue with the relevant music hub to establish key information. You will need to find out whether something similar already exists, otherwise you run the risk of splitting the audience and making both your own and existing projects unviable. You will also want to know whether your project meets the identified needs of local young people; if not, you could be wasting money and time on something that would have better impact elsewhere. You’ll also want to consider whether your project will meet young people’s interests, as you are far more likely to make a long-term impact if your project is developed out of young people’s interests rather than drawn from something that you have decided they ought to be interested in. There are many well-intentioned organisations who create what they consider to be great projects from the top down; a dialogue with the music hub can instead help you build something much more meaningful from the ground up.
Finally, it is crucial to ask yourself whether your project leads somewhere? Most projects don’t, so that is where the connection to the wider work of the hub is so important, particularly when we consider the final goal of the NPME.
NPME Goal 3: All children and young people with musical interests and talents have the opportunity to progress, including professionally
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this goal is not achievable at individual organisational level. Yes, of course there might be isolated cases where organisations are able to nurture an individual student’s talents, help them identify and apply for opportunities and fundraise to cover the costs, and prepare them for success in conservatoire auditions and the like. However, these examples will always be in the minority. This goal needs to be tackled at system level, which means, in the immortal words of ABBA, ‘Money, money, money’.
As soon as you start thinking about extra-curricular activities, financial barriers come into play and frankly I don’t see how there will ever be enough money from the public purse to cover every expense for every young person up to the point at which they enter the profession. Even if that were possible, in today’s economic climate (which doesn’t seem forecast to change anytime soon) many young people will consider a career in music too much of a risk to take a chance on, so it’s inevitable that we will always see a higher proportion of people from wealthier backgrounds – with parental support to fall back on – entering the creative arts professions.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and it’s certainly a good starting point to aim to give everyone the opportunity so that they can make those tough decisions later in life; but we need to be realistic about what is achievable. I can’t even comprehend what the costing would look like to fully fund the musical ambitions of all young people up to the age of 21 for every future generation; it would surely be an eye-watering sum that would give even Elon Musk pause for thought! I don’t think we will ever see such a financial commitment from any government; however, I do think the government can do much better than the current level of funding that music hubs and other associated NPME initiatives are currently receiving.
The one place we can hope to give ‘all’ children and young people the opportunity to progress is within the music curriculum. This is where we should be focusing our efforts on the progression of musical skills. Classroom music lessons should give children and young people a strong musical foundation as the vehicle to explore their interests and talents, and schools fortunately have been focusing on progress in all subjects ever since Ofsted changed their inspection framework back in 2019. Although 2019 seems a long time ago, five years is only a small proportion of a child’s school life, and we obviously had the major blip of the pandemic to contend with for two of those years. So, at this stage in the game, what we all need to do is hold our nerve and wait. I am confident that the positive impact of the hard work being done in schools to drive progress will become more and more apparent in coming years – assuming, of course, that we don’t get a radically new National Curriculum which has us all starting from scratch again!
A progress report on the NPME is due in 2025, although the commitment to do this was of course made by a previous government. It does seem a little premature given that real delivery work for the NPME has only just begun, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see future funding decisions based on progress so far. It’s important for our sector to champion the successes that we have had, but also to highlight the systemic barriers that we face in delivering the Plan between now and 2030. By working together on both delivery and advocacy, we have every chance of making this Plan a success.
