Academisation strains relationship between Music Hubs and schools

The relationship between schools and Music Education Hubs is being put under growing pressure as schools become increasingly autonomous and move away from local authority control, according to a new report by the Musicians Union (MU).

The report notes that engaging with their local Hub has become “much more of a choice rather than a given” for schools. Instead of working with Hubs, some head teachers sourcing instrumental tuition are now “going for the cheapest option available”. Others are looking at music lessons as “a way of creating revenue for the school by charging teachers for being allowed to teach there”.

This is the third MU report on Music Education Hubs since they were established in 2012 in response to the Government’s 2011 National Plan for Music Education (NPME) to provide access to music education for all children and young people.

The report concludes that the Hubs “do their best in increasingly challenging circumstances” but there remain “areas of concerns which we feel are still not being addressed”.

Each of the 123 Hubs across England operates independently and in some areas the Hub has relinquished direct responsibility for instrumental teaching, as it was not one of the core roles of the NPME. This has left some schools and parents to source teachers themselves. It is a situation the MU said has resulted in “a very confusing picture with instrumental teaching becoming incohesive or unaccountable”.

The lack of consistent provision across the country is perpetuating the “postcode lottery” which the NPME was supposed to address. Whilst most primary schools are still involved with their Hubs, engagement with secondary schools is described as “patchier” and the report notes an “underlying gap in policy where Hubs are obliged or compelled to engage with all schools who, on the other hand, are seemingly free to set their agendas as they wish”.

Among the problems facing Hubs are local authority budget cuts, which are leading to more precarious careers for music teachers. Some providers are making peripatetic teaching staff redundant and the MU, which represents musicians working in all sectors of the music business, is “seeing an increase of schools getting rid of teachers with little or no notice on very spurious grounds with no opportunity given for recourse”. It is also finding “teachers increasingly being moved away from employment to self-employment” and some who are employed are seeing “an erosion of terms and conditions with no structured pay scale”. An MU survey found that one third of teachers are now being contracted as self-employed with full- or even part-time employed roles becoming increasingly rare.

The MU notes: “In some of the more brutal restructures we have dealt with the cuts imposed on the workforce do appear quite bluntly to be keeping the management in well paid, pensionable employment while the teaching workforce suffer.” Its research showed the ratio of managers to teachers in music services ranged from one manager to seven teachers, to a “staggering” one manager to 100 teachers.

The report encourages music services facing cuts to “think more carefully about how they remodel provision for the future to ensure that a qualified and experienced workforce is maintained”.

Among the alternative business models it highlights as “inspirational examples” are the Cornwall Music Service Trust (CMST). When music service teachers were made redundant by the local authority, the teachers joined forces to form CMST, which now has over 90 staff and covers the whole of the Cornwall region.

“Many believed it an impossibility to create a music service in such a short amount of time,” Gareth Churcher of CMST told the MU. “Through this challenge we have gained a lot and in all honesty, lost little. A great feeling of ownership is now evident within CMST due to the huge team effort needed to achieve the goal, a sense of freedom that we are our own entity with the ability to see external funding… and the belief that in our model we have a sustainable future, posting a healthy surplus in our first eight months.”