Louder together

The National Union of Teachers and the Musicians’ Union have joined together to oppose cuts to music services. In a new partnership, the two organisations criticise the government’s record on meeting its commitments to music and music education. They say “no one can doubt the benefit of music education in our schools” and draw attention to the fact that the Secretary of State for Education and the recent Henley review of music education speak highly of music’s importance and the place it should have in schools. However, they state that “the words do not match up to the reality”. Many music services have already been hit by cuts to local authority budgets, and they point out that “freezing music funding for the next year does not ‘protect’ music services as the Government claims. With inflation running at near 5% this is a real terms cut which will be compounded by the possibility of local authorities losing up to 10% of their music budgets as the Government moves towards a national funding formula.” Spokespeople from both organisations have welcomed the partnership.