Wales’ national music plan gets green light

The Welsh government is moving ahead with plans to establish a national music service.

The announcement comes alongside the release of Wales’ first National Plan for Music Education (NPME), published today (17 May), and confirmation government funding for music education provision will be trebled to £13.5m over the next three years, at £4.5m per annum.

The national music service delivers on a Welsh Government manifesto pledge from 2021 and places focus on ensuring no child misses out on a music education due to a lack of means, by delivering a more consistent and equitable service across the country.

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It arrives in time to launch in tandem with Wales’ new curriculum this September, which will see music become one of the five disciplines within the Expressive Arts Area of Learning and Experience.

The national music service will operate as a hub, with the Welsh Local Government Association (WGLA) acting as lead body, co-ordinating programmes with a range of music and education partners and allocating funding to deliver the plan’s priorities.

It is hoped the NPME turns around a decade of decline in non-statutory music services, which suffered following reductions in public spending and constraints on local authority budgets.

It includes a number of key work programmes, including a review of music tutors’ terms and conditions to ensure they are treated equitably and a Making Music with Others initiative, designed to offer secondary school students industry work experience.

A Making Music programme will promote music as an activity to support health and wellbeing among all 11- to 16-year-olds, with ringfenced funding to support disadvantaged and under-represented children.

Music Mark CEO Bridget Whyte says the plan “recognises the importance of the wider music education ecosystem beyond the school gates”.

“It looks to bring partnership working to the heart of provision at a local level as well as to develop a stronger national partnership too," she said.

“This is a great opportunity to ensure that all children and young people across Wales have equitable access to a progressive musical learning programme in and out of school.”

Widespread tuition

The plan aims to remove barriers that prevent students from taking music tuition lessons but stops short of Scotland’s plan to abolish tuition fees altogether.

Music tuition provision varies greatly across Wales. Some local authorities do not charge, but a large variation in costs elsewhere often sees students from low-income households miss out.

A Welsh government spokesperson told ArtsProfessional that “achieving a more consistent approach” to extra-curricular lessons across the country will be a priority of the National Music Service and the WLGA.

Minister for Education and the Welsh Language Jeremy Miles says the chance to learn an instrument and develop musical skills is too often limited by cost: “Our vision is for all children and young people across Wales, regardless of background, to have the chance to learn to play an instrument.”

Wales’ NPME includes a First Experience programme offering all primary school children a minimum of a half term of musical instrument taster sessions, and a new national instrument and equipment library designed to share resources across Wales.

It also plans to remove any charges associated with music tuition lessons that contribute to GCSE or A-Level exams, and develop a policy that agrees a maximum charge for lessons delivered in school hours.

Last December, the Welsh Government put £6.82m towards providing additional music resources to schools ahead of the new curriculum, £5.5m of which was earmarked to distribute musical instruments to learners who are less likely to have access to them, and those with additional learning needs.

England awaits

Wales’ announcement comes as the wait continues for England’s much anticipated – and delayed – revised National Plan for Music Education.

Work on a reboot of the plan, first published in 2011, began at the start of 2020 and resumed last July after a Covid-enforced hiatus.

Originally expected in early spring, the Depatment for Education (DfE) has since pushed the release date back to “later this year”. Speaking in April, Minister of State for School Standards Robin Walker said the national plan will be delivered before the end of this academic year.

“The department will continue to work with schools and the music education sector to ensure that the timetable for implementation is reasonable,” he added.

Walker’s comments followed criticism from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, who called on the DfE to reverse its decision not to consult teachers on the revised plan.