Music Manifesto Reappears

Remember a few years ago when the government, various Youth Music groups and some famous musicians (Julian Lloyd Webber & Co.) all came up in public and patted themselves on the back for promoting music in schools? At the core was the promise that every child in primary school would be given the opportuniy to learn a musical instrument. There was going to be standardisation across the country for music provision. There would be more funding, more teachers, better provision, more instruments. Then it all went away, disappearing under the surface?

Well, today it’s back. Sort of. Only now it’s saying that some areas of the country are excellent and others aren’t. Why might that be? They cite the Tory cactchphrase ‘postcode lottery’, which isn’t exactly true. The core problem is this: The money that was going to music was given to education authorities and local councils. Yes it was earmarked for music but there’s a problem: someone forgot to do their homework – some music services are not part of the education authority, and of those who are, some are given no funding from their local authority at all. The end result? For those music services there was no change at all.

So today the music manifesto reappears, and wants to solve that problem – which, arguably it created. More worrying still is the amazing place given to singing. We should all be singing. Children should all be singing. Yes, okay, the voice is an instrument, but is that how we’re going to achieve ‘music tuition to all’? Excellent, we’ll solve the postcode lottery thing, and then create a new problem – certain areas of the country will still teach violin and trumpet, whereas huge sections of the nation will have no instruments but millions of choirs…

…excellent. My prophecy: Come back in 2 years, when the music manifesto people will say “Postcode lottery solved. Now we need to promote instruments – they’re all singing!”

BBC Article on Music Manifesto