A letter to Welsh Minister for Education Kirsty Williams

Music Mark, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Tŷ Cerrd and Anthem have today written to Welsh Minister for Education Kirsty Williams on behalf of the music education providers in Wales calling for public support of Music as an indispensable subject on the curriculum.  

Read the letter in full here.

Available in Welsh here.

“Urgent action is required to save the music education services across the country that are still, some of them only just, striving to provide opportunities for children and young people.  Only with urgent action and a clear pathway to grow and sustain their work can these services assure to children and young people access to a broad and diverse range of musical opportunities. 

In England, the National Plan for Music Education, published in 2012, clearly articulates the responsibilities of all those involved in children and young people’s music education, particularly schools and a network of music partnerships made up of schools, local, regional and national providers.  These Music Education Hubs have seven roles defined in the plan and the English Department for Education provides funding to support delivery of these roles.  Funding is allocated to each local authority area according to a formula, based on numbers on roll and deprivation.  Music Mark, in partnership with other organisations is currently campaigning in England for increased funding in recognition of year-on-year growth in pupil numbers and inflationary increases to costs.  The request equates to £12.50 per pupil, per year. 

Music Education Hubs in England achieve considerable impact with this modest funding through partnership working.  Welcome bi-products were a focusing education strategies within cultural providers and a new willingness to work at a local level.  This has created closer partnership working in many areas, with many Hubs now playing key roles in local cultural education partnerships (LCEPs). 

A similar scale of commitment with a Welsh-appropriate structure from the Welsh Government, at a cost of a little over £5,850,000 per annum, would reinvigorate music education providers in Wales, reversing years of underinvestment nationally and locally, and ensuring the highest quality of music education for children and young people, wherever in the country they live.”