The Liberal Democrats’ Music Education Policy

Liberal Democrats believe that music is a massively important part of education for many reasons: music is an integral part of every culture, while learning an instrument improves focus, discipline, confidence and even behaviour. Most importantly, music offers children an avenue for developing their own personal creativity – and a key liberal principle is embracing individuality and eschewing conformity. As Nick Clegg has said, “Liberals believe in the raucous, unpredictable capacity of people.”

To help creative capacity flourish in schools, the Lib Dems want to free teachers of inhibiting targets and top-down diktats. Culture should be central to education. So the Lib Dems want schools to offer music education in their own way, free of targets and quotas and with children engaging with culture on their own terms. Instead of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, children should be able to make a mess, or, in the case of music, some noise. We will encourage innovation and creativity in schools by ripping up the overly prescriptive, 600 page National Curriculum and replacing it with a slimmed down Minimum Curriculum Entitlement.

Teachers must have the skills, confidence and space to teach freely. They must have the opportunity to experiment and introduce creative methods of learning. Why shouldn’t music play a part in other lessons, too? To facilitate this kind of flexibility, we will improve teacher training so that new teachers think more about arts and creativity and their role in particular subject areas. The number of training places available for music teachers has actually declined in recent years. We want to encourage more music graduates (and graduates from other areas of the arts) to enter teaching.

We also think teachers should have the opportunity to develop professionally once they are in their roles. We would like to use what we have learnt from the Creative Partnerships Scheme, a program to foster long term partnerships between schools and creative partnerships, to create a model for all schools. Such a scheme would involve bringing creative professionals into the heart of the education system. A recent experiment saw the Tate’s Nicholas Serota, Michael Boyd of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Tony Hall from the Royal Opera House swap roles for the day with three head-teachers with great success.

Professional musicians already make great efforts to support learning, and we want to make sure that they can visit and inspire children without rules getting in the way. We seek to reduce unhelpful vetting procedures. Philip Pullman's decision to boycott school visits last year is just a high profile example of the negative effect that the vetting and barring regime is having on creative professionals wanting to support young people.  The next generation of musicians starting off in small or informal venues also need the freedom to play and develop their talents without being tied up in red tape. But Labour’s licensing laws have made it harder to stage live music in small venues by increasing bureaucracy to unmanageable levels. With the support of ISM, we launched a Live Music Bill in Parliament last year. This bill, if made law, would have provided exemptions from the Licensing Act for music performances in the smaller venues that prove so vital in fostering the next generation of British musicians. We also would have enacted a complete exemption for schools, so that school music events are no longer at risk of being caught out over paperwork.

Inequality has widened under Labour and social circumstances are preventing many children from engaging with music. This is demonstrated by the fact that only 4% of pupils on free school meals were entered for music GCSE exams recently, compared to nearly 8% of other pupils. Liberal Democrats will introduce a Pupil Premium, backed by £2.5bn of additional funding for schools, to close the gap between pupils of richer and poorer families, so that all children get a fair start in life.

We also acknowledge the importance of adequate funding for instrumental music education, especially to those who would normally struggle to access it. The Liberal Democrats believe in devolving centralized funding, and we have said that ring fencing one set of funding only encourages deeper, more damaging cuts in other areas. Although we currently have no plans to restructure the Music Standards Fund, we think long term access to music could be better guaranteed through our Minimum Curriculum Entitlement, not through ring fenced funding.

Cultural activities outside of schools have a role to play, too. The Liberal Democrats recognise the centrality of arts and culture to society, and the importance of public funding. Liberal Democrats recognise that it would be absurd to try to make any meaningful dent in the government’s £178bn deficit by slicing money out of the DCMS budget. We are taking a strong line that no department should be “ring-fenced” as if every single thing they do is sacrosanct. But we can promise that there will be no big cuts to arts spending in our manifesto, because arts funding is a duty, not an option for any government. We should, however, address the fact that London dominates arts funding. £22 of exchequer money per head is spent on cultural provision in London, while the equivalent figure in the East of England is less than £2. Funding structures should be reviewed, to make national organisations truly national and give more cultural organisations in regions national status. The benefits of Arts Council funding for music must reach every part of the country, and every child as well.

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