Musical instrument lessons in UK schools

[MusicIsForAllChildren]

Hello. I would love to start a discussion about what I see as a sad fact that UK state schools are now charging parents for musical instrument lessons. It never used to be this way. Children need opportunities to learn about the arts at school just as they need academic lessons and sports. Cultural vitamins please, not invoices!

Fees in state schools create barriers and stigma.

Grateful for any stories and thoughts.

If you agree with its proposal, please consider signing this petition.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223408

Thanks!

reluctantbrit unfair to ask parents to enforce music practice!?!! Christ have you forgotten what parenting is about? It’s sometimes about making damn sure kids do what they need to do rather than sitting on the sodding iPhone. And in the early days some enforcement is needed to get them to the point where they can really enjoy it and motivate themselves. I recall listening to an interview with Lang Lang where he said his father made him practice several hours every day. Outcome is world class pianist.

Rouge dad - yes I know what parenting is about. But I personally think homework for maths, English, science etc is more important and I want my child do a hobby she enjoys, not practice for an instrument she may not like actually. DD hardly has TV or iPad time, she goes to Scouts, drama, dance, swimming and riding,

I worked 4 days until last year, we struggled to get homework like reading, spelling covered plus 2 after school hobbies and violin practice. And DD actually likes her violin. And it only worked because my husband works from home and can stop at 5pm instead of 6pm when I am home and do dinner etc.

Most parents I know who work full time do not have lots of time, esp if they have more than one child and concentrate on what is important and sadly, unless music is often not on top of the list unless the child wants to.

You need a talent for music to play an instrument successfully like for lots of other things. I do not see playing an instrument as an Important part of life, loving music is one. If a child has no interest or no talent it can be torture. Practice alone does not make a concert pianist.

My child’s state primary provides free, compulsory violin or cello lessons in KS1 . . A weekly group lesson (class of 30 divided into 3 groups of 10) plus 20 minute lesson in pairs.
After that it’s optional, and subsidised, but still virtually free for pp parents; KS2 kids get 45 minute group lesson, 1 hour orchestra, and 30 min solo lesson weekly, cost about £125 a term (non pp), though does depend on most children continuing.
It’s brilliant, and the brainchild of a brilliant charity:
londonmusicmasters.org
which regularly gets ordinary state school children to grade 4/5 distinction by end Y6.
Only caveats I have: it only offers violin or cello, not full instrumental range, plus the sheer ambition and numbers involved, coupled with budget restrictions, mean sometimes it has felt a bit like a sausage factory; kids get little say in repertoire . . . A little more allowance for individual quirks would have been nice.
But overall - yep, this should be available to every primary school, what a nation of musicians we would become if that were the case!
And watch out for rising star/early graduates of this programme, now ca. 16/17. .?!

Marytuda
What a wonderful scheme your school run - you are very lucky! Your annoyance that the only programme run is for strings has a theory/planning objective - if you think about it, in an orchestra there are roughly 40 violins verses 2 flutes/oboes/clarinets/trumpets etc. It is very good forward planning to teach violin/cello to large numbers of children as this is what is needed in our local & national orchestras. I wouldn't mind betting there will be a stonkingly good local orchestra in your area in 10 years or so. Bravo tutti!!! ❤️🎼

My parents paid for my violin lessons in the early 90's (4 or 5 of us in a class).

My boys have learnt the trumpet, ukulele and recorder for free in primary with the whole class learning at once.

In secondary they can pay for instrument lessons and the pupil premium children get a discount.

Wow thats incredible!!!! jealous. Mine may get to grade 2 in flute after lots of random lessons weve paid for....

Yes that's what they said to us at the outset strings; "orchestras need a lot of violins" and "well learning violin (it was just violin in those days, the cellos came later) is so good for general musicianship . . ." (ie bloody hard!)
Yes it is amazing and sometimes I fear a victim of its own success. Its stated purpose is to change lives by bringing top-level access to a classical-music education to places it never otherwise goes. But - guess what! "for some reason" the school is increasingly popular with just the type of parent who does do classical music at home!

reluctantbrit unfair to ask parents to enforce music practice!?!! Christ have you forgotten what parenting is about?

She is talking about a hypothetical situation in which every child was required to learn an instrument like the violin as a mandatory thing, meaning that every parent would then be required to enforce the practice.

If my kid's school sent her home with a note saying that she has to pick a musical instrument and that I'm now going to be required to make her practice it every day, I'd tell them to bugger off because we're not interested in playing music, as a family.

I have no objection to state-funded musical instrument lessons for kids who want to do so and have a talent for it, however.

I think the important thing here is to be clear about what, exactly, the aims are. Is the aim to expose most of the population to the basics of music (the whole "cultural literacy" thing, a la ED Hirsch?)? Or is the aim to produce the top musicians of the future?

If you want as many people to enjoy music as possible, you will need a broad based approach with many opportunities to learn an instrument over many years.

If you want to produce top-class musicians, I suspect you are going to have to have a policy of exposing as many kids as possible, THEN aggressively narrowing the focus down to just the small numbers who are truly promising, and throwing lots and lots of resources at just those people. Getting to a "serious" level with an instrument requires shitloads of practice and teaching, much of it 1-1, and it positively eats up resources. A few years of half-arsed school lessons are not going to do it.

I'm reminded of sports. Team GB did well in the Olympics last time largely because the govt had adopted a ruthless policy of throwing money behind top performers in those specific sports where we were likely to win medals. It's a good medal-winning strategy. On the other hand, it is not much good as a "general population-wide fitness" strategy--to do that, you'd need to focus on a wider variety of activities and try and include as many people and as many ability levels for as many years as possible.

I'm not sure on free music lessons. I learnt the violin for free because the school offered it.
For 4 children a year who they chose.
Which meant they chose the nice children whose parents weren't likely to say "thank you very much for a free violin" and sell it (yes that had happened) or were in nice big houses so the neighbours didn't complain meaning they handed the violin back after a week, (again, something that happened) etc.
Which basically meant that pretty much every child who was chosen had parents who could have afforded to pay.

When we got to secondary parents had to pay anyway.

The best thing about our school's music programme is that every child does it, at least initially. So the children accept learning an instrument as something you do at school, like learning to read. And ideally, by the time they get to choose, they've already reached a level where they can perform a certain amount . . . (KS2 children perform in assembly every day) and have recognised it as something supremely social . . . All their friends do it! Which again, oils the home-practice-machine; no way do they want their friends to leave them behind and learn a piece before they do! I'm not sure - in fact I know - I could never have got my DC to this level as a violinist with just a private teacher, on my own. He needed that peer pressure from school to keep at it.

'Most' children who learn instruments are from wealthy middle class families. If you make instrument tuition free, all the working class deprived children aren't suddenly going to be rushing to learn the violin. All you will do if subsidise wealthy families.

But I dont understand why schools should pay for 1:1 instrument lessons rather than anything else? What about pottery, trampolining, tennis, football, sculpting, programming, meditating, scrabble or any other hobby you can think of. Individual music tuition is an optional extra and I dont see ANY reason why schools should be paying for it.

You be surprised Walking . . . Look and listen to some of the kids at our school, maybe in the playground, ca Y5, and note all your social and racial prejudices come into play. . .Yeah, you might think, single mum/gang member by 16, wannabet on it? Don’t really want him/her as my angel’s BFF.
Then watch them pick up violin . . And feel your shame as they produce a classical solo to beat any prep school kid.
This happened to me so often in my DC’s early primary years; if it doesn’t now, it’s because I’m used to it. News flash: prejudices fade on confrontation with realities like this.
That said: the ability of a music programme like our school’s to reach the most deprived children is dependent heavily on resources that are stretched to the extreme . .and they fall short. Obviously talented kids fell out of my DCs music group in early KS2 through lack of parental support, sometimes because the family didn’t wholly approve (maybe for religious or cultural reasons); more often because time, space and spare energy to supervise practice at home were lacking. Result: yes, the leading musicians at the end of Y6 are weighted towards the white middle classes, who are a small (though growing) minority in the school as a whole.
But that still leaves plenty of space in the programme for everybody else. Another of its features is to select occasional “exceptionally gifted” musicians in Y3 or 4 for extra tuition, which (without fail) gets them into top London junior conservatoires at 11 (the one from our year (6) has just done grade 5 theory and will be taking grade 6 in the autumn . . He is still only 10) but the eligibility for that requires that child comes from “underrepresented” background in the field, which in context of our school means ethnic background . .
Yes, other extracurricular activities are just as important. And maybe there are as many unrecognised talents just waiting for opportunity in sports and visual arts too. The point about music, which this charity (londonmusicmasters.org) is demonstrating, is that great talent lies hidden everywhere, and there is really no excuse for its professional domination by the white and wealthy. No excuse at all, and the profession and the music are the losers in the long term.

I had free violin lessons during the 80s. They weren't available to everyone, you had to do a singing test and a rythmn test and your class teacher had to say you were conscientious.

I think its sad that you cant learn an instrument now unless your parent pays for it and can get you to lessons (cant have them in school time at the boys school)

Im even sadder about the lack of proper choirs in schools. They cost no money to run, apart from a teacher that really knows about choirs. Again there is no choir at all in the state juniors round my way.

Actually, from my experience teaching whole class Strings I never ever come across children who are prejudice towards classical music in mainly working class schools. Children do not hold any judgement, they just enjoy what they hear. I also know many top flight professional players in BBC orchestras & the like who are thoroughly down to earth & come from working class backgrounds. But these are Middle Aged players. It is only in more recent times (the last 20 years say) that music has become for the middle classes. Mainly because we don't give free lessons in primaries anymore. It is only parents that tend to be prejudice

Wow id love an "access as many classes as you can" music centre. A friend of mine in a london borough had one like that.

On rhe other hand we have an incredible choir led by a fab music teacher - they sing as part of local schools christmas concert in town theatre, sang at the royal albert hall (!! Accessed some sort of disadvantaged area thing) and do an amazing end of year concert. So not all bad.

But we spend a fortune (for us) in music lessons but expectations are not high and we're not seeing the grades talked about here.