New National Centre for Arts & Music Education

What can we expect from this new body, and should we be concerned?

BY DR LIZ STAFFORD

The government’s recent announcement of their intention to establish a new National Arts Education Centre has certainly got everyone talking, despite very little being known about what this might look like in practice. It’s difficult, and might be considered unwise, to venture an opinion on a proposal that is so scant on detail at present. Conversely one might argue that this is the perfect time for our voices to be heard, before the government heads hard and fast down a path that cannot be turned back. So, what do I think about this proposal?

Well, firstly it’s always welcome to see a government recognising the importance of the arts in education, especially after a decade where the EBacc has pushed these subjects firmly into the role of second-class citizens. Arguably, though, just getting rid of the EBacc would be a more significant step towards restoring arts subjects in our schools and have more impact on more children and young people than this proposed centre might Why? Because as I have said many times before, the only way you can guarantee children’s entitlement to arts provision is within the curriculum. How ever many well-meaning extra-curricular initiatives you fund, there will always be barriers to some (even the majority of) children accessing these; cost, geography, transport, clashes with competing activities, lack of motivation and/or interest… If we truly want to reach every child then the only way to do that is through the statutory curriculum. I therefore very much hope that I have correctly interpreted the signs from the Curriculum Review Interim Report also recently published, that the EBacc may finally be painfully creaking its way out of our system.

Speaking of curriculum though, one of the intentions of the new centre is to provide online training for primary and secondary teachers. As the leader of a company that has been providing online training for music teachers since 2014, clearly I have a vested interest here, and it’s only fair that I state that up-front before passing judgement! As you might imagine, I have many thoughts on this particular aspect. While I am not an expert on what other arts subjects training is available out there, I do know that the market for music training is so saturated that it may as well be 100% liquid at this point! I wonder whether launching yet another provider of training into the music education sector is the best use of government funding? It would potentially be better to signpost to existing provision, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?!

The original NPME (2012-2020) involved a very short-term trial of additional music education training modules in Primary ITT. The fact that this initiative was dropped almost as soon as it got going is to my mind the single biggest failure of the plan, because it is the aspect that could have made the most widespread, equitable and permanent improvement to music education across the country. If we trained our teachers properly to deliver music (and all the other foundation subjects) in the first place, we would not be spending more and more money plastering over the cracks in our schools. It is not the fault of the teachers that they may be ill-equipped to teach music and other arts subjects (or MFL for that matter!), it is the fault of the system that doesn’t provide them with the requisite training before releasing them into the wild. If we trained teachers properly from the start would we even need a National Arts Education Centre? Or at the very least, what additional benefits could such a centre bring to the system if it didn’t have to focus on basic teacher training?

Something that you might not expect me to say as an online training provider myself, is that if this centre really wants to make an impact on teachers’ professional development, then I’m not sure that online is necessarily the right medium. Clearly the accessibility angle of online training can’t be beaten, and teachers really value the flexibility and affordability of online training. However, it lends itself best to knowledge-transfer rather than skills building. Anyone who has tried to run an online training session, either live or asynchronous, will tell you how difficult it is to support teachers to develop practical musical skills in an online learning environment. The main barriers to delivering high-quality music teaching in primary schools are teacher confidence and teachers’ own level of musical skill, and these are extremely challenging to support through an online offer. Before you can effectively support teachers with their pedagogic knowledge, you need to support them with developing their own personal musical skills and understanding, otherwise they cannot put that pedagogic knowledge into practice effectively.

It may just be that enough thought hasn’t gone into the training offer from the government’s side yet to identify this problem, but I am concerned that it is another indication of the doubling down on ‘knowledge rich’ that we’ve seen from the DfE in recent months. If knowledge is the only important thing in arts education (which our whole sector knows is very much not the case), then it is perfectly logical to think you can give teachers all the development they need through an online offer. Of course, music hubs are working towards establishing their network of Lead Schools to enhance their existing CPD provision, and the centre is going to oversee the work of music hubs. There is therefore the perfect opportunity to look at the training offer for music as a whole, so that online offerings can be supported locally with face-to-face support. In fairness to the government, just because they haven’t told us that this is the intended plan, doesn’t mean it isn’t the intended plan, so perhaps we can give them the benefit of the doubt on this one; although no similar infrastructure system is available for the other arts subjects that the centre will oversee, so perhaps not!

This train of thought leads me to wonder about how this centre will interact with the existing infrastructure for arts education? The relationship between the DfE, ACE and Music Hubs has not always been easy to say the least. I’m sure there will be significant concern amongst hub leaders about how the relationship with this centre as their new ‘boss’ will develop. What will the place of subject associations be once this new centre has been established? Given the direction of travel back towards the limited definition of education as knowledge transfer, and knowing how problematic that is, it’s important that our subject associations remain robust in their defence of our sector, giving those of us with more knowledge of how music education works best a voice to counter problematic policies and pronouncements from government. Will schools and teachers stop engaging with them when there is a more ‘official’ feeling overarching body that they feel obligated to take advice from? Perhaps I am worrying over nothing here, after all the entire education sector voted with its feet the last time the (previous) government established a centralised body to dictate how schools should teach; Oak National is on its way out by default with only the quietest of whimpers.

Where I think this centre could make a significant positive impact is in the drawing together of all the disparate strands of the arts education sector to create a true picture of all the activity on offer for children and young people. Music Education has a real case of ‘initiativitis’ at present, with multiple different organisations constantly reinventing each others’ wheels and declaring their new projects to be the thing that is finally going to ‘save’ music education. For schools and parents this is confusing at best, and at worst contributes to the patchiness of provision where children and young people are offered opportunities seemingly at random. Music Hubs have done excellent work of mapping the local offers, but there is definitely a case for a national picture to be developed, and ideally quality assured, so that we can map out a comprehensive approach to music education across the country which makes best use of the limited funding available.

Given all the above, I suppose my overriding concern is whether the establishment of this centre will result in another top-slicing effect, where funding that could have gone to schools, music hubs and arts organisations working on the ground to directly benefit children and young people, instead gets swallowed up in the bureaucracy of an overarching establishment which does not add equivalent additional value to the system as a whole. Only time will tell.