17th Mar 2011 at 7:29 pm
On Tuesday evening, a meeting of invited stakeholders was held at Dunstable Fire Station to discuss the future direction of the music service.
The meeting was attended by about 20 stakeholders from schools, music centres and the music service itself.
The Henley report, in the ‘A Vision for Music Education’ section, presents a view of music education as a pyramid.
At the base is music delivered to all children as part of the Early Years Foundation Stage and National Curriculum. This foundation is built on with most children continuing their interest beyond the classroom, many children receiving specialist tuition and finally a few who are exceptionally talented. This is the same 4 tier approach that Central Bedfordshire is proposing.
Music services are having to align themselves into Music Education Hubs in order to apply for funding from the government in 2012. These hubs will need to show that they are able to fully cater for Music Education needs of all children in their particular area, in accordance with the requirements of the National Music Plan. Different models for a music service were discussed, including Derbyshire who closed their service in the early 1990′s for about 9 years and restarted about 12 years ago. After discussion with other music services, it appears no -one has a working solution yet.
The objectives of the meeting were for the stakeholders in groups to discuss and provide their thoughts and suggestions to the following 5 questions:
- What do you see as the most important provision that should be delivered through a music service?
- What role could schools/ groups of schools have?
- Which other partners/organisations should/could we approach in the Central Bedfordshire area?
- What role could other organisations have?
- What do you see as possible music service delivery models for Central Bedfordshire?
It became apparent during the conversations in our groups, how much disruption to the children the fee rises were causing. From the discussions, it looks like the majority of students will be giving up instrument tuition due to the massive rises. The question was asked ‘when the fee rises were set, what percentage were expected to cancel lessons’. It appears that no calculation of this figure had been made as there wasn’t enough information; it was assumed most parents would continue to pay.
It was suggested that this type of consultation should have taken place before the fee rise was sent out to the parents, so that answers could be in place for the obvious questions, rather than the current situation where the general response is ‘we are finding that out and will get back to you’.
Schools are unable to arrange taking on providing the lessons themselves as the very people they need, the peripatetic teachers, are under contract to Central Bedfordshire. This is going to leave a void in instrument tuition until, as is likely, the peripatetic teachers are made redundant due to no work for them. The music service instruments will go back to the music service as students cancel their lessons and are likely to go into storage while it is worked out how to provide the provision. All this time, in essence, those students have stopped playing music, probably in many cases forever.
The stakeholders had concerns the that vision of the 4 tier music education system, which we currently have, would not exist by the time the new service had to apply for funds from the government in 2012.
It is important that everyone has their say in the consultation that is now taking place. The on-line questionnaire is on the Central Bedfordshire website at:
http://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/surveys/Music/service.htm.
The consultation period finishes at 9am on Monday 28th March, so there is very little time.
It was expected that the council will consider the feedback for a couple of weeks before setting out the future shape of the service.
Tags: Bedfordshire Music Service, Central Bedfordshire, Henley report, instrument tuition, Music Education Hubs, music service
March 18, 2011 at 2:53 pm
[...] Edit: I have also posted about this on the Dunstable Music Centre website http://www.dunstablemusiccentre.co.uk/2011/03/17/stakeholder-meeting-15th-march-2011 [...]
April 1, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Thank you for your summary of the meeting and for taking the trouble to attend. I think the fee increases are a real threat to the continuation of a music service-is there any chance of these calculations being independently verified? How do they compare to other LA music service fees?
Has anyone yet been appointed to head the new music service in central Bedfordshire? The next school year is only five months away and as things are, I don’t think there are any guarantees that our children’s lessons will be continuing and if they are who will be teaching them. Central Bedfordshire has handled this exceedingly badly and created one almighty big mess and a lot of uncertainty.
Perhaps the only action we can take is to exercise our democratic vote next month and remove the councillors who created this mess from office.
April 1, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Thank you for your comment Helen.
From a recent Guardian article, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2011/mar/24/music-education-funding-cuts-bedfordshire, it appears that the fees are around double the national average. Of course the average will change as other authorities put their prices up, but even so that’s quite a statistic.
The on-line questionnaire has disappeared from the Council website, so I guess they are in the analysis phase of the consultation.
As far as Central Bedfordshire are concerned, they will be providing a music service and delivering the lessons under the new pricing structure. Whether they have anybody taking lessons at the new prices remains to be seen, and it will be more telling to see the numbers continuing past the summer.
I personally believe that the biggest issue is with how it has been handled. The speed with which the changes have been pushed through has left everyone in a very difficult position. The response from Edwina Grant to the Friends of Bedfordshire Youth Music, http://www.fbym.org.uk/news/2011/03/response-from-edwina-grant.asp, provides the Council explanation of the timeframes and speed of activity.