Are Hubs Really a New Model for Music Education?

Having read Hazel Davis’s article, ‘Are Hubs a New Model For Music Education? I asked myself whether or not it really was too early to say that Hubs are a new model for music education. That started me both thinking back over my forty years as a peripatetic music teacher and comparing the implications of Hubs with the ‘rationalizations’ of music provision that I have witnessed during my career. Weighing up the characteristics of Hubs in comparison with past experiences of government-sponsored attempts to widen provision for music education led me to answer Davis’s question with less circumspection than Davis herself.

Hubs, I concluded, are part of a shifting attitude on the part of government to education in general. The music education offered by Hubs is no longer a public good administered by expert music teachers, but a service distributed to clients. As clients, students’ parents will have to shoulder an increasing burden of the cost of music education, whilst the Department for Education (DfE) relinquishes its financial and logistical support for provision. Moves toward a private service and away from music education as a public good will therefore follow.

I want to begin by establishing from the government’s own literature what the aim, scope and funding for Hubs will be before considering their novelty or viability. A Music Education Hub (MEH) will be a collection of organizations working in a given area to create ‘joined-up’ music education provision, both in and out of school. Hubs will, we are told, ensure that every child aged 5-18 has the opportunity to sing and learn a musical instrument, and to perform as part of an ensemble or choir. Young people will thereafter have the opportunity to take their talent further – through local ensembles, partnerships with nationally-funded music initiatives such as National Portfolio Organizations, or through involvement in the Music and Dance Scheme. A body not formerly involved in the provision of music education, The Arts Council England (ACE), will monitor the activity of Hubs:

• providing on-going dialogue and monitoring, with a commitment to term-by-term contact with every music education Hub;
• taking appropriate action that varies according to the risks to DfE investment;
• producing annual feedback to MEHs on their risks, progress, achievements and best practice;
• developing and brokering relationships in the music education sector.¹

There will be a defined funding agreement in accordance with which MEHs will operate.

• The funding agreement (the offer letter and related terms and conditions) is a high-level agreement that sets out the terms and conditions for funding and many of these are also explained in this document. It also reflects the fact that the Arts Council is accountable to the Department for Education when distributing these funds.²

And Hubs will receive this funding in accordance with Business Plans that they must submit:

• Hub leaders submit a business plan on behalf of their music education hub, including a needs analysis, risk assessment, key performance indicators/milestones and financial information. Robust business planning includes clear key performance indicators allowing hubs to establish what data and information they need in order to plan, evaluate and measure their progress and assist in gathering data to fulfil the annual reporting requirements
  In the appendix we suggest some potential key performance indicators for a music education.³

In administering the appointment of Hub managers and the division of funds and resources, the Arts Council’s role becomes pivotal: ‘To help provide transparency around appointments, and, by helping to ensure strong recruitment processes for senior leaders, we [the Arts Council] fulfil our obligation to safeguard public funds.’⁴

          Having established the aims of a Hub they look little different in aims and scope from recent initiatives. First, the previous Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made significant strides toward the goal of ensuring access of all children aged 5-18 to singing and instrumental lessons. Nationally, by 2011, over 2 million pupils had the opportunity to learn a musical instrument for free, normally in a large group or whole-class setting, for at least one year – this represents over 80% of the Key Stage 2 population. By 2011 programmes were in place that would have result in every child having this opportunity during their time at primary school.⁵

Second, Music Services have always attempted to coordinate their activities with those of national initiatives. They have failed in the wake of overall funding cuts since the late 1970s and in spite of the fact that a plethora of funds with a specific remit have been and gone in recent years. An instrumental fund of £10,000,000 operated between 2007 and 2011, Youth Music Organisation received £520,000 per annum whilst large-scale initiatives such as Wider Opportunities flourished from 2008 until 2011.⁶

The figures behind the funding of Hubs do not suggest that the progress of Labour governments can continue under the MEH-regime. In 2010, the music education budget from the DfE stood at £82,500,000. In 2012 it will fall to £77,000,000 with Local Education Authorities (LEAs) having 90% of its funding ring-fenced. In 2013, the budget available will be £65,000,000 with LEAs losing no more than 20% of its funding, whilst in 2014 when the budget is cut to £60,000,000 there will be no ring-fence for LEAs budgets.⁷

In total, this is a cut of 40% over four years.⁸

90% of the funding for HUBs, by contrast, will be determined by the number of pupils in each LEA area with the remaining 10% calculated on the number of pupils receiving free school meals. There will be minimal variability on the numbers according to a census of pupil numbers conducted in January each year. So, overall,£2,000,000 will be available each year for the running of Hubs, including the work of ACE whose fee has not been revealed.

That this budgetary regime is unfavourable to LEAs coincides with longstanding government indifference to Local Education Authorities. Most recently this has resulted in the invention of academies, free schools and the like to take power away from LEA’s under the guise of giving each school its own individual recognition. The government instead favours the Federation of Music Services (FMS), the employers’ organisation, to which 99% of music services are affiliated. The FMS has therefore had disproportionate influence on music education policy by comparison with the input of music teachers. Management teams in music services have expanded accordingly: ‘They [management] are often overly bureaucratic paying large salaries to directors and big management teams.⁹

Looking at the management of Hubs by a combination of ACE and the DfE, a complicated and expensive management structure is likely to expand further with the introduction of MEHs. Many tiers in fact become necessary by bringing ACE in to monitor Hubs because they have no contact with the educational sphere.¹⁰

Into the equation come relationship managers who liaise between ACE and Hubs. Yet whilst management enlarges itself, the reorganization of Shires and councils in unitary authorities will further concentrate their influence of music education provision. Until July 2012, there were 165 music services; this will come down to 122. In the process, some very successful youth orchestras will disappear, e.g. Bedfordshire whilst new managers appear. The relationship between ACE and music education hubs is in this way bureaucratic if not a senseless exercise in diverting diminishing resources away from delivery of music education on the ground.

This raises what is, perhaps, an obvious question: if the largest amount of music education takes place in schools, why should ACE monitor what is still within the DfE’s remit? Hubs, like music services will need to raise their own income through sponsorship and fees charged to students. As the year on year cuts bite deeper, more pressure will be put on the Hub to raise its own funds. The government’s aim is to drive client led models of music education on the model of the private sector, where providers use business plans to compete for taxpayer money. ACE in this context becomes a market regulator. Thus a Hub is being used to accommodate the policy of marketization and contributes nothing to the advance in quality music education because it costs more to manage.
None of this will solve the problem of joining up music education by linking schools, music services and head-teachers, an important series of relationships.¹¹

The plan for MEHs makes no provision either for the DfE or ACE to improve communication between these stakeholders who have from time immemorial struggled to coordinate one with another, particularly without oversight from the DfE. Yet even Ofsted has signalled that this is crucial,saying: ‘we have broken with the tradition of making separate recommendations for schools,local authorities, and continuing professional development [CPD] providers. Instead, six of our seven recommendations are directed to all music education professionals, in partnership. This reflects a key message from our inspection findings and, indeed, the National Plan for Music Education – that the central government funding and the work of music services or music Hubs are not, by themselves, enough to guarantee a good music education for every child.’¹²

All of this notwithstanding, one aspect of MEHs not discussed is the role of the community in driving their development. In schools, the governors pressurize head-teachers, forcing measures that may not prove to be in the interests of the children’s education, but are in-line with the fashion of using an accountant’s abacus to instigate questionable conditions on everyone in the name of austerity. Parents also feel they should have a say often without possessing any formal music education or respect for teachers’ experience. In the end, it appears there are no experts, just different interests competing against each other. There is no reason why governors and parents should not participate in the music education process, but if teachers cannot command respect for their knowledge and training then provision of music education will in any case risk decline and collapse in the face of market forces such as price and student performance statistics.

A Hub may appear to be a new, robust structure that reaches out into the community with its costly management structure which will push the needs of teachers and students further down the list of priorities. Yet the expansion of management in recent years cannot have achieved significant strides in music education if by current estimations a totally new system of music education, the MEHs, are required. We clearly need some managers, but far fewer with smaller office back-up. Without a vibrant music scene and plenty of employment prospects, where musicians are able to perform their art, the expertise of practising musicians will be wasted and a poor quality of music training and teachers will not be good enough to raise and reach the goals we all so strive for. The only way forward is for teachers to manage their work on permanent contracts so that various means, defined by local conditions, can be used to tackle the real problems in educating a musical future for our young people. This may require concerted action from unions and other teacher groups in music education as in education more generally. For as the National Union of Teachers suggests, ‘Unless we, as the trade union movement, in conjunction with community campaigning, are able to mount a significant campaign […] to put the brake on this and unless the Liberal Democrats start behaving consistently with their own policy, which is to oppose academies and free schools, there is the spectre of a completely fragmented and privatised [education] service that is not in anybody’s interest.’¹³

Ron Tendler October 2012

1. http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/relationship_framework_music_hubs.pdf, accessed on 14 August 2012.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/g/grant%20111%20music%20education%20grant%20guidance.pdf accessed 14 September 2012.
6. Darren Henly, Review of Music Education in England section 2..2-2.9
7. http://www.thefms.org/about-music-services/hub-information, accessed on 13 Sept. 2012.
8. Jonathan Savage, Financing the National Plan for Music Education, http://jsavage.org.uk/?p=2915 accessed on 30 November 2011.
9. http://www.expertopinions.org.uk/article/instrumental-music-teaching-needs-a-radical-re-think/ accessed 23 September 2012.
10. The relationship between the Arts Council and music education hubs http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/advice-andguidance/browse-advice-and-guidance/relationship-between-arts-council-and-music-education-hubs accessed 14 Aug 2012
11. Davis, ‘A New Model for Music Education,’ 17.
12. http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/news/improving-quality-of-music-education-schools accessed 30 Sept 2012
13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/28/education-system-privatised-2015-union, accessed 23 September 2012.