Jonathan Savage

I’m sad to report that my questions to the FMS (see previous post) remain mostly unanswered. In response to the first question, the FMS did inform me that they were not responsible for the allocation of IMS funding during the years 2008-2011 and they referred me to the DfE. I submitted an FOI request to the DfE for these figures yesterday and they arrived today in the form of this spreadsheet. It details the allocations to all local authority areas from 2008 to 2011. A quick number crunch of certain areas revealed that overall allocations are reducing by 10% each year from 2011/12, with some areas slightly worse hit than others (overal reductions varied from 22 – 51% over the four years).

Interestingly, the figures published by the FMS for the three year allocations from 2012 – 2015 bear little relation to the published figures by the Arts Council England. For example, according to the FMS figures Manchester would receive £2,754,215 whereas the ACE settlement quotes a figure of £2,345,777 (some £408,438 less); Herefordshire would have received £598,582 according to FMS whereas the ACE figure is £519,769 (£78,813 less). If anyone from the FMS is reading this, perhaps they could answer why the figures quoted on their website are so inaccurate?

In relation to Question 2, ACE have released a spreadsheet detailing which successful hub applications cover which local authority area. I haven’t been able to look at this yet but a comparison here would allow one to see which areas have not had successful bids. I’m sure the FMS must know this and it would great if they can tell us?

In relation to Question 3, I’m sad to report that redundancies are already being announced across the country. Changes to the Gloucestershire music service will result in 36 teachers being made redundant; Music Teacher are reporting a similar situation in Bedfordshire. The FMS press release signalled some of these developments, but they are proving very reluctant to share any intelligence that they may have at the current time.

Today, many of us (including those of us in Cheshire East) are celebrating the funding announcements made by Arts Council England for the new music hubs. But, without wanting to put too much of a dampener on things, I think it is important to remember that music education has already lost a massive amount with more significant losses to come.

The Federation of Music Services were quick to jump on the bandwagon and celebrate the inclusion of so many traditional music services in the new music hubs. They’re even campaigning for new ‘hub associate’ members! For this reason, I have three questions that I’d like to pose to the Federation of Music Services following their press release earlier today:

1. Would you publish the funding allocations given to all music services for the last (2010/11) and current (2011/12) years so that we can accurately position the recently published figures for music hubs? Will they, as I suspect they will, show that funding is being cut by an average of 10% each year?

2. How many music services have not had their music hub applications approved today? Do you know what is going to happen to the future of these services?

3. How many of the 12,000 instrumental teachers that you identify in your press release have already lost their jobs, and how many are you anticipating will lose their jobs as a result of these reforms?

I’ll let you know when I get a response.

Details of all the successful Arts Council England music education hubs have been released today. The full list can be found here. There are 122 successful hubs. The vast majority of these seem to be reconfigured local authority music services (no surprise there I suppose). But only one has been set up by a partnership of schools for the benefit of schools (you can see where I’m heading!). I’m proud to be associated with Sandbach School’s successful application to create the Love Music Charitable Trust (see previous post).

I was also delighted to see that the other hub within which I have a role (the one consisting of the nine local authorities across Manchester) was featured in the ACE press release this morning. I was disappointed that they forgot to mention that Manchester Metropolitan University was a lead partner in that bid (but I suppose the RNCM and Cheethams School of Music sounded sexier for them).

So, all in all an exciting day but much work to be done.

I’m delighted to say that the new Love Music Charitable Trust has received three years of funding from Arts Council England to create a music education ‘hub’ for Cheshire East. This new organisation, run by a partnership of schools across Cheshire East, will help facilitate and deliver music education throughout the region.  Read the rest of this entry »

The publication of the Education Select Committee’s report into attracting, training and retaining the best teachers reveals the shocking true costs involved in training our teachers on various pathways of initial teacher education. Having waited for months since Teach First gave evidence and refused to reveal their costs in their verbal submission, a comparative table of costs has been published.

You have to get to page 216 of the second volume of their report to find the scandolous truth about the massive expense of the Teach First route compared to other providers. To save your time and energy, here is a screenshot of the table:

So, according to the table itself, Teach First is the most expensive pathway (when compared to a PGCE pathway) by some £7k. But, check out the footnotes. In addition to £23,277 per trainee, Teach First receive an additional £8,000 per participant to fund the costs associated with their Leadership Development programme (of which £4,166 is not included in the figures). So, the total cost per trainee of the Teach First programme is £27,443 compared to £16,470. That’s a whopping £10,973 more than a conventional PGCE pathway. And, apparently, they still have to raise income from charitable sources to cover their costs! I’d love to see their business model in more detail. It beggars belief.

For the record, these figures are a like for like comparison for training a specialist physics teacher in inner London.

In their defence later in the report, Teach First claim that schools actually save money by having one of their trainees because they are actually ‘filling a teaching vacancy in their first year’ (i.e. or, in other words, the schools adoption of their trainee means they don’t have to recruit another fully qualified teacher). They acutally cost this out on Ev211 (p.217) and their table is copied below:

This is plainly ridiculous on so many levels. Firstly, and it needs saying, a first year Teach First trainee is clearly not as well qualified to teach a full teaching timetable as a newly qualified or experienced teacher; secondly, the perceived ‘savings’ for schools in this respect have not been mapped or considered in other pathways.

For a PGCE student, for instance, throughout their 120 days in school they might teach, on average over the year, a 50% timetable. So, should we consider reducing the overall cost of training a PGCE student by the 60 days worth of teaching they do (approximately 1/3 of a full time teacher’s teaching commitment of c.180 days)? Going by Teach First’s own figures (£27,000 salary/3 = £9000: see Ev211 note 2 in table above), this would reduce to the taxpayer  and schools he overall cost of training a PGCE student to around £7k, i.e. at least £20k less than the Teach First route/trainee.

In other words, a like for like comparison of the overall cost to the taxpayer means that you could train around 3 teachers through a PGCE programme for every one teacher that Teach First train. Except, of course, it is plainly a ridiculous line of argument that only Teach First seem to think is suitable to justify their exorbitant fees.

I am staggered that at this time of financial austerity, the Government believes it is right to promote the work of a private charity and fund it so generously. I have no doubt that Teach First produce good teachers. But so do our university programmes. Even if you disagree with me about the potential ‘savings’ a school could make by adopting a PGCE within their staff, there is no way that the additional £11k spent on training a teacher through the Teach First programme is money well spent when universities can produce teachers equally as good and just as effective for a lot less.

It is also worth noting that the costs involved in training teachers in subjects without bursary payments (e.g. Music) will be even more extreme. Take the £9k training bursary out of the original table and a music student on a Teach First programme will still cost £27,443; the music student on a PGCE programme will cost the taxpayer £7,470. Outrageous.

In another in the series of guest post on my blog, I asked Jonathan Westrup to reflect on whether the recently appointed monitoring board for musical hubs have sufficient expertise around SEN/ disability to ensure accountability. Jonathan has worked for Drake Music since 2005. He currently leads the day-to-day running of DM Education which aims to broaden access to formal assessment and accredited courses for SEN/ Disabled young people and adults. Jonathan previously taught Music in a Bristol secondary school and has long been active as a composer and performer on the Bristol music scene.

Here is Jonathan’s post …

Q. Does the recently appointed monitoring board for musical hubs have sufficient expertise around SEN/ disability to ensure accountability?

All of the recent ‘big three’ reports on music education – Henley, National Plan and Oftsed – have made clear and specific statements about the urgent need to address the historical shortfall in music provision for SEN/ Disabled (SEND) students. Darren Henley started the ball rolling when he recommended that a National Plan ‘should also include details of provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Looked After Children’.

The National Plan itself places emphasis on the entitlement of SEN/Disabled (SEND) pupils to ‘high quality music provision’ and requires all hubs to do an on going needs analysis in their area to ensure they reach all young people. Finally, Ofsted referenced it within their number one recommendation – to ‘challenge inequalities in musical opportunities and participation among pupils’.

It’s a surprise then, and disappointing, to see that the monitoring board overseeing the implementation of the National Plan doesn’t appear to include anyone with expertise in SEN/ disability and music provision. Granted, there are some very experienced people on the board who will have experience of SEN issues more widely; but we’ve been here before. Some of the big music initiatives of recent years – Sing Up! and Wider Opportunities among them – failed to address SEND provision sufficiently at the planning stages. Success did eventually come down the line, but opportunities for children and their teachers were lost because the ‘right’ sort of questions weren’t asked.

So, the new hubs and the make-up of those monitoring them is a crucial test case on whether we are really serious as a sector about raising the standard of provision for SEND students. Is SEND a priority, as stated by the government; or is it doomed to be the ‘nearly man’ of the National Plan? It’s not too late to consider additional support and advice for the monitoring board on what is, admittedly, an area of provision in which there are few experts but which has long been crying out for some proper attention.

I’ve been asked to advertise the RNCM’s junior Gamelan course on the 24th and 25th July 2012. Please download this brochure for further information. The course is aimed at young people aimed between 11 and 14, with no previous experience required.

I’m really pleased to working at MMU, a fantastic university with a great reputation. However, the best thing about working at MMU are the people I get to work with. In particular, Will Evans and Jane Petrie are fabulous colleagues whom I have the greatest respect for. It has been a privilidge to work with both of them for a number of years.

Research at the newly-named Faculty of Education is located within the Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI), housed in the above building. Here, research professors and others work on a range of research projects. I enjoy teaching on a range of research-orientated courses (such as the EdD and MRes) and have had some great students from the worlds of education, social work and health care.

So, I’m really excited that one of these courses – the MRes – has been rewritten and, from September 2012, you will be able to come to MMU and engage with a fantastic course taught by great staff. I’ve attached a .pdf outlining the course in more detail would highly recommend it to you. Here’s the opening paragraph:

This is a 1-year, full-time programme, comprising 4 taught units and a dissertation. It is a research training programme for students who wish to go on to study for a PhD and for research workers in education and the social sciences. The course can be taken as a free-standing qualification and as a research training programme it covers all key areas of research methods preparation, including: qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, data collection techniques, methods of analysis, developing theoretical, methodological and ‘real world’ skills for researchers. The course structure is designed to provide a collaborative, student-centred approach that makes the best use of digital technologies to increase flexibility, collaboration and insight into the latest research and practice. Exit awards will also be available.

Following my invitation for guest posts about the state of music education in the UK following on from recent Government policies, I am delighted to present this guest post from Dr Alison Daubney. Alison is a research fellow and teacher trainer at the University of Sussex.  She started her career in music education as an instrumental teacher with Brighton and Hove Music Service then moved on to lead music departments in various Sussex primary, secondary and special schools. Much of her recent research is based around the interface between community music and formal education settings, with a particular interest in finding practical ways for marginalised young people to overcome barriers and gain access to music education.

Here is Alison’s post about the recent Ofsted Report and the ripples it has caused:

Regular readers of Jonathan’s blog will know that the Ofsted triennial review for music was published earlier this month, and whilst outstanding practice was showcased, there were a worrying array of messages about how much better music education could/should be. More disappointing for me was that many of these messages were similar to the 2009 review; yet the vast majority of music practitioners I know are hard working professionals who are passionate about sharing their love of music with young people. Let’s be clear that there is no distinction in the report about one particular sector of music education needing to improve – these messages are equally as valid to community musicians and instrumental teachers as they are to generalist and specialist music teachers in all kinds of school settings. Read the rest of this entry »

Alison Daubney has written some tremendously helpful documents for the ISM summarising the key points from the recent OFSTED report. These documents are useful for any advocacy that you might want to do for music education in your school, LA or other settings (e.g. to headteachers, senior management teams, etc) and available in a range of formats. The direct link to the ISM download page is here.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the 1 page and 3 page briefing documents. Thanks for your great work Alison in putting these together!