Primary Music Magazine Issue 4.1 Spring Term 2020

Why don’t schools teach music?

Thoughts on challenges, changes & obstacles At every music education event that I go to, and almost every time I open Twitter, someone is complaining that ‘most primary schools don’t teach music.’ As someone who spent three years of their life as a researcher, this immediately concerns me as I know that there is as yet no empirical evidence to support this theory. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence about schools who don’t teach music, but there are no underlying reliable nationwide figures to ‘prove’ that this is the majority of schools.

I also hear regularly the cry of alarm ‘most schools don’t even have a music specialist’ as if this were a bad thing. However, not having a music specialist does not mean music is not being taught, or that it is not being taught well. And conversely, having a music specialist does not necessarily mean that music is being taught well, since there is no agreed set of criteria to become a ‘music specialist’ beyond simply calling yourself one.

Even if you have a great music specialist, this is not the most sustainable