Earlier today, when I was turning out some old papers about teacher supply issues, I came across a draft for a paper I wrote more than 30 years ago on the subject of failing to meet the demand for music teachers.
Interestingly, in the notes, I compared the data for the shortage subject receiving a bursary in 1990 and 1991, with music that wasn’t a bursary subject.
As you might expect, music stood out, even in the early 1990s as an anomaly.
Take Table 31 from the Interim Advisory Committee report of January 1991. This table lists the percentage of unfilled teacher vacancies recorded in a joint union survey. Music ranked 6th worst in the list. In the DES Press notice on vacancies, issued on 25th August 1991, music was third worst as a percentage of teachers in post, with a vacancy rate of 2.4%. This placed music behind only, ‘other languages’ at 7.2% and German, at 2.5%.
In a DFES document ‘Projecting the Supply and Demand of Techers’, published in December 1990, the Department accepted that projections suggested a shortfall of teachers of music. Interestingly, music was the only subject with a shortfall across all four scenarios modelled in the document. Even so, music did not at that time join the list of subjects entitled to a bursary.
Another DES press notice, of 27th November 1990 (382/90), probably associated with the census of ITT trainees, normally published about that time of year, also showed a deterioration in ITT places filled from 88.9% in 1889, to 71.0% in 1990, although the actual number of trainees had increased from 282 to 340. In 1990, only mathematics, at 63.3% of places filled had a lower percentage of filled places than music.
So, what do I deduce from the data about both recruitment into ITT, and teacher vacancies, from nearly 40 years ago? Perhaps that attitudes in the civil service towards certain subjects in the curriculum don’t change very much.
Maybe the turnover of civil servants with responsibility for ITT bursaries is so frequent that it doesn’t allow for them to start afresh each year in considering the data and trends in each subject.
However, even that approach doesn’t really explain the dropping of the bursary from music for 2026 entry. I think the profession needs an explanation. Otherwise, the axing of the bursary for music can be seen as a cynical ploy to say money in a subject Ministers don’t fully appreciate in terms of its contribution to both society and the growth agenda.
I think that the Arts Council, DCMS, and the music lobby have a right to know why music lost its bursary, and to ask that it be replaced.
However, having seen how both the DfE and DCMS have recently handled the physical education grants, I am not holing out much hope unless there is a real campaign to reinstate the bursary for music, perhaps with some scholarships provided by private funders. Don’t let us lose music from our state secondary schools.
John Howson 