Music Teachers: Recruitment

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Oh dear. We are definitely investing £76 million annually in music hubs, which of course means that the 43 music hubs can continue their important work to help children, regardless of background, to access musical education, by providing instruments and resources. In addition, we are investing up to £13 million in the national centre for arts and music education, which we intend to establish by September, to provide support for the revised national curriculum, improve the professional development of music teachers and make sure that extracurricular school enrichment and partnerships with music and arts organisations are strengthened.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, further to the supplementary question from the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, does the Minister agree that what is needed most urgently, given that the Government are not taking into account the long-term decline in arts education, is a review of the way in which recruitment targets and ITT bursaries are calculated? This affects not just music but art and design. If they were really interested in boosting arts education, they would not just be looking at the most recent baselines.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Every year, we review the recruitment trajectory for different subjects. Given the need to safeguard public money and ensure we are spending it efficiently, and given that we have had a 55% increase in recruitment to initial music teacher training and the lowest leaving rate—8.7%—for music teachers at any point, apart from during the pandemic, I do not think it unreasonable to conclude that, at this point in time, the bursary is not required to bring about recruitment. As I said, we will of course review that every year. We will keep in mind the number of teachers needed to maintain the proportion of hours taught by specialist music teachers in our schools at above 90%, and we will, as we have already proved, pay more if necessary to get the teachers our children need.