Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Main Page: Lord Wallace of Saltaire (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Music Education: State Schools
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire.
I declare my interest as, for 10 years, the chair of the VOCES8 Foundation, which combines music performance with taking singing into schools. We were shocked when we began to go into primary school after primary school where there was no teacher with any musical knowledge. We developed ways of getting students to sing together in catches and in parts. All the evidence is—the Institute of Education did a study—that if you get pupils to sing together, and, even better, to sing in groups, competing and combining with each other, it lifts the school as a whole and it lifts the sense of common purpose.
Co-operation with outside bodies is therefore fundamental, and I hope that the Minister can reassure us that this Government believe in that. The most depressing meeting with a Minister I have ever had was when VOCES8 went in to see Nick Gibb, who told us his views on musical education, which I vaguely remember from my primary school a very long time ago.
Music hubs are a problem. I note that south-west London, which has an excellent music hub in Wandsworth, to which my grandson goes every Saturday, has not yet agreed the new reorganisation. I have read very critical comments on the reorganisation. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that this is not going to lead to a greater weight of bureaucracy on the hubs now imposed over their other counterparts.
In conclusion, I have been extremely lucky; not only did my children go to a state secondary school which had a strong musical tradition but my grandchildren now go to a Church of England secondary school, St. Cecilia’s—the clue is in the name—in Wandsworth, which has an excellent music tradition. If you go to Wimbledon this year, you will hear the St. Cecilia’s school band playing on one of the days in the first week and the Wandsworth Music orchestra playing on another day—all state school children, and my grandson will be playing in both of them.