Creative Education Access Bill [HL]

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Keeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on her Bill and the way she opened this Second Reading. I also welcome my noble friend the Minister to her place. I look forward to her maiden speech today and to working with her.

Last week we had a debate on the Government’s priorities. I focused on creative education and the importance of making changes to improve the uptake of music in our state schools. Our Labour Government inherited an education system in which the EBacc had squeezed music education and other arts education from the curriculum. In music this damaged both music teacher recruitment and retention and contributed to declining GCSE and A-level entries. Recruitment targets for music teacher training were missed for 11 out of 12 years, and the number of music teachers fell by 850 between 2011 and 2023. A-level music remains in crisis. Entries have fallen by 41% since 2013 to a record low of 4,635 students, while GCSE music entries are around 27% lower than they were in 2010.

As the noble Baroness said in her opening speech, this decline has not affected all young people equally. Music has one of the largest disadvantage attainment gaps of any subject. Schools in the most deprived fifth of local authorities are more likely to have no entries in some arts GCSEs. Some 54% of state schools in those areas have no GCSE music entries, compared with 21% in the least deprived authorities. I thank Professor Adam Whittaker of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Dr Anthony Anderson of Birmingham City University for the research they do on disadvantage-related attainment gaps in music education, and for providing briefings on it. Their work found that, in 18 local authorities, either only one school offers a music qualification—A-level or vocational—or, in the worst cases, none do. The list of authorities includes Knowsley, Hartlepool, South Tyneside, Rochdale, Salford and Tameside, as well as four London boroughs. As a former Salford MP, it breaks my heart to see the Salford local authority included in that list.

The Social Mobility Commission found that children from poorer backgrounds are three times less likely to learn an instrument, sing in a choir or play in an orchestra. Recently, I attended an event hosted by the excellent Royal Philharmonic Society, where three of our most gifted young musicians, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Ben Goldscheider and Jess Gillam, discussed the state of music education. These musicians were worried that music education is not in a great place and said that “it’s not what it was”. Like many musicians, they do what they can to support music in our schools, but they cannot solve these issues as individuals. It falls to us in this place to create a better future for both arts and music education in our state schools.

The United Kingdom’s music industry is one of our greatest success stories: it generates £8 billion for the economy and supports 220,000 jobs. Every performer, composer, producer, sound engineer, technician and educator begins somewhere. If we weaken music education, and arts education more broadly, we weaken the talent pipeline that feeds our universities, conservatoires, orchestras and creative industries.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to removing the EBacc performance measure, but removing a barrier is only the first step. We must rebuild the music teacher workforce, restore effective teacher training incentives, such as the bursary, expand access to instrumental tuition and ensure that children in disadvantaged communities have the same opportunities as those elsewhere. Music education is about far more than producing professional musicians; it helps young people to develop creativity, confidence, resilience and collaboration. My hope is that we can create an education system where every child and young person, whatever their background, has the chance to choose music and benefit from all that it offers.

Today’s Second Reading debate brings a welcome focus to the subject of creative education and the issues and challenges of restoring it after the damage done in recent years. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for enabling that focus through the Bill.