Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many secondary schools in England offered GCSE Music in (a) 2010 and (b) 2017.

The information requested is not held centrally. The Department does not collect information about which subjects are offered by individual schools. Instead, the Department holds information on each exam entry taken in a school, in each subject, which provides a proxy[1] for the subjects offered by that school.

The number of schools[2], with pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 who sat an exam in music[3] in 2010 and 2017 were:

[1] In any given year, a pupil may sign up to a subject but not sit any exams in it, leading to that subject not being counted. Also, a school may offer a subject, but have no pupils signed up to take the course, or sit an exam in it for that year.

[2] Includes all schools, except further education sector institutions, converter academy (alternative provision) and sponsor led academy (alternative provision).

[3] Only includes entries that were eligible for inclusion in performance tables, were full GCSE courses, that were not discounted (in 2010, the pupil’s best entry was included, all others were discounted. In 2017, the pupil’s first entry is included, all others are discounted: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/key-stage-4-qualifications-discount-codes-and-point-scores). This means that a pupil may study music and enter an exam in either 2010 or 2017, but the entry won’t be included as part of these figures as the entry was discounted. This is in line with performance tables methodology and enables comparison to published figures.