Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the closure of the University of Nottingham’s music department on music education in the UK.

Higher education providers in England are independent, autonomous institutions. Decisions about which courses they offer are a matter for each provider and the government has not made a specific assessment of the impact of individual institutional decisions such as this.

Where a provider decides to close a department, the Office for Students, as the independent regulator, requires it to have a student protection plan in place. The plan will always include minimum measures for ensuring that existing students complete their course and continue to access student finance or transfer to other providers. We expect the University of Nottingham to honour its commitments to its current students.