English Music Education: From Access to Quality

We spoke to Steven Greenall about his reflections on Music Education in England, including how we define high-quality music education. Steven is a passionate advocate for music education, a trustee of Music Mark, and CEO of pBone Music, a strategic partner for music hubs and music education organisations internationally.

Over the past decade, the creation of Music Hubs has transformed access to music education in England. Through Whole Class Ensemble Teaching, instrument loan schemes and youth ensembles, millions of children have experienced instrumental learning for the first time. In policy terms, the hub programme has achieved something significant: it created a national infrastructure for access to music education.

But recent developments suggest the system is now entering a new phase.

The Department for Education has launched the tender for a National Centre for Arts and Music Education, while the government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review is examining what pupils should learn across the national curriculum. At the same time, ministers have emphasised the importance of cultural enrichment, highlighting the need for all children to have meaningful experiences of arts and culture.

Taken together, these developments point to a growing interest in what children actually learn and experience through music education.

The government created music hubs to widen access to music education. The National Centre has been established because the system still lacks a national mechanism for defining and improving quality.

Music hubs have been highly successful in expanding participation. But once access infrastructure exists, governments typically turn their attention to the next challenge: improving quality and consistency. We have seen this pattern in other areas of education policy, including the development of Maths Hubs and English Hubs to support teaching and professional development.

A More Complex Ecosystem
Music education today also operates in a more complex ecosystem than it did a decade ago. Schools now draw on a range of organisations when delivering music, including music hubs and services, cultural organisations and orchestras, curriculum and teacher-training platforms, commercial providers delivering programmes in schools, and independent instrumental teachers.
Many schools now assemble their music provision from multiple sources. In this context, the critical question becomes: what does high-quality music education actually look like for children and young people?

Enrichment and Learning
The growing emphasis on cultural enrichment raises an important strategic question for the sector. Enrichment programmes can play a powerful role in introducing children to the arts. But they are often delivered alongside the formal curriculum rather than embedded within it.

If music increasingly sits within the language of enrichment rather than curriculum, there is a risk that it becomes something children experience occasionally rather than something they build skills in and progress through over time.

For music education, the challenge may therefore be how to ensure that enrichment experiences are connected to sustained musical learning and progression within an already busy school timetable and not shifted to lunch-time or after-school activities.

Defining Quality
One difficulty for the sector is that we have never fully articulated a shared definition of what high-quality music education looks like in practice. Participation has often been used as the primary measure of success. Expanding access has rightly been a major focus of policy. But participation alone does not define quality.

Access and opportunity are closely related but distinct ideas. Access focuses on whether all children are able to participate in music regardless of background or circumstance, while opportunity refers to the breadth and richness of the musical experiences available to them across their school journey. In other words, access ensures the door is open; opportunity determines what lies beyond it.

A more balanced understanding of quality might therefore consider several complementary dimensions:

• Access – can all children participate regardless of background, circumstance or ability?
• Opportunity – do pupils have meaningful opportunities to experience and study music across their school journey, from early years through to secondary education?
• Learning – are pupils developing musical understanding, skills and creativity through sustained musical learning?
• Progression – are there clear pathways for pupils to continue their musical development through lessons, ensembles and further study?
• Cultural experience – do pupils encounter music as part of a vibrant cultural life, through performances, musicians and creative practice?
• Workforce capability – are teachers and music educators supported, trained and sustained to deliver high-quality music education?

These dimensions recognise that participation enables quality – but it does not define it.

A Moment for the Sector
If the music education sector does not take the lead in defining quality, there is a strong possibility that it will be defined elsewhere – through policy, inspection frameworks or national programmes.

That is why this moment matters.

The tender for the National Centre for Arts and Music Education signals that the next phase of music education policy may focus increasingly on teaching quality, workforce development and musical learning.

This month, Music Mark has begun the search for a new Chief Executive. That transition also offers an opportunity to reflect on the organisation’s role within a changing landscape.
This is also a moment that calls for strong system leadership – organisations willing to help the sector think collectively about the future of music education and articulate a shared understanding of what high-quality music education should look like for every child and young person.

As Peter Drucker famously observed,

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

And once we agree on a clear definition of high-quality music education, are we ready to be held accountable to it?