Ms Harriet Harman – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ms Harriet Harman on 2014-03-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of all primary school age children in England were learning a musical instrument in (a) academies, (b) community schools, (c) free schools, (d) primary schools and (e) other schools in each of the last five years.

Elizabeth Truss

The information requested is not held by the Department for Education. A recent report[1] published by Arts Council England shows that in the academic year 2012/13, 437,975 pupils in years 1-9 received free whole class ensemble teaching. This is 8.6% of the national cohort. 430,998 pupils were in years 1-6 (12.4% of the cohort) and 6,977 were in years 7-9 (0.4% of the cohort).

Many other children learn instruments in and out of school, but these figures are not collected or held centrally.

[1]http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/funding-programmes/music-education-hubs/

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