The Music Education Podcast
Listen for authentic and challenging conversation on all things music ed. Brought to you by Charanga. Hosted and produced by Chris Woods of The Chris Woods Groove Orchestra.
The Music Education Podcast
Episode 44 - 'NPME National Plan for Music Education' Harriet Richards
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In this episode Chris chats with Music Teacher Magazine editor Harriet Richards about the NPME or the National Plan for Music Education. You can find some great resources for the national plan at https://www.musicteachermagazine.co.uk/npme2
Welcome to the Music Education Podcast. I'm Chris of the Chris Woods Groove Orchestra, and this podcast is brought to you by the Soundstore Music Education Hub. The National Plan for Music Education. What is it? What's it all about? What's in it? What's the word on the street? What people are actually saying about it? Do I need to pay any attention to it? Do I even actually need to read it? These are questions that I wanted answers to, and I've asked them to Harriet Richards, the editor of Music Teacher magazine. Harriet is probably one of the most perfectly placed people to have a balanced conversation and answer questions about the National Plan for Music Education. At the end of this conversation, Harriet very helpfully points us in the direction of some fantastic resources that can help you implement or just make sense of this document. I hope you enjoy listening. Harriet, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. Can we start off with a bit of uh who you are and what you do?
SPEAKER_01Thank you very much for having me on. It's lovely to chat to you. Um I am Harriet Richards, formerly Clifford, um, and I am the editor of Music Teacher magazine. Um so yeah, that's I that that's plenty.
SPEAKER_00That just that that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01That's like the worst.
SPEAKER_00It was possibly the best introduction because you've you've said who you are and what you do in in the space of three seconds. And I just start overthinking and then I'm like and that's that's that's just wonderful. That that's the genuinely the best introduction. So the sort of stimulus for us having this conversation, apart from the fact obviously the close ties between uh Music Teacher magazine and the podcast itself, it makes sense for us to to have this chat, doesn't it? But is to talk about the the national plan for music education, get a sort of a sense of what that's about. And I think a nice place uh to begin with that is to start and ask you if you can give us a little introduction of you know what what it actually is. You know, is it is it as boring as it actually sounds? Does it have you know does it have a purpose? Because I think I think any educator of any sort of part of the music education industry, for want of a better word, will have heard of it. But I reckon actually a lot of people just don't really understand its function. It's just another sort of fusty document somewhere, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yes, and there have been many, many fusty documents. Um there's been so many reports and publications and government documents in the last, I don't know how many years, even just the last few years, that it is very overwhelming for anyone in actually working on the ground, like it's all well and good. Me as a journalist is my job to sit and read documents and analyse. That's fine. But if you're actually teaching day in, day out, what are you supposed to do with this thing? It's 84 pages of government rhetoric, basically. I mean rhetoric might be the wrong word, but it's not gripping reading, is it? No, and written by civil servants who may not be in music, they've obviously been advised by this um advisory board. But yes, so I'll I'll give a little bit of an overview. Obviously, I'm no expert, I'm coming at it from someone who's read it and I've spoken to lots of people about it, spoken to someone on the advisory board. I've done a bit of summarising, but yeah, I'm not someone who's gonna have to implement it, obviously. But so this is the second national plan for music education that England has had, and the first one was published in 2011, and that was obviously during the 2010 to 2015 Conservative Lib G Lib Dem Coalition. So that was Michael Gove and Ed Vasey, because it's a um sort of collab between the Department for Education and DCMS, and that was in 2011, obviously a long time ago, and this new one was overdue. It was meant to be it's meant to be 10 years sort of between them, um, so obviously it's slightly delayed. And that first one, the main aims were so they introduced music hubs, which is obviously a big thing, and that's still going.
SPEAKER_00That was from that plan, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that plan uh was based on this report by Darren Henley, who's the CEO of the Arts Council England, and yeah, it introduced music hubs, which is probably one of the main like lasting legacies of it, I suppose. And it also was meant to get rid of like patchy provision across England, but um as most people know that didn't really work.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So this new one acknowledged that actually in the introduction, acknowledged that the patchy provision still remains.
SPEAKER_00So it sort of starts with sorry, yeah, this didn't really work out. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there's an acknowledgement of that, which I think is a good thing. Um, but yeah, so this new one is 2.0, and it was there was the government sort of announced that it was coming in 2021, and they did this big announcement saying it's coming early next year. There's this new um expert advisory panel, which some people were quite critical of because they felt it wasn't representative of actual teachers in schools, which is probably a fair point.
SPEAKER_00Was there any teachers?
SPEAKER_01Uh there were a few, but they were not they were not schools that had to follow the national curriculum. I think it was an academy. Well, so I think people were obviously concerned about that. Um, and there was lots of call for wider consultation from people. But there was a consultation in 2020 um from the government, and it was a call for evidence, which they said they were going to use to put into the plan. Um, but so that was answered by like five over 5,000 teachers, I guess, and people in music education.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, but interestingly, 30 I've got to write it down, 35.7% of those people had never heard of the first national plan. So that's not a great um sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Well, that thing to be. It's because I mean I actually said I think you've all heard of it, but m maybe not, maybe you don't even know this exists.
SPEAKER_01So it's because it's very, it's very sort of structural, it's not about the content of music education, it's about like how it's delivered, and it's about so when I was speaking to Phil Castang, who is on the who was on the expert panel, um, he was saying that it's not, yeah, it's nothing to do with the content, it's about how we organise ourselves to best deliver music education like fairly across England. And I thought that was a good way of thinking about it. Like it's not about what we teach in our lessons, it's about how everything is structured.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01So people on the ground, like classroom teachers may not have heard of it or have read it because it's kind of like a structural thing, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00So, does that mean to a music teacher it's kind of an essential reading then?
SPEAKER_01Well, no. I always say obviously I have no vested interest in making people read it, but I do think that people should read it because I think that if music teachers aren't reading it, then it's unlikely that the head teachers are going to read it, and I do think head teachers need to read it. Okay. So whether or not it's you're reading it as a music teacher, classroom music teacher, to tell your senior leadership to read it.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Like, even if that's all that it is, I think is great. And I think that there's so much for head teachers and senior leaders to be reading, taking in for all subjects, that they need someone, they need like an advocate within the school to be like, hey, this is what's happened, this is a summary of it. So even if they don't read it, they've got some insight there. Um, but yeah, so back to the summary, I guess. It it eventually came out at the end of June, 20, 25th of June in 2022, which is obviously not early next year, which is what they'd said. So it was delayed. Um, and it was on a Saturday which caused uproar. Because why should it be why would it come out on a Saturday? Like at the end almost at the end of the summer term.
SPEAKER_00It's just not how so that teachers can spend their summer holidays reading the 80-page document.
SPEAKER_01It's just really fun. Um so yeah, that came out, and it's it's actually not that dry a read. Like it's written well, and I think it's written well anyway.
SPEAKER_00And well, I mean, you would know. So, okay, so it's it's quite an exciting read.
SPEAKER_01But that's well, maybe not exciting, I wouldn't put it quite like that. But it's not boring, it's not like it's not really um, it's not full of loads of jargon, like it's just it is quite well presented stuff, like it makes sense if you're just reading it and you're not sort of like trying to look at every word like what does this mean?
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01It's quite clear, and it's not a tax return sort of no, exactly. And speaking to Phil again, because he's one of he's the person that I interviewed from the panel. Um, he said that there was some of it where he was actually reading back like his words neat, like it was actually they did use a lot of the words and ideas and text directly from the panel because a lot of the time you think, oh, the advisory panel, do they get actually have to have much input? And then is is what they said actually included? But he said there was a lot of it where it was reading that, and obviously that shows and that is really important because those are the people rather than the civil servants who would who obviously doing their absolute best to do what they've been asked to do, but they don't know much a lot about music education. Um, so that was encouraging to hear that there was actually like their neat words written into the document. Um, people who work in music education day in, day out, from whether or not it's a representative section of the sector, but they're still in it. So yeah, that was good.
SPEAKER_00Okay. If I'm honest, I still don't quite understand what it is, even though I've read the summary as well.
SPEAKER_01So Okay.
SPEAKER_00Maybe I don't know.
SPEAKER_01So it has three you could separate like you could summarise it in three as having three sections, and the they are um the first one is about access and inclusion from early years to higher education, but it doesn't have that much about higher education. So that's like all about that and how we or how the music education sector community would provide that. The second section is about partnerships, and so partnerships between hubs, uh multi-academy trusts, schools, industry, community projects, all these kind of all the different areas where that do have loads of expertise and funding within music education, but are just not necessarily working together. Okay. And they are in some places, but it's about like about bringing those things together to basically pooling our resources, pooling our expertise. And then the third section is about progression and opportunity for every child to have to progress in through throughout that system throughout from early years to um higher education, but also like into a career in the music industry. So that would be like broadly how it's split up, and there's there's lots of case studies so that you can see what's actually where it's being done in different schools, which is great. Um, but obviously different schools have different budgets, so it's not always that helpful. But still it's there.
SPEAKER_00So that so then within those there's those three areas of insight, research, and then also uh actions or suggested actions, and then that's been decided or researched and discussed by the the board, if you like, uh, or the committee, and then that's published as this plan, and then that's uh delivered to the public in whatever way. And then similar to the model music curriculum, is this then something that we uh teachers can then just go and completely ignore and carry on? Or is it a case of it's just suggested reading because the government are trying to guide?
SPEAKER_01Or um so yeah, it's non-statutory again, like the model music curriculum, which is one of the sort of major concerns around it because there's no there's nothing tangible sort of holding schools account to account. Because obviously, ideally, and from everyone in music education, like you would want this plan to be implemented, and lots of schools already will be doing it, it's just not in exactly the same terms. Um, but yes, it's non-statutory, so technically schools can ignore it. Um head teachers don't even have to read it if they don't if they just don't want to. Okay, there's no nothing telling them to, but um Ofsted have said that they will be using it, not in a way of they can't like they can't enforce it, they've said that they can't enforce it, they know that, everyone knows that, but they will be sort of looking at it, and so there is like an awareness of and and because one of the things that you you're supposed to do from it is write a music development plan as a school, we're just talking about schools here, really, I suppose. Um they would be sort of after they would want to see this music development plan, I assume. Um I don't think they can it's really tricky one, there's like a balance between them saying people saying, Oh yes, we'll we'll want to see this plan, but then they actually can't they can't ask for it and then give and then mark you down if you don't have it because it's non-stating.
SPEAKER_00That's quite sort of it's just quite abstract and surreal there, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01And there's also the sort of issue of like music hubs, lots of their funding is dependent on um like specific targets, but which presumably would link to the plan, but then the plan is non-statutory, so it's kind of like I like Chris Walters from the Musicians Union has talked about how that's kind of like a a bit of a what's the word? Like a contradiction, how there's some things that are presumably statutory because of their link to funding. So it is really it is a really difficult um thing. But I think beside all of that, like I think the main thing is that it's like a useful resource. I don't think there's you can get into all these technicalities of is it gonna be enforced, is it not? But it's kind of like then you're just getting into the territory of thinking, oh, can we get away with not doing it? But that's not really like that's not really what anyone wants. Like we don't obviously we don't want to end up with people having to do unbelievable extra amount of work, and that I I think that is a concern that some of it is extra work and people are already way overstretched. But if there's a few small like practical things that you can do, which is obviously where the magazine, from my perspective, we want to be able to help people make practical steps and not be overwhelmed by this document.
SPEAKER_00So so what are those sort of key what are those key points then that's so um a main one for schools specifically in primary schools and secondary schools is this music development plan, which is a new thing sort of mentioned by the national plan.
SPEAKER_01Um and it's it says that by 2023, September 2023, schools should have one. Um and lots of schools already will have one, and there's no sort of set, there's no template given by the plan of what it should look like. So if people already have one, then great, there might just be some tweaks to make. But some schools won't have one at all, and some schools won't have a music specialist in their school, especially primary schools. Um, so the plan says that every school, every primary school should have a music specialist, music lead in a primary school, every school will have that, but they might not necessarily be a specialist because it's been like widely acknowledged that often music is the last thing if you're late to the staff meeting when the subjects are getting sort of it's literally that's been said all the time. It when subjects are being handed out, you often just hand it with music, you don't know anything about music, you can't read music, but you that's your subject in a primary school, and that is that's the people who it most challenging to create this plan and obviously deliver music in a meaningful way. Um, and that's not their fault, that is through that is no one's fault other than the system of where we find ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Um sorry, so so now they have to be a specialist, that's that sort of change that well, so they don't have to be.
SPEAKER_01It says it says in the in the plan that ideally, so obviously there's all these like ideals and like dreams and which is great. I think we just have something to aspire to. Okay. But it doesn't mean that it's gonna be a reality, and it doesn't mean that people who aren't there yet in their school have to feel like oh they're not good enough. Like there's still ways to there's still ways to get to implement a lot of the plan and a lot of it in your school without it being like we have completed it to check. Like I don't think anyone will ever complete this vision. Like there's always stuff to be working on, regardless of where you are.
SPEAKER_00Because that that idea of being uh what was the difference? Sorry, music lead and music.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's music specialists, but some people argue that there's no such thing, so it's all very complicated.
SPEAKER_00Well that that's it, isn't it? Because I I mean I've been in to do workshops in primary schools, and the music lead, I suppose, is someone who might not be um a um a musician as such in a training way, but they just love taking part in music and that's works beautifully, but they might feel a bit underconfident then from No, exactly.
SPEAKER_01And music specialist is not like a um a sort of defined term, like no one there's nowhere that that is defined particularly, so it's very much like people self-identify as a music specialist, and lots of people don't, even if they are. And so it's a really uh vague term, yeah, as you say, and I just think it kind of needs to be ignored in some not ignored, I don't know if that's some people do ignore it, and I think that's I think that's fine. I think we can ignore it really because like what if if you're in that position as a non-musician, then what you can't do anything about that, like you just have to get on with it, really, and I think there's no point being told that you're a non-specialist, like, how's that gonna help? So, yes, so the music development plan, we've got a really useful written by um a music lead and one of our writers, and she's an author, Karen Marshall. She's written this really useful um guide to writing this music plan for a primary school. Okay, and it's kind of she's slightly um targeted it towards a non-specialist or non-musician music lead.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, so that's available on our website, and we've made it completely free to read, and there's like a downloadable Word doc um template, which is slightly like could be seen as an issue because there's definitely no one size fits all to this. Like, no that you can't just follow a template and then you're you're done. But we've created this template because it's an editable, you can make it work for your school, and like you need somewhere to start rather than just having a blank page in front of you. Like, I think anything is some is somewhere good to start. So, yeah, we've got that online, and I think that's really useful, and it just goes through the different things to even begin um where you might even begin, and that's like auditing where you are now, and then putting on this table where you want to be, how you'll do it, and then like problem solving and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00Um it's a sort of overarching the whole um musical journey, if you like, from year zero to end of year for whatever school it is, where where those students be.
SPEAKER_01So it's it's massive, obviously, it's a massive thing. But it is, I mean, as I said, like schools will already music leads will already have this these kind of things, whether or not they call it a music development plan. Like they'll have a vision of whether it's written down or when it's in a document or what it is, but they'll have all of their plans from like key stage one to end of year six, they'll have this plan written out. So it's kind of just about um using the key components that are mentioned in the national plan, um, some of which may or not may or may not be being met already in the school, and adding it to your what you've already got, and just seeing where you can go, whether it whether you can make one change that year. It's just about having the plan down and like the vision for development. And it doesn't have to be that it's Not saying, oh yes, you must you must implement all this stuff all in one. So for examples of things would be um like having a choir, having an orchestra or something in your primary school, and like if you are nowhere near having that, nowhere near having a peripatetic singing teacher, peripatetic violin teacher, whatever. It's just about making like one small thing, so even if you find the funds to get someone from the music club to come one day a week and lead a singing assembly, like that's that's some progress, and that's like something. And at like as I said, every single school will be on a completely different level, and so many schools will already feel like they've they're doing everything that it says, which is great, but there will always be some room for improvement, I suppose. Um I spoke to two head teachers actually for another article about what they thought of the plan, and that was really interesting. Those were both primary school head teachers. Um, and one of them on the day after the national plan was published, he has this blog that lots of people read. He's called Michael Tidd, um, and he has like 50,000 followers on his blog. And he published a blog called Another Damned Expectation, and basically was talking about how the plan reading the plan felt like he was being set up to fail. Um, and it was there were lots of like really depressing things, and like he was just saying sort of music's not a priority um because there's so many other priorities in the school. It's not because he's anti-music, it's just because there's so many priorities, even just getting people to attend, get making sure every child is safe, attending school, fed, those are the priorities for a lot of like realities of being a primary head for a lot of people. So to be presented with this big document telling you that you have to have all this amazing music is just the sort of the straw that breaks the camel's back. Um so that was so I contacted him after that um and wanted to find out more basically because I wanted to find out whether he didn't really talk about his own what their current music provision was or like what his actual view of music was. It was more just a he was obviously very like angry and sounds like a bit of a rant. Yeah, it was, but like a fair enough one, I think. Um and yeah, and he was very like willing to chat and talk about it and and say that he's not anti-music. He actually really what he really wants is to be able to employ a music specialist in his school, but he can't find one, or he can't yeah, he said they'll he said he can't find one. Um and he said that they're really rare, which in some ways is true, but in other ways there's definitely people out there who would be looking for that job. So yeah, I don't know, I don't know exactly about that. But um and he yeah, he was just saying that it could have been any subject that this plan was about. It does it's nothing to do with it being music. Uh it was it's just the expectations placed on primary schools and heads specifically is just too much, and it would he would end up feeling like he needs to like leave his job, and he do he doesn't think that there should be a national curriculum and then further expectations placed on top of that, which is basically what's happened here. Like we've got the national music curriculum and then a plan on top of that, and not every subject has that at all, so it is a bit it is a lot, and I can see it was really interesting from someone not in the music education world because we're so used to just talking, well, I am so used to just talking to people within music education and finding out what people think and like talking about all the intricacies of stuff, but actually if you step out, and the people who need to be reached with this kind of plan to improve music education for children and young people, they're just feeling completely overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_00Um, isn't it for like educators? I suppose.
SPEAKER_01It was really, it was really um it kind of was a bit of a wake-up call and just to be and not to just immediately think, oh well, they don't know what they're talking about, like they they don't know the joys of music, blah blah blah. Like it's actually that's that's not helpful. Like it's mean to engage with people who are finding just general workload of being a head teacher difficult, and if we can find ways of enabling them to implement just a few small things. So then the other person that I spoke to for this article was Leslie Barringer, and she is an former headteacher, but she took over a failing primary school in 2014 and basically put music at the heart of it. She's a complete non-musician, she said she was very open to just being like, I don't know anything about music, but she saw something in music at the time of taking over the school to that she knew would would really help holistically in the school. And it wasn't just about music, she just saw it as a not a quick fix way of improving the school, but as a way of yeah, holistically improving the school experience for every child. So she she used people pupil premium and did some fundraising, I think, to hire a music specialist one day a week, which was actually Karen Marshall, who is the person who wrote the development plan thing for us, um, to come in. And yeah, it she just talked about how much how she completely completely agreed with what that other head teacher was saying that it feels like you're being set up to fail when you read these kind of things. She said, I completely agree.
SPEAKER_00Even though music through the school is like at the heart of what she does, right?
SPEAKER_01She she said that she's not so she's not a headteacher anymore, but she said she completely like sympathizes with that opinion and says that yeah, you do feel like that when you're presented with these things, but she says she's she feels like she's had her eyes opened to what music can do in a school, and so she was talking about how she comes up with a sort of bronze, silver, and gold of like a vision of doing things, and so if gold is like absolutely having everything that this plan says, and bronze is having um just a few things implemented, she says, What can I how can I get gold in the future, but over a longer period of time? It is really interesting. She called herself a creative pragmatist and said that she always like approaches things on these saying what part of the dream can I cut to get a sort of a small part of it and then get the the bigger benefits over a longer period of time. Yeah, she was it's just really she's got loads of really interesting things to say, and it was really interesting juxtaposed against this other head teacher, and it wasn't saying I wasn't trying to set them up against each other and say, This one's way better, look at this. Yeah, yeah. It was more just these are different opinions. Lots of people will have completely different experiences as head teachers reading this plan. But this is a head teacher who has has basically done this before, she'd done it in 2014, and this was the outcome, and it wasn't meant to be like, oh, look at this person, they're so great, that person's obviously wrong. Both of those opinions and experiences are like fully valid, but it was just a really interesting conversation to have with both of them.
SPEAKER_00It seems to me for from that from how you've described that anyway, what sort of immediately hits home is that idea of all of us within education, be it people who are advocates or workshop leaders or what have you in music or sport or visual art or maths, science, all those different elements, all just shouting, Oh, music, it's gonna change all the children's lives. You must do it, it's disgraceful. But then at the end of it, we have headteachers who are, you know, just trying to work out uh if all those children have had breakfast and all those kind of basics, and then also this idea of the constant um improvement that the head teachers are sort of going through of always having to because something has to give, doesn't it? I I think that's always a reflection with teachers anyway, especially classroom teachers, right? That you you're always being told you must do this, you must follow that, you must follow this, but the uh yeah there's only a finite amount of time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. And I think that is quite a like that can come across as quite like a depressing thing, and just being like, oh well obviously music has to give, and it doesn't, it really doesn't have to give. And I think a big part of the the the overall plan is about partnerships and about this pooling of resources and about your hub really being supposedly being a massive support to where you might not have the time in the day. Like the hub, the hub can supply the support and the teachers as well, like the peripatetic teachers or a specialist to come and do a singing assembly. And that's like a massive part of the plan, is the is the role of partnerships and how yes, no one can do this, no school can do it on their own. It needs to be everyone working together and all the amazing, like you and I both know there's so much amazing music going on around the country in education, and it can it can be spread and it can be pulled in a much more effective way. And I think that's really a main thing of what the plan's trying to achieve.
SPEAKER_00Because there's a big change there, isn't there? In hubs, there's gonna be sort of less.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's gonna be fewer hubs. It's a bit confusing, but there's gonna be like lead hub organization, which I think just is basically hub, and there's gonna be a competitive process via the arts council where they have to bid for a certain amount. We don't know what what you don't know what the minimum amount is yet, and then there will be less, or there'll be fewer of them. Um, and then there will also be lead schools and a few national centres of excellence, which I think are gonna be sort of super hubs. So there's a few changes, but they're all coming down in the next few years, it's not all immediate. Um, so yeah, I think that that's a huge thing. Like it kind of feels like okay, the plan's here, and then nothing immediately happens. So it's we it's there's a small sense of it feeling like, oh, is it gonna lose a momentum? But I think stuff will be happening and stuff is happening behind the scenes. And yeah, I mean, even just having the fact that the government has bothered to create this national plan for music is great, to be honest, because there's so much, there's so much sort of rhetoric about oh, government doesn't care about music, it's such a low priority, and they have said that, like they've said it's a non-sat non-strategic priority in higher education and that kind of thing, and all that sort of stuff going on. So I think it's a really positive step that we even have this plan, and I think that is the general consensus, like people, if we're within music education, like the general reaction has been sort of cautious optimism of like, okay, the plan's here, it was late, but it's here, and it's actually quite good. And if we can make it work, then it'll be great. I think the main criticisms and like concerns are around how you can make it work and whether people have enough resources, whether people have enough time. But the actual plan itself, I think most people, like most people speaking generally, acknowledge that it's quite sound and in the ideal world, it will be great. So I think that's like if you're to summarise in just a tiny bit, I think that is the general consensus. And then obviously you have people who are like we shouldn't even have a national plan. Like there's just too many strategies, too many plans, too many documents, like we just need resources, we need money. So there's all sorts of opinions, but I think now that it's here, we're not going to get rid of it, are we?
SPEAKER_00So you might as well accept it.
SPEAKER_01You might as well accept it and just try and do our best to make it work.
SPEAKER_00So did because that that's an interesting question, which I try and ask. Um is like here you know, the government are presenting his what we think you should do, um, and this is how we think you should probably do it. Does that come then with new funding and uh more money?
SPEAKER_01So the only bit of funding that was announced as part of a plan was 25 million for instruments and equipment, which is good. Apparently the panel weren't expecting any funding to come from it at all. Um, so that was like a sort of surprise bonus. Um a bonus 25 million, excellent. Um and I don't think that's that hasn't been it hasn't been decided whether that's gonna go directly to schools or to hubs yet. But that the idea is that that will go will be for instruments and um like resource equipment technology and stuff like that. So that's good.
SPEAKER_00Okay, but then that could be yeah, them having to actively seek it out with hubs or them actually.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, it hasn't been announced yet, but it is definitely ring fenced, which is good because I think in the past funding has been not ring fenced, and then it's just been used for other stuff. So I think hopefully, whenever that announcement, I'm sure that announcement will come after the sort of hub situation has been has gone along on the process.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which is a pretty significant change as well, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Are we doing Yeah, I think that will cause quite a bit of um upheaval, but I don't really know I don't know when. I've asked the arts council when it's gonna happen, when we're gonna find out more, but they have nothing to tell me yet. So I'll keep you posted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, okay. So a lot of a lot of unknowns, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there is. There is.
SPEAKER_00Okay, Harriet. Well that's a fantastic insight into it and a and a summary of um of what this what this thing is. Where can teachers go to to find more information beyond obviously reading 80 pages of possibly well written stuff? Um where can because I think I think yeah, for any music educator is now actually, well, how can I sort of make this quite abstract sounding thing into something tangible?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. So loads of all the sort of major subject associations and like the ISM, MTA have got have produced resources, um, and obviously I'm going to be plugging our resources. So Music Teacher magazine has we've got a tab on our website that says MPME2, and under there is where all of our anything to do with the plan is. Um, and some of the sort of key things to point out, I suppose, are um is that music development plan guide um that Karen wrote, and then that that's accompanied by the download and a little um video QA with me and Karen that just kind of explains it in 15 minutes, um, which is hopefully quite useful. Um, and then yeah, my interview with Phil Castang, who was the panelist, which is quite interesting just to get some sort of insider insight into what it was like being on the panel and sort of how the decisions were come to. Because I think often with these government documents, you don't really it kind of appears and then you don't it's silence from who who wrote it, you don't find out sort of what went on, why decisions were made.
SPEAKER_00Almost seems a bit shady.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you yeah, exactly. You don't get any sort of people don't want to put their name to it because if it's been criticized, then they're like, Oh, I had nothing to do with it. Whereas this with this, people have been very willing to be like, Yes, I was part of this, this is why we did this, this is what hasn't been included, and this is why. And I think that's really great, and that transparency is exactly what we need. Um, so yeah, you can find that in that article, and then the other article I was talking about the interview with uh about what head teachers think, that's also on there. Um, and that's yeah, again, just very interesting insight from a sort of stepped back perspective of headteacher. Um, and Karen also wrote a sort of nuts and bolts piece about how you would implement the plan generally in a primary school, which is also excellent, and I would recommend that to any sort of primary music lead. Um, but yeah, so that's on our website, which is www.musicteacher magazine.co.uk.
SPEAKER_00Fabulous. I'll put a link in the podcast as well.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much, Harriet. It's been it's been great to chat.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me. It's been it's been great to just chat about it. I didn't realise I had so much to say.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful, thank you.