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 primary school children in England learning an instrument in school (a) paid a charge and (b) received their tuition free of charge 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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