| Summary: | The National Plan for Music Education (NPME, 2011) was the first nationwide policy paper for music in English schools. Its impacts were two-fold. Firstly, it sought to unify the work of music education providers in a historically “fragmented and uncoordinated" field through the establishment of Music Education Hubs (MEHs; Henley, 2011, pg. 30). Secondly, the Plan introduced Whole Class Ensemble Teaching (WCET) as a national entitlement to all children and young people.
Yet during the last decade of NPME enaction, many studies and voices within the profession still describe English music education as being at a “crisis” point (Finney, 2011; Dickinson, 2013; Zeserson et al., 2014; Daubney, Spruce & Annetts, 2019). Current knowledge of the challenges MEHs face are dominated by evaluative reports, society reviews and annual Arts Council England (ACE) key data returns. Relatively few qualitative studies exist on the NPME’s impacts on those actioning policy at ground-level.
This thesis aims to provide a qualitative contextualisation of MEH practice. Through ethnographic research methods, this study examines the roles of MEHs, and the challenges and successes of actioning the NPME’s policy text. Based on 19 months of e-fieldwork during the Covid-19 pandemic and 6 months of in person fieldwork with an East Midlands based music service, the research illustrates how both educational policy agendas and pedagogical practice influence the current state of music education. The study is divided into two parts.
In the first part, chapters 1-4 focus on government education policy and its implications for music education from the Education Reform Act (ERA, 1988) to the NPME (2011). In the second, chapters 5-6 examine the context of music education pedagogy from two contrasting positions - that of the specialist and the generalist. I examine WCET’s successes and challenges as a melded pedagogical approach in these two spheres. Chapter 7 illustrates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on a music service with instrumental provision at the forefront. Overall, the thesis contributes one of the first qualitative examinations of ground-level NPME implementation since its initiation over a decade ago.
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