A music teacher’s diary on the looming Music Hub handover, post-16 funding anxiety, and a genuinely good afternoon with a class of nine-year-olds and a box of shakers
September the National Centre for Arts and Music Education launches, taking over the Music Hubs from Arts Council England, and as of this week I still don’t have a straight answer from anyone about who the actual delivery lead is or what happens to our local Hub’s funding once the handover completes. I’ve asked three times through three different channels. Politely, mostly.
Why This Actually Matters To Me Specifically
Our Hub funds the instrument loan scheme half my Year 5s depend on, the cheap violins and the slightly dented cornets that get passed down year after year because none of these families can afford to buy one outright. If the transition drops a stitch anywhere in the handover, it’s not an abstract line item, it’s a specific kid who doesn’t get a violin in September.
The Post-16 Situation Nobody Seems To Be Fixing
Meanwhile the defunding of post-16 vocational music qualifications is still grinding forward somewhere in the background, something like thirty thousand young people reportedly left without a clear pathway once Level 3 options disappear. I have former pupils in that exact pipeline right now, kids who came through my classroom on a loaned clarinet and are now trying to actually build a career out of it. Nobody’s told them anything concrete either.
What Actually Happened In My Classroom This Week Regardless
None of this. A box of shakers, egg ones and the little wooden frog ones that make everyone laugh regardless of age, and twenty-eight nine-year-olds building a rhythm together that actually, genuinely locked in for about ninety seconds before collapsing into giggles. That’s the whole job really, distilled down. Doesn’t care about procurement timelines.
Why I’m Not Actually Panicking, Just Tired
I’ve lived through enough restructurings to know the actual teaching mostly survives the reorganisation, even when the paperwork above it is a genuine mess for a year or two. But I’d like, just once, for a policy change affecting my classroom to come with a clear answer to a simple question asked in good faith, rather than three unanswered emails and a September deadline creeping closer regardless.