Research Report, October 2016 - Key Data on Music education hubs 2015 by Caroline Sharp and Adam Rabiasz

"Secondary analysis of a survey conducted by the Arts Council has found that music education hubs have continued to deliver on their core roles, working with an increased number of schools and pupils." notes NFER News.

Music education hubs (MEHs) were created to provide access, opportunities and excellence in music education for all children and young people in England. A total of 123 MEHs were established and started work in 2012. NFER has carried out secondary analysis of a survey conducted by Arts Council England each year since 2013. This report on the 2014/15 school year concludes that MEHs have continued to deliver on their core roles and worked with an increased number of schools and pupils.

Key Findings:

• Music education hubs worked with 18,811 schools in 2014/15, representing 86.0 per cent of the state-funded schools in their areas.
• Music education hubs provided Whole Class Ensemble Teaching (WCET) to over 631,000 pupils in 2014/15 representing an increase of 42,177 pupils in Years 1-9 since the previous year.
• Over a quarter of pupils who had received WCET in 2013/14 continued to learn an instrument through their MEH partnerships in 2014/15.
• Participation in WCET and ensembles was broadly representative of the population as a whole in terms of ethnic background and deprivation. However, pupils with SEN were considerably under-represented, as were boys.

Sharp, C. and Sims, D. (2016). Key Data on Music Education Hubs 2015. London: Arts Council England.
https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/MEHE01 

Source: NFER