![]() Founded 10 years ago this year, In Harmony Lambeth was inspired by the Venezualan El Sistema. Some years ago, I was at an In Harmony Lambeth event when Julian Lloyd Webber was talking, and he commented that as a musical project In Harmony Lambeth could only be seen as expensive but as a social action project it could be seen as providing wonderful value for money. Ironically, this comes at a time when we are beginning to understand quite what a valuable tool music can be in education, improving not only social cohesion but academic skills as well. But the result is a patchwork of practical music provision, rather than a coherent musical policy. There is lots of good work being done by musical organisations, something touched on in my recent my interviews with Nicholas Chalmers of Nevill Holt Opera and Christopher Monk of the Armonico Consort and my article about the recent Gabrieli Roar project. It isn't just music as an academic subject, with the cuts in funding for education and the down-grading of music's role in the syllabus it is tempting to think that we are on the way to all forms of music in education being the preserve only of the privileged or dependent on external projects. Music isn’t included in the English Baccalaureate, the set of core subjects used to measure schools’ performance, which was introduced in 2010. ![]() Numbers released by Ofqual, the government department that oversees qualifications and exams, reveal that the number of students taking Music at GCSE has been in decline for the past four years. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of pupils talking music, mirroring the fall in other creative subjects not included in the English Baccaleaureate (see article on Classic FM website). Gabrieli Roar (with children from Tiffin Boys Choir & DRET Youth Choir), Gabrieli Consort & Players ![]()
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