Long Term Trend Changes in School & College (incl training providers) Music Qualifications in England 1994-2021 (by academic year)

Which Pupils Take Vocational Music Qualifications compared to GCSE and A Level Music?

Data provides two clear indications that pop music qualifications such as RSL Music VQ’s serve the needs of pupils and teachers providing music education for parts of our community previously not engaged by traditional GCSE and A level Music. Specifically these are:

• Pupils coming from families with low to medium POLAR ratings
• Pupils from families predominantly in the lowest third and half of the government’s multiple deprivation index

The data below shows the pop music qualifications like RSL Awards’ Vocational Qualifications:

• encourage many more families with lower experience of higher education to support their children to study music
• engage children of families within the lowest categories of multiple deprivation

POLAR data
POLAR data expresses the level of familiarity in a household of experience of higher education. The POLAR data for music pupils in England can be compared directly between some pop music qualifications and Music A level candidates.

The RAM and RCM commissioned research into A level music candidates’ POLAR data in 2019 from Faultely, Whittaker, Kinsella and Anderson. This showed that 60% or more of the c.5000 music A Level candidates per annum come from families with a POLAR rating of 4 or 5.

In 2020, RSL Awards’ analysis of its c.8000 per annum music VQ candidates shows a very different demographic, with 70% of these music students from areas with POLAR ratings of 1-3, and only 30% with POLAR ratings of 4-5. The table below illustrates this:

Multiple Deprivation Data

The RSL Music Vocational Students in 2020-21, around 8000 students, were analysed. This showed:

• 49% of RSL Music VQ students are in the lowest 3 deciles of multiple deprivation
• 65% are in the lower 50% of multiple deprivation.

There is a lack of reliable published information to compare the socio-economic background of music A level and GCSE candidates with these RSL VQ pupils. In 2012 Ofsted’s report ‘Music in Schools: wider still, and wider’, Her Majesty’s Inspectors noted that ‘only 5% of the students who were known to be eligible for free school meals were involved in additional instrumental or vocal tuition’ (para128), and elsewhere in this report they also noted that this additional tuition characterised the experienced of the vast majority of music GCSE candidates. More recently, Whittaker in his 2021 article ‘Teacher Perceptions of A level Music: tensions, dilemmas and decline’ admitted the evidence suggests ‘A level music as a relatively exclusive qualification in the British educational landscape’.

Government and Music Industry Reaction

It is heartening that since publishing Pop Music Education in the UK 1960-2020, the government and music industry has begun to take note of the contribution and potential of pop music qualifications to the music education landscape.

In the House of Lords, education minister Baroness Baran showed the start of an awareness in the department for education of the contribution to growing music education when she answered Lord Black’s question on 2nd March 2022 by saying (as accessed on 26/01/2023):

‘The Government share my noble friend’s concern about the importance of music education in all of our schools. We see it, along with other arts subjects, as integral to a good, strong curriculum. In relation to the numbers that my noble friend quoted on the music GCSE, I point out that while he is right that uptake of the GCSE has declined, uptake of the VTQ—the vocational qualification—has increased, so actually there are almost 53,000 children today taking either the GCSE or the VTQ, compared to almost 50,000 in 2016.’

Hopefully the Department for Education will use this new found understanding to inform their medium term support for the pop music education sector in the future.

It is also heartening that UK Music, representing the British music industry, have started to recognise pop music students more publicly. Their recognition of results days for RSL, BTEC and UAL results days alongside those of traditional GCSEs and A-Levels was very positive for the wide range of learners who achieved qualifications.

Dig deeper with Norton York’s book: “Pop Music Education in the UK 1960-2020”

Since 1960 British music has been a global success story, but the UK’s traditional music education system was slow to understand and react to this. That left an opportunity to create an alternative music education in Britain which embraces Pop Music in all its forms and supports young people’s desires and ambitions to perform and write it, or work within its industries. This is the story of how and why that change happened, told by the people who founded its key organisations – from BIMM, ICMP and ACC to the BRIT School, LIPA and RSL Awards.