News: November 2018
Poorer children priced out of learning instruments but school music programmes benefit the wider community
Years of austerity in the UK have bitten away at school budgets, and the arts have suffered heavily. Schools can no longer afford to employ teaching assistants , so it is little wonder that local authorities have cut school music funding . Schools are responsible for their own budgets, and musical instrument lessons that were traditionally subsidised by councils have been cut down in some districts . Now, the Musicians’ Union has found that children living in the poorest areas are no longer getting the exposure to music and the arts that they so often only get in school. With parents being asked to subside instrument lessons, 41% of low-income families have said that they cannot do so due to their limited household budget. This article by Eira Winrow , PhD Research Candidate and Research Project Support Officer and Rhiannon Tudor Edwards , Professor of Health Economics, at the Centre for Health Economics and Medicinces Evaluation is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .
Publication date: 13 November 2018