 Good morning and welcome to the Education and Skills Committee, our 28th meeting in this session. The first item of business is a third evidence session on the committee's inquiry into music tuition in schools. This week, the committee is hearing from representatives of three local authorities. We've had an informal session with a number of students and teachers from the Royal Conservatives of Scotland last Thursday to hear about their experiences. I would like to thank those who took part in that session. I welcome today Councillor Chris Cunningham, convener of Glasgow City Council, Councillor David Dodd's Executive Councillor for Education, West Lothian Council and Councillor Willie Wilson, vice-convener of the Lifelong Learning Committee, Perth and Cynros Council. If you please indicate either to the clerks if you want to come in and answer any of the questions of the committee. I'd like to start by asking each member to give an overall view of the challenges facing music tuition in the schools at this time and particularly outlining their approach and their local authority approach to the charging of pupils. If I could come first to Councillor Cunningham. Thank you very much, convener. Glasgow City Council, I'm not sure if it's unique in this regard, but Glasgow City Council does not charge for music tuition. In those circumstances it's an indication of the extent to which we value music tuition in our schools. We believe that we have a very extensive reach. I'd probably take slight issue with the figures that appear in your report or the information that's preceded this session. We believe that if you take all of our programmes together it reaches over 44 per cent of primary and secondary pupils in the city. We have an extensive programme both in terms of instrumental music and our youth music programme, an extensive programme of training of teachers as well as providing tuition to our pupils. We operate in more than 100 of our primary schools out of 138 and all of our secondary schools. I'm happy to make comment on the issue that I think gave rise to this, namely the idea that music tuition should be a right which is enshrined in law. I'm happy to make comment on that if committee members wish. In general I think that that's a problematic area for Parliament to go down. I'll await the opportunity if you wish for me to make further comment on that. Instrumental music tuition in many other areas is facing huge problems due to the underfunding of local government. It has left us looking at cutting the funding that we have available. The intention of West Lothian Council was to try to maintain free tuition on a reduced range of discipline. However, that option was not possible. For the first time this year we have introduced charging for instrumental music tuition. Our service prior to that has been highly successful. We have a range of disciplines operating in all of our secondary schools and primary schools with 13 different bands and ensembles that contribute usually to the life of our schools and communities. It would be very important for us to see that continue. However, with the options available to us, that has not proved possible. I'm happy to go into the situation that we now face in terms of answering questions. I also want to answer whether legislation would be a potential solution to the issues that are facing us as a result of the current situation. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. This is a subject that is very close to my heart. Perthengros has a long-established high-quality instrumental music provision that is available to all pupils. In order to maintain the excellent provision, there is a fixed contribution that is required from parents in order that their child can access tuition. We have had charges for many years. We have also looked at the budget for instrumental music service. We have tried hard to protect that in a way that ensures that the service is delivered to those who need it. We did, as part of last year's budget, after a six-year freeze of fees, introduce a 20 per cent increase, which meant, in some cases, that it was £50 extra a year, a pound a week. However, we are closely monitoring that. We have had no fallback in the number of applications for IMS for this year. We understand that some people may be under pressure in making payment, and we have plans to tackle that, which I can elaborate on now or later. The same applies to our services to many others. Youngsters who are studying for exams obviously get free tuition. We are engaged with our youngsters. We are engaged with our parents, which is really important to make sure that we try to meet their aspirations. I would not say that we always keep them all happy. I do not think that that is life or the facts of life. We thought long and hard before we put the charges up, and we were faced with the traditional rock and hard place that was either to diminish the service in some way or maintain the service and increase the charges. We did, at the same time, introduce a £35,000 grant that is available for a bursary scheme for those who may be eligible for a variety of reasons to apply for financial help. We have recently launched that, and we are getting a number of applications in as we speak on that. We will also work hard with the charitable Perthengross Music Foundation, which we want to look further at, how we might work further with them. There is the possibility of buying additional instruments for youngsters who may not have immediate access to them, may not be able to take them home, etc. We have a number of initiatives in that regard. I will stop there, and I am happy to answer questions. I am going to go to Johann Lamont. Can I maybe start off by asking Chris Cunningham a couple of questions? First of all, to see that I have had direct experience of the wonderful service that Glasgow provides, both as somebody who has attended concerts and as a child who went through the process. It has been a fabulous experience, but I am interested in the choices that Glasgow has made if it had consequences elsewhere. In our evidence, it says that music is very much regarded as a core subject in Glasgow City Council and funded accordingly, but it is the case that not all subjects are regarded as core subjects. You might, for example, not access geography in one school and modern studies in another. What is it about music that has meant that Glasgow has chosen to invest in that way? Presuming that there are the same budgetary pressures on Glasgow's elsewhere, what are the consequences of that choice in terms of provision across our schools? All local authority education departments need to make choices. They need to decide whether or not one area of expenditure is more important than another. They need to balance those judgments within the budgetary constraints that exist. We recognise—and I am happy to quote here the Scottish Government's 2016 guidance on instrumental teaching in Scotland— that talks about the fact that music enhances cognitive processes that are shared between music and language, such as supporting language development, development and literacy. I could go on further in that quote, but it is recognised that music has wider benefit in terms of literacy and cognitive development and language development, which means that there are additional benefits that arise from it. I think that that is at the core of why we regard it as important in the curriculum, why it has been regarded as important in the curriculum for a number of years. I understand that around 10 years ago there was a decision taken by the council to introduce charging and that, as a consequence of that, the participation levels in music tuition dropped very significantly. The decision was made correctly that those charges should be withdrawn. I am advised by officials that it took a number of years to build the programme back up again and build the participation rates back up again. Those are never easy choices. I entirely understand the point that you are making. I cannot give you detail on the way in which other subjects have been impacted by the various choices that have been made over the years, but at its core we regard music as important and it is funded accordingly. It would be interesting to know what is a general survey of subject choices across councils, but that is maybe for another inquiry altogether in terms of restrictions on choices. You say something like 44 per cent of young people get the opportunity to participate. Do you do any analysis of, given the benefits that you have identified around music tuition, the extent to which, within that, where everybody can access it, to what extent young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are accessing instrument tuition? Even if it is everybody and everybody can uptake us up to everybody, do you have strategies in place to ensure that young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds who might need a bit more support, that that is monitored closely? I am absolutely clear and the department is absolutely clear that music tuition is delivered across the entire education estate. I have made reference to more than 100 primary schools involving around 25,000 children. The authority has 138 primary schools, so you can see that the reach is very extensive. One of the most significant programmes at the moment is, in four primary schools, we are delivering a whole-school music approach, and that is, in fact, in the East End, based around East Bank Academy in Shettleston. It would be entirely wrong to categorise the music tuition programme within the council as being geographically discreet. It is not, it covers the entire estate. The question was asked with a slightly different one, which is not a geographical question but income, that disadvantaged families, young people who may need a little bit more support to be encouraged to access it, even if it does not cost anything. I wonder if that is something that you monitored, because presumably even across, if there is a reach right across the city, which I recognise, 44 per cent of young people take it up, is it something that you would keep under scrutiny that all of that 44 per cent is not disproportionately young people from families with relatively better off families? I understand the point that you are making, and to some extent we may be speaking heavy across purposes, given that the extent to which deprivation applies across Glasgow, albeit not in some areas. The reality is that if we are providing across the entire city, then we are going to be reaching those significant areas of deprivation that occur in Glasgow. I am not in a position to say to you right now exactly what those figures are. I am very, very happy if the committee wishes that they are provided, but I am confident that we are reaching across the city and throughout all of the income groups that occur in the city. That was just the final point that I would make, because there is a difference between reach and uptake, and that you would need to, even in a circumstance where there is no charging, have strategies to increase uptake among families who maybe do not regard to something that they can do or can afford, even if the council is not charging for it? I fully appreciate the point. I think that the principle strategy that the council has is to ensure that the provision is made across the entire estate and across all of the areas and all of the income groups in the city, but I appreciate the point that you are making. Can I just ask finally the other panellists what made them choose differently from Glasgow? I mean, everybody has got budget pressures. Why did you feel that it was reasonable ultimately to select music tuition rather than some other bit for your budget? I think that there are very few other bits of the budget that are not already under pressure. It would be the first thing that I would say. It was certainly not a choice that we made lightly and not a choice that we were keen to make. We looked at all the options available to us. The original proposal that the administration brought forward in West Lothian was that we were going to maintain free tuition, but we were going to reduce the number of disciplines in which we offered free tuition, so that we would still regard that as being a positive option, because it avoids many of the issues that are related to charging. I think that your previous question, that even before we did not reduce charging, the access to instrumental music tuition was not taken up equally across the board in terms of the range of society. Up to before we started charging, 12.75% of the people who accessed instrumental music tuition were in the most deprived quintile, as opposed to 28% in the least deprived quintile. We had offers looking at one particular school in a deprived area and trying to bring up the proportion of young people who took up musical tuition, but proved very difficult. I am not sure how you would do that, unless you prioritised your tutors into the areas of greatest deprivation, which in turn would have an impact on the areas where people were able to afford it. It was something that we were very reluctantly forced to do. Our option would have, of course, had consequences as well. It would have meant that children would not have been able to continue taking forward musical tuition, but it would have meant that any child who wanted to take up musical tuition and had an aptitude to do so could have done so without having it considered at the cost of it. I think that my answer would be something that we did very reluctantly and would not have done with any other option. I have got a number of members wanting to come in on the back of Joanne. Can I first go to Ross Greer? A quick supplementary for this stage, please. On the point about cost and not charging for music tuition means cut self-swear, I am interested in what the difference in cost between your local authorities is. As far as I am aware, in Perth and Kinross, it is over £800 per pupil. Are there quantities of scale things going on here where the per pupil costs in Glasgow is lower? Various logistical challenges in Glasgow like getting tutors between schools are lower than they would be in somewhere like Perth and Kinross. To agree, I think that that is correct. I am glad that you have raised the issue about the rural aspect, because Joanne Lamont correctly raised the issue about folk who are disadvantaged, but we can have pupils and parents who are disadvantaged because of transport, because of distance, because of the lack of transport and what we have been working hard with all the voluntary organisations that support the instruments of music services. Can you do car sharing? Can you get people to help each other out? Can there be a community aspect to that? Can we make sure that there is a bus to take the burdens home at night after the lessons or are there other ways to provide that? We have that additional challenge. We have also got the challenge of just travel, but we do provide buses and transport wherever we can for the central groups, for instance. We do have a sensitivity analysis. For instance, our 20 per cent increase this year was not popular. That is just a statement of fact. However, we did review it and looked at the music camp costs and we made sure that they were not making a profit. The parents did not want us to make a profit on that, so we made sure that it simply covered the costs. We have adapted our policies to take account of that, and that is listening to the community and reacting to it. I think that the issue about why did we charge, we always have. We see, as I said in my introductory remarks, that it is really important to make sure that the service and the quality of the service are maintained. There is a unique thing about Perth and Cranos. There are many unique things about Perth and Cranos. One is that we are a rural area that supports and has two producing repertory theatres, which not only provides excellent facilities, but also provides youngsters with opportunities to move into those areas to work. The link between the instrumental music service and the opportunity to work in theatre is strong. We work with both theatres as part of our overall aspect to provide opportunities for young people. It is a difficult question to answer about charges, but we are where we are now with it. To the other members, do you want to come in? As the background paper suggests, none of the councils charge full recovery for the musical tuition. The key figure is the difference between the amount of money that the council put in to musical tuition and the amount of cost to deliver. In our case, we were looking at a budget of £939,000, which was cut to £500,000. The charge that we introduced of £340 was to ensure that we recovered the difference between the two while maintaining the level of musical tuition. That is why there is such a patchwork across the country. Previous surveys have shown exactly that. Can you bring in Liz Smith? Thank you, convener. Councillor Cunningham, just before I ask another general question, could you clarify a couple of things you said in your introductory remarks that you took issue with some of the statistics that we had in our papers? Could you just say what that is? The papers show that the instrumental music tuition programme reaches 8 per cent of Glasgow's pupils. My officials had some difficulty with that and gave me figures that suggest that, as I said, it is 44 per cent. I think that it might be dependent on what is counted and what is not counted. It is possible that the 8 per cent figure refers only to secondary schools, I am not sure. I genuinely do not know where the figures that are in your papers come from, but my officials are clear that the reach is far, far greater. If we are in more than 100 primary schools and all of our secondaries, I struggle to see how you could reduce that down to 8 per cent. I think that it might be worth checking that discrepancy, because it is quite considerable. The other point, Councillor Cunningham, you mentioned that Glasgow previously had charged and that the decision was reversed, but it took some time to build it back up again. How long did that take, roughly, do you know? My understanding from officials was that the charging was introduced around 10 years ago, but quite quickly it was reversed. Do not ask me for a timeline on how long it took from their perspective to build it back up again, but that message came across to me fairly clearly when I was discussing it with officials. I think that the big issue there, and it is probably a general point, is that there is a huge step between not charging and charging something, is a far, far greater step than, for argument's sake, charging £100 and increasing it to £110. Incremental increases in charges are one thing, but that big step of do you introduce charges or not seems to me to be the significant one, and it is that issue that caused the problem about around 10 years ago and that the council stepped back from. Thank you. Councillor Dodges, you have taken the decision to charge. What are the latest statistics from West Lothian as to how many youngsters have had to drop out? We do not have the final figures as yet. We are waiting for some of the figures, but I can give you a general idea that the number of primary students since we introduced charging has decreased from 1,128 in November of last year to 234 this year. One in five students at primary level have opted to continue. At secondary level, the number of students has decreased from 1,042 in November 17 to 514 in November this year, so only half of young people have continued. An estimated 264 primary and 53 secondary students have shown an interest in entering the service and we are hoping that up to 49 per cent of them may opt to take up musical tradition. Do you have the statistics because you are having to bill people for the fees that you are charging? Is that where the statistical evidence has come from? The evidence is coming from the returns from parents who have expressed their interest in continuing and obviously from our tutors on the ground who are able to tell us accurately how many young people are continuing in each of their schools. My final point to both Councillor Dodges and Councillor Wilson, if I may, we are obviously very concerned about the drop-off in youngsters as a result of the fee charges. I am particularly interested in what councils are doing to provide a sort of cost-benefit analysis of exactly where you stand because obviously there are a large number of youngsters who are not able to uptake the offer, as might have been previously the case. What analysis are you doing of this in terms of getting provision to those who are most in need and addressing the concerns for those youngsters who have had to drop out? What are you doing to make an assessment of this situation? I think that in our case the statistics are only becoming available, so I think that we will have to look at that going forward. What I can say is that the drop-off follows very closely the SMMD profile of the schools and that the drop-off is much more pronounced in schools in more deprived areas. We will certainly have to look at how we respond to that. We introduced what I think is a very common range of discounts that nobody who is doing SQA pays for tuition. We have a sibling discount of 50 per cent and families who have received free school meals do not pay at all. Interestingly enough, there has been a drop-off even there from 10 per cent of the total to around 6 per cent of the total. Are you looking at why? We will look at why. I think that at the moment you could speculate, but I think that we will look at why. The problem remains that although we have introduced a standard charge, it may be an equal charge, but it is not an equitable charge. In some cases, that charge will be met by families who have a reasonable amount of disposable income and who are able to meet that charge and sibling charge. In other cases, the families who are facing that charge are looking at trying to find money after they have paid for the basics such as heating, food and clothing. Everything else that they have left is that every penny is accounted for. For us to bring in a charge, any charge, is going to be a great challenge to that. We will have to look at how we respond to that. Obviously, those figures are not complete, but on the basis of what we have already, we are going to have to look at a response across the board. Why are the figures not complete as yet? The main reason is that when we introduced charging, we had to move from just asking young people if they wanted to take it up. We were one of the authorities who did an assessment, and if the children were suitable, they just continued. In fairness now that we have introduced charging, we have introduced a four-week period when children can have an option to try out the musical tuition and decide if it is for them before they charge. I think that that period is just about to come out close. The figures that I have given you will be fairly robust. There may be some changes in the new optium. Can we just clarify that those are the figures that have come back or are coming back to the full analysis of all 32 local authorities that are currently being done? Those are our figures. Those are West Lothian figures for the charges that we have introduced. Which are being sent back to the general survey that is being done, is that correct? They will be. Just to follow on from that. First of all, as I said earlier, we have seen no drop-off in the applications this year. Because the musical tuition year doesn't coincide with the financial year, there's a lag time in getting the statistics, and we're only gathering them in finally now. But as of this week, we saw no major drop-off. I think that to answer the second part of your question about, if there were, what were you going to do about it? The bursary scheme is one where it's open-ended to begin with. Obviously, we're looking at qualifications, but we're fairly flexible about these as things stand at the moment. The second thing is that we want to work even harder with our parent groups to see how we can help. Examples that I gave about car sharing and transport are there, and there are other initiatives. We're looking at the purchase of additional instruments as one option if there were any gaps in that process. We'll get advice from our professionals on that. One of the concerns that we have is that people who are at the margins, there are folk who will qualify for discounts for a variety of reasons, but somebody who's just over that may be disadvantaged. We want to work harder with our parental groups to look at those people who might be disadvantaged or disincentivised to participate in, because that's sometimes the folk that are hit the hardest. If you add on the question of rural transport costs, that can be a big issue. Those are some of the things that we're working at at the moment to try and minimise the effect. None of this is done with any pleasure, convener. I can assure you. It was done to protect the service and make sure that the service was available in the future, because if we'd taken chunks out of the service, that would have been seriously bad for everybody. Thank you. Mr Greene, what do you want? I think that the committee are probably sensitive to the really difficult decisions that councils have had to take in this, so person can rose have had to raise their charges by 20 per cent. That's pretty swinging. Increase West Lothian, going from not charging to charging, that was difficult. I know in East Lothian where I am, they introduced charging for the first time and suffered quite a lot of grief publicly, because even Glasgow, maybe more historically, has tried to introduce charges and then had to pull back from them. The committee have looked at other models elsewhere, and in Wales there is a recommendation that music services be delivered nationally through an arms length body. Would that not be a simpler solution here, which would prevent your authorities having to take these very difficult decisions? Can I just make the point that, yes, it would relieve the local authority of having to make that decision, but it would simply place that decision difficult or otherwise in somebody else's hands, and it would then create a situation in which, whatever that decision was, there would be some that were happy with it and some that were unhappy with it. I don't think it resolves the issue of whether or not music situations should be free or can be free in its delivery. I think it just shifts the decision making. Local authorities might at that point go, well, that's absolutely fine. You make the decision, whoever you are, on the national body, but it doesn't alter the nature and character of that decision. Well, I would... Sorry. I think it would be worse, and I think it would be a one-size-fits-all. Scotland is a diverse country, as we all know, and the answers for Shetland, Berthing and Ross, Glasgow, wherever are different. It would remove any local control or influence. It would certainly diminish substantially parental involvement, and that's absolutely crucial, as far as our IMS is concerned in Berthing and Ross, and I think that it would be a major disadvantage. It would shift the problem, but I think it would increase the problem, and I think that you would then have the likelihood of some of the signing up to IMS falling off a cliff to be quite blunt. I tend to agree, I think, that I don't think there's an issue with the decision making regarding music tuition at local level. I think that it is a question of competition for funding. If you move it to a national level, it will compete with other funds possibly. I think that at local level as well, the instrumental music tuition reflects the musical heritage of a local area, where we have a strong mining tradition and a strong bass band tradition, and that's reflected in the fact that brass is our biggest discipline, and I think that there are other areas where that might be piping or strings or it might be Scottish traditional music, and I think that local authorities are perfectly placed to reflect that and to provide a service that responds to that, and I think that that would be lost if it was to be moved to a national service. I don't think that there's an issue with the local decision making around local services, but the fact of the matter is that the result of that that we see is that in Glasgow instrumental tuition is provided free, whereas I haven't got the figure in front of me, but I think that in one local authority, the cost of parent and family is over £500 a year. I mean, I don't know Councillor Wilson and Clackmannanshire want to pay £500 a year, but parents in Glasgow don't want to. Can we really sustain such a wide, huge disparity in the provision? I'm not sure if I can answer for Clackmannanshire or Glasgow, to be honest. Well, your own is. I understand the point fully. I think the problem, for us it isn't such a big problem that there have always been charges and folk have got used to that and if you've got used to it over a period of time then there's ways you can budget for things. My point is how you saying your parents have always wanted to pay for instrumental tuition and you are responding to their local desire then. I don't know if I would accuse them of always wanting to pay, but I think what we have developed is a partnership arrangement where it's become the norm. As I said earlier, the 20 per cent increase in use of our swinging was substantial. It was not popular and it's something that we're working on at the moment. Obviously we're looking very closely at the detailed effects of it, but if we hadn't done that, if we'd cut the service I think that would have been even worse. I think there's a disparity because there always will be. Why would we worry about a variety of solutions? That's what democracy is about. That's what local governments are about. That's what the variety of Scotland is about. I agree with you that it seems strange that some places councils make decisions. They make choices. Glasgow's made a choice which I don't criticise. I think that's fine. It's important that councils work with communities to try and sustain and maintain what we've got. I think that the point is fair but the disparity is very wide and Councillor Dodg's in your presentation, you made it fairly clear that you introduced charging not because you felt that was the right thing for your local area or because parents wanted to make that contribution. You did it because you absolutely had to. I think that's a fair reflection. It's not really responding to local needs and desires. Is budget driven? You could argue in our case that it was responding to local desire because there was a very active campaign for us to introduce charging. At the end of the day I think that for reasons already discussed there will always be disparities because councils have to make decisions based on different factors. The only equitable solution that we could achieve is that if a child has the desire and the aptitude and provision is available free of charge unless that's the situation it will never be equitable. There will always be differences and as I think I've suggested earlier even if you introduced a standard national charge that would mean very different things for different families and make it very difficult for families to be able to take up allow their children to take up music if that's what they want to do. I could possibly just add another thing and that is that there is an issue whether or not there is an entitlement in law and whether or not there is charging. If you somehow rather say that there is an entitlement in law that that is a road that has got some significant issues in it but if you do that then you've got the question of how it's funded. If you say that it's going to be funded and it's going to be free but there isn't an entitlement then what happens presumably is that budgets get squeezed around the extent of the provision albeit it's free and so the extent of the provision gets squeezed rather than the pricing gets increased to some extent I don't have a simple answer to those things but it just strikes me that it's one or the other. On that we had a debate recently about national testing and in the course of that the Cabinet Secretary for Education made the point that there is no statutory requirement for you as local authorities to teach literacy and numeracy in schools and yet those subjects are taught in every school and the idea that a local authority would decide they weren't going to teach it or indeed they were going to charge for that is quite ludicrous. Why is music different? I don't have an answer to why music is necessarily different because we don't treat it as being different but you're absolutely right that there is very little enshrined in law as to what must be taught in our schools I think it's religious education from the 1980 act that is the only subject that's prescribed and I think the difficulty is if you put music on that standing you do create a difficulty with all of the other subjects that are there in our curriculum through guidance but not through statute and I think to some extent I'd probably say there be demons and going down the road of do you put one subject in law and others not that's your decision I think the place of music in the school curriculum is secure and I know in West Lothian and I'm sure in the other authorities it is a core part of the curriculum for excellence and it's delivered in school by music staff and young the children in the schools have the opportunity to learn music and access to musical instruments both in the classroom and through the youth music initiative in primary school but that's through the instrumental music provision which is discretionary and something that councils look to provide in the best way that they possibly can so there is a slight difference but music is still very much part of the curriculum access to musical instruments is part of what we do in our schools and would continue to so I don't think there's any threat to the place of music in education I have a number of members have indicated they want a supplementary so if there is a supplementary, what's been heard Mr Scott, do you want to go just now? Thank you so it's not the Wales model that Ian Gray has just asked you about is your argument and Councillor Dawkins is quite notable in his introductory remarks is your argument therefore that central government and Scottish Government should ring fence money for music it's not to be a central service one of the alternatives that could be considered would be a central fund which I guess either on a formula-based system or on a bid system local government would seek to access is that any better? No I think the general funding level of local authorities needs to be increased because that's where the problem comes from if you ring fence music tuition and say there's a sum of money set aside for instrumental tuition without a general increase in funding what you're actually doing is taking money away from another area and diverting it to instrumental music tuition so you may solve that problem but it's going to be at the expense of the finance available in either other areas of education or other areas of local authority function which I don't think does solve the problem Ferris Hughes, music is part of what you deliver in schools and why should it be separate in financial terms that would be my argument what we need is adequate funding to provide the services that we would like to fund for a local community I think that it might be a worse solution got to the moment again the centralisation versus delegation devolution argument applies but repeat again convener the point about parental involvement in this whole process centralised funding or control over it that could vanish overnight and that's something that there's a great value it's difficult to put a money tag on that and I also think that it would mean some other part of the national budget would need to be there and it would remove local democratic control because if you had to apply and you got X there wouldn't be any flexibility in that X amount according to a formula and I think that sometimes local authorities have enough problems with the formulas that we have already we need adequate funding for our core services and we look upon music as a core service okay that's entirely fair and straightforward and therefore as a consequence of that do you think that there's a greater owners on local government, local authorities as you represent here today to take into account the questions that Johann Lamont was asking about children who come from families where there is no money or just cannot access any no matter what you do we'll just find it much more difficult to do do you think your analysis of those families because I always worry about SIMD to be honest because it's very broad and you need to get down to an individual family level to understand that do you think you need to do more on your analysis that you very helpfully illustrated earlier on about how to identify children who could and should have an opportunity to take up music but just there's no money at home and mum and dad can't afford to put them anywhere near it poverty is interesting because it's sometimes not money it's sometimes about time it's sometimes about access it's sometimes about transport I've made that point before but I think it's really important that we help families and it's part if you look at the whole aspect of education and what we're trying to do with young children, young persons families and school pupils it's part of that whole process of how we support the family and if we don't do it holistically then I think there's a danger in siloesation if I can use that dreadful phrase that we pick something differently so Joanne Lamont was absolutely sport on with her question about how can we include people I mentioned the people who are at the margins who are worried about more in some ways than others because they fall out with the support mechanism and what we're trying to do through our bursary scheme and working with parents as I mentioned earlier is to start to dig a bit deeper into that problem at least as far as Perth and Ross is concerned and see how we can help I don't want to introduce a discordant note here but the reality is that poverty is always about money the rest are consequences whether it be distance, travel or whatever all of those become barriers where there is a lack of resources poverty is always about money I would just endorse that I think that's exactly right poverty is always about money and everything else is a consequence of money the other thing is that we have different demographics but in West London we're not talking about the margins and I think there's a danger here in conceptualising that people who are in the high SIMD areas or on the quintile one are the only ones who are struggling I think that the ability to find additional money for anything including instrumental music tuition is something that affects families well up the income scale and it becomes very difficult as I say in families where one parent is in employment and low pay every penny suppressant is saying that everything is accounted for and we can only help if we look at it from that point of view bursaries can only help as has been suggested at the margins they're not a solution for the problem that's facing us in West London Dr Allan just picking up on one of the points that councillor Dodds was making about SQA exams I think that most authorities have to try to ensure that fees don't prevent people from accessing SQA exams we met with Royal Conservatives our students in music last week and they were raising a question about that issue which is if the assumption is that we don't charge for tuition leading up to SQA exams how is leading up to defined advantages to people have or disadvantages to people have if they've not had access to music tuition when it comes to doing SQA exams in music I think it's inevitable that if you've not got some background before you reach the formal music subject you're going to be struggling I realise that its presentation at SQA level requires the competence in instruments but you're not going to choose the subject unless you've already got an interest and it's the responsibility to some extent further down the school ladder to foster that interest so it's inevitable that if that's not already developed then it's going to impact on the number of pupils choosing music as an SQA subject I think that's a perfectly fair point and it's a difficult one to be quite honest obviously the pupils studying for full SQA courses in S4 to S6 are anywhere offered free tuition but what you're making is what about the lead up how do you get to S4 and that is really difficult I think just generally budgets have been squeezed so tight in the last few years have made some local authorities including their own drawback from it and I would like personally to reverse that but I don't have a pot of gold to pay for it and we get into the very difficult situation of what else in the education budget can you start to find savings and because approximately two thirds of the budget is ring fence and that leaves you with savings in the one third package which makes it even harder so what we would like to do and what we can do are two different things I'm afraid and we have to live in the real world and try and do our best but I think through a variety of means we try to support as many people as possible but we can only do what we can do I think we have the same concession we begin the concession at the beginning of S4 and it would continue until S6 and my colleagues here have outlined the issues there quite clearly I think what we before we introduced charging the correlation between pupils doing SQA and doing musical tuition wasn't that high there were some pupils who were using their instrument in curricular music but not a huge amount of them having gone forward 19 per cent of our secondary pupils are now qualifying from the discount and it wouldn't surprise me at all if there are now this year certainly pupils in our schools who are choosing to do music curricular as a way of preserving the instrumental music because there is only a way to afford it a couple supplementary still Mr MacDonald it was a point you raised Councillor Dodd's earlier on about charging I think it was in response to Ian Gray's questions my understanding is that West Lothian Council carried out a survey of the 1800 parents who had children that were undertaking music tuition and you gave them four options can you tell us what the outcome of that survey was yes it can if you can find the figures in front of me we offered four options which included options where tuition would remain free but in different models removing strings or reducing and one of charging of the surveys that we sent out the response was less than 50 per cent although there was a small majority of 50 per cent of those responding who were in favour of introducing charging in terms of the families who were in receipt of instrumental music tuition at that time it was just slightly over 19 per cent of the total but it was every single catchment area of the 11 secondary school catchment areas of those who returned voted in favour of introducing some form of charging I would need to come back to you on that I think there was a clear preference from charging in one particular school area the numbers I've got in front of me is quite substantially every single school has a majority in favour of charging then if you have that in front of you I can't find the figures to hand yet at the moment thanks very much on the budgets councillor Dodd you started charging this year for the first time do you see that now as the trajectory and will charging be part of your budget discussions and not in on-going years in your opinion I think that given the levels of drop-off we will have to address that we are now at the margins of being able to continue to provide a viable instrumental music tuition service so we've for example gone down from 13 bands and ensembles to a total at the moment of five and we're looking at ways of delivering ensemble provision in other forms for other disciplines so I think it is something that as a councillor we will have to address again perhaps our experience will have to be a reflection of the Glasgow experience what I'm really getting at it's not set in stone what I'm saying is you will consider whether you can return to free tuition in future budget discussions I think inevitably I think when we set a level of charging we had assumed a maximum level of dropping off of 30% but in fact the retention level is closer to 30% so based on that what we're now offering doesn't achieve what we set out to achieve so we would need to look at that and that would need to include looking at returning to some form of free provision okay thank you councillor Wills can I just ask you if you can maybe clarify a wee bit how your bursary scheme works well this is year one so we're in a learning phase with it we've asked for applications from anyone parents and we've had a not a huge flood of applications so far but it was only launched early in October so we're fairly early doors yet with it but once we are able to look at the applications we'll find out who would qualify for instance under any of the normal headings of free tuition and these are some of the benchmarks for it but there may well be other people who we would want to try and help and that's where we're going to have a look at when we see the analysis and I'm hoping to get this by the end of this month of the applications how we might go on to help people in other ways that's subject to some fairly delicate discussions with a variety of players at the moment and I mean to be secretive about it but we will be are you setting the parameters for that in terms of income threshold that kind of thing we will set certain basic parameters yes but it may be that we'll look at some of the parental support groups to see how that might be enhanced okay thank you thank you it leads on to a supplementary that I wanted to ask myself I mentioned that we had the graduate year of the Conservatoire of Scotland who are studying to be music teachers and two of the members in the group that I was dealing with had come through the Glasgow system and both of which it's really a question of the sustainability of the service going forward and that all of them said that they'd had to seek outside support to achieve the grades to get into the Conservatoire but two of the young people who were there had said they had not only received support from Glasgow City Council but they'd been given grants to attend the conservatoire juniors and they'd been given additional support and I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper on Ms Mackay's questions about the purpose of the grants is it to help people financially or is it to support potential and the talent of the young people so that they can achieve their full potential in this area I say to you that that's an area that I'm not on firm ground and I'm not going to go there and make a mistake on it is it about the financial circumstances on the individuals or is it about their aptitude and their talent I can't answer that I can find out but I can't answer that If you could provide us with that information afterwards that would be very helpful councillor I'm happy to provide a more detailed answer but we have a variety of opportunities for young people who are in a similar situation whether it be the conservatoire or Glasgow or elsewhere to apply to the council for assistance that can be done through a number of ways there's straightforward financial assistance programmes we have common good funds that can sometimes help people and we also have a variety of other local funding arrangements that might apply we also have an educational trust it's one of these very old fashioned things that somebody left money x years ago and we're trying to modernise that process so we can make it worthwhile and help people so there are a variety of different methods these are three examples I need to give you a bit more detail in the post I've got a couple of other supplementaries if you wanted to comment on that It's just a brief supplementary with regard to fee exemptions because I know that PKK offer fee exemptions in terms of income-based concessions and a sibling discount and West Lothian offer it for pupils in receipt of free school meals looked after children and those studying towards an SQA qualification How do you communicate that fee exemption opportunity to parents and carers and pupils throughout their educational journey are they told at a certain point why does that happen? Yes, we regularly publicise it first of all on the council website etc but we're also right proactively to parents outlining the opportunities there are and again working through school parent councils through head teachers and through other methods of communication by parents then that information is widely available We have only got experience from one year and what we did was write to every family in receipt of instrument and music tuition outlining all of the options available We also offer a sibling discount And what about the families who were not in receipt of music tuition to children as well? The situation would be that when the offer was made to young people if they wanted to take the instruments up then that information would be communicated at that stage Okay, thank you Okay, Mr Mandel Question, convener, so if other people have any main questions I'm happy to We're about to move on Okay It was a slightly different topic Last week we heard from a couple of panellists that they felt that instrumental music teachers were treated differently from other teaching staff and that limited how effective a role they could play and also some issues around retaining their skills and talents in our schools Is that something that you've come across as local authorities in difficulty in finding the right people and keeping them? Thank you for the question I'm not sure what's different We treat our instrumental music staff according to the conditions of service that will apply to all members of staff within the council Different other teaching staff so where people who are routinely taking part in classroom and curriculum teaching are at the value differently they have different roles within their schools whereas instrumental teachers are seen as being a sort of add-on or not given the same status or importance I certainly think they're not an add-on we don't treat our instrumental music staff in that way at all we value their contribution very much and recognize that and I would be astonished if I discovered that any member of staff had been treated differently they have a different role and many, because again of rural distance they've got a peripatetic role and they may spend more time in a car going from A to B than we would want them to do they might be teaching but that's life if you've got a big rural area they certainly are not in any way as far as I know treated any differently and in fact we do spend a lot of time speaking to our leader in the instrumental music service through the senior officers and we get fairly vigorous feedback from them on a regular basis which is good and I don't know of any reason to treat them any differently they certainly are not as far as Bersangoros is concerned I don't think we treat ours differently in the sense that you're suggesting they are certainly managed obviously because they have a different role and they work in close collaboration with the music departments and the schools in which they work and I think my view is that they are highly valued within those departments and their contribution is seen as very important they do do a different job and for that reason there are differences I'd echo that I think that our music tutors are as valued as any other staff but yes the role and character of what they do is inevitably different but are they less valued to know Are you finding that there is difficulty or are you finding it easy to retain people with the right skills with the right range of instrumental provision or is it getting more difficult to attract people to provide instrumental music tuition I wouldn't say that we have any experience of becoming more difficult Is that the same for the two other authorities? I'm not sure I can answer that with any authority I'm not aware of any difficulty recruiting or retaining music instructors that has certainly hasn't been reported to me We have no major difficulties in that regard I think that part of the number of our teachers and instrumental music specialists have been with us for many years I'm quite interested in your response to that because clearly it may be worth looking at the evidence from last week because I think it was a very strong feeling in the other direction they weren't regarded as core business and therefore perhaps expendable in some ways or they had to be flexible in the way in the other staff I wonder if you think the figures we have the number of music tutors is down by about 50% we have a very significant reduction Does that mean that even where we're not charging the actual number of tutors that are available to local authorities is reducing? Has that an impact? I think that some of the evidence we've got talks about a tipping point in relation to the service I wonder if you think we're anywhere near that but what we provided will indicate that in terms of our youth music initiative there has been a drop in the number of tutors it's not a dramatic drop but there has been a drop and that reflects budgetary pressures local authorities have to make those decisions within their budgetary constraints Can I just ask then your two colleagues in the panel that is an issue about the resourcing of local government and that Glasgow requires a greater budget in order not to have to make these choices? I'm never going to turn money away Would you ask for it though? Is it a separate matter? The answer is yes local government has experienced a greater level of budgetary cut than many other programmes many other areas of budget yes I would be very pleased to see more resources coming to the city that we can spend on the programmes that we think are important Absolutely On the question of the tipping point For us the game changer has been an introduction of charging our intention was to retain the service but with the reductions in numbers we certainly wouldn't be able to retain the full range of instructors that we currently employ so we will obviously have to address that but I think that the whole economic situation and the need to charge is going to have a negative impact on shooters Can I ask, it's really fallen on my colleague Rona Mackay that you would not the logic of the drop is to use the number of tutors Have you given yourself the space to make a different decision so you're not getting rid of tutors until you're absolutely sure that you're going to address the consequences of charging which has been a reduced service Sorry to interrupt but the worry is that a vicious circle starts playing out and it's actually difficult to stop it No, I think that's absolutely right I think that the Glasgow experience as described earlier reflects that having decided to introduce charging and then reverse that it took many years to get it back to its previous level I think that's right We built into our decision in May that our report on the situation would be brought to the education executive at the beginning of next year and I would think that that would be where we would need to look at the consequences of charging as they have actually happened rather than as we anticipated they would and how we would address that issue and that would involve looking at how we deal with our instrumental music charts Yes I don't share the view at all that we certainly prefer to be anywhere near any tipping point One of the main reasons for us increasing the fees is to keep up the quality and the amount of IMS that we provided and delivered and that was quite clear In the previous council term there were savings made in the IMS budget staff efficiency of nearly 20k over that five-year period I lost the vote on that one if I had won the vote it might have been something different however that was a council decision of the time and that was in a different different role so there has been very small efficiency savings that wasn't all staffing I might add it was something to do with travel and other costs that were included in that figure I don't think we're anywhere as far as we're concerned near a tipping point I look upon the future with great hope and great excitement The definitions of quality around the size of the group that's been taught the reduction in one-to-one tuition the reduction in the number of we've had some of this earlier but the access to instruments or the length of time that a lesson might take Is that closely monitored? That's a good point, yes and sometimes there are choices have to be made about how many, it depends how many youngsters are wanting to pursue a particular instrument One-to-one tuition is great but it's not always deliverable in terms of the number of people who want to participate for instance if you've got six youngsters who want to do one instrument then you've got a certain amount of time to do that and I think the small group work actually is good there's a lot of evidence that you've heard about the benefits of working in a team while working in a small team and practising in a small team can have that benefit as well I don't think that there's any major diminution in the quality as a result of small group work and sometimes that's what we need to do to make sure that we we have there's a big demand, there's more demand for instrumental music tuition and surface that we can supply and we'll have a filtering system as you're probably aware of and youngsters to see if they've got the basic abilities first of all but there's more people applying than we could take on so therefore we have to look at a number of different solutions to making sure that we deliver the service and small group work is one of them and you would never be in a situation where a young person would find it cheaper to go to a private tutor where they would get one-to-one rather than be charged for being part of a group I have anecdotal evidence that one or two people have said that they could go to a private tutor but I've no formal evidence to that regard and I think what we charge at the moment is still quite competitive okay, thank you I just want to return points that wasn't a point you made with regard to recruitment and you said there had not been any issues in that field, is that what you said? I am unaware of any difficulty in recruiting staff to the instrumental music service I wonder therefore then why it's the case that Perth and Kinross has less of pupil ratio to music tutor so I think one full-time equivalent music tutor for every 578 students in the country, I mean that's less than half the national average, why is that the case then? Well it is what it is it's a figure that's taken Perth students it doesn't mean that that's the relationship between the number of tutors and the number of people who are doing the instrumental music participating in the instrumental music service I don't have that figure of the top of my head we do provide a quality service and I don't think that that figure is terribly helpful in quoting because I don't think it adds anything to the discussion to be quite honest It's interesting to note obviously because you're employing less staff so therefore you'd think you'd have more money in the budget to spend and perhaps it's the case obviously that Glasgow have double the amount of music tutors per pupils so therefore that they're able to provide the service for free Well again we're back to local decision making and how that pans out and local budgets and there is a mix to conw in this I think we've all made that quite clear but I don't think our instrumental music service is diminished in any way by the number of tutors that we've got we could have more but we work with the budget constraints that we've got and we've tried to make sure that the quality is maintained Thank you Doctor Allan did you still want that an additional question I know we've covered a lot of the areas across the questions Is anyone else got a question that we would like to ask Can I just finish in the course of looking into this councillor Roslyn you said they've always charged in Perth and Coon Ross if we go right back to the creation of the unitary authorities music tuition has always instrumental music tuition has always sat in a way outside the education core curriculum and we've heard that some councils have taken different decisions so we've also talked about mechanisms of protecting the service either through an allio if it became the conclusion and it's not a given yet but if the conclusion was that there had to be a statutory requirement for instrumental music tuition how would that be best achieved it could be done through an expansion of the youth music initiative by guidelines in the curriculum clearer guidelines towards councils in terms of the curriculum and work from education in Scotland how would you say the best mechanism of achieving that I hope we wouldn't get to that as my first comment quite bluntly we have enough central control already in local government and it doesn't help having even more piled up on us to be candid if it came to that we'd need to look at the options some of which you've outlined I think losing local control and local participation would be a major factor I don't want to contemplate that that model but if we did we'd need to look at the options Can I just add here it doesn't seem to me that this is a binary thing that is either a central government or its local government my understanding of the way in which the curriculum works is that the level of devolution is down to the school almost down to the teacher there are variations across Glasgow in the way in which some of our schools deal with the curriculum that variation and that flexibility is regarded as a strength in our system when I say our system I mean across the whole of Scotland so I don't read it as central government versus local government we are either going to have a situation in which we set something down in law where everybody from local authority down to school have to apply it or we're going to have flexibility but that flexibility can be within the local authority as much as it's between local authority and central government I'm not sure that there is a dichotomy between national and local I think you could make it statutory and it would still be administered locally but I think there are real dangers if it's not accompanied by an increase in funding then I think one of the real dangers is that you would create a reduction to the lowest possible level that everybody would consequently have to work to the statutory level because financially there's no option and in many cases that would be a lower level than current provision so there are dangers in going in that direction I think it's best delivered locally Would you agree that initiatives like Youth Music Initiative which we've only heard good things about, I mean the Youth Music Initiative is an example of how an objective can be achieved working in partnership with Government and do you value the Youth Music Initiative in your own councils? I think we very much value the Youth Music Initiative and it's something that we look at how the Youth Music Initiative is delivered across the country it will be very different because of circumstances and simply what's available as well it's a service that we contract out we don't deliver it in-house and I think that's probably the pattern across the country but yeah I think there is a model that has succeeded and does allow an introduction to musical instruments and the ability on an individual basis is much more questionable I think Cyningham, did you want to come in? Yes, of course we value and welcome that initiative but it should be mainstreamed and it should be fully funded Mr Gray, you wanted to come in? Cyningham's point about that this shouldn't be a binary choice I mean some of the drive for consideration of centralising or a national scheme is the breadth of the disparity in provision and charging across local authorities I mean is it beyond the width of local authorities themselves through COSLA or otherwise to collaborate in some way to provide a more consistent provision perhaps not identical but more consistent across the country without national government stepping in I wouldn't disagree with you I think that that's a perfectly fair question it will raise issues about the extent to which you're levelling up or levelling down do we want an equality of misery or do we want an equality of aspiration that is a choice which is going to have to be made I didn't say so much that it shouldn't be a binary choice but that it isn't actually a binary choice between local government and central government that there's as much variation often within local government within local authorities in terms of the flexibility of curriculum provision and I don't see why music necessarily is dramatically different to a lot of the other choices that occur within local government but yes I mean can central government say to local government in general can you please come up with a better model that's a perfectly fair question local government might turn round and say well actually you're the guys that make the law perhaps you should do that but I would be very reluctant to see a situation in which all a subject becomes enshrined in law or statute in a way that no other subject is I just think that that would open the floodgates to every other subject advocate charging through the door just one very brief point and I entirely agree with councillor Cunningham on that point would you countenance any regard for perhaps some international experience where the provision of musical instruments has been undertaken by bodies outwith government altogether to try and help the funding situation by which I mean some private trusts or in some cases in America by the music industry itself would you countenance that as worth looking at at all to get round what's a very difficult problem for local authorities at the moment I don't know the detail in those other places but I would tread very carefully where the example is that of the United States where I suspect that private institutions feel the need to make up the gap in public provision and I wouldn't like to see a situation in which we become beholden to external or private organizations because our system is so impoverished that we need that I would find that very uncomfortable I don't necessarily think that local music groups and bands and so on couldn't have a role to play if there are organizations who are able to offer tuition to young people I think that's all to the good but I don't think it gets at the heart of the problem and I'm not aware of any national institution that that would come fraught with its own difficulties so I don't think that it would resolve the core problems Like the man with the red flag in front of the train I think that it would proceed with great caution on some of these suggestions I think our minds have got to be open to look at models we are discussing this at COSLA I think on Friday morning and we will deliberate on a number of issues there and I'm cautious about the private sector always Members, content No more questions Can I thank Councillor Wilson, Councillor Dodd's Councillor Cunningham, thank you very much for your time it's been very helpful to the committee's work we will be continuing on 5 December when we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary and that will for education and skills and that will conclude the formal inquiry sessions into our work at the moment Just before we move into private section remind everyone that next week we're here to hear evidence from Government statisticians on school, census information and school staff I mean I'll go into private session Thank you very much