 Good morning and welcome to the 27th meeting of the education and schools committee. I can give apologies from Ian Gray, Jenny Goldruth and Tavish Scott. The first item of business is the second evidence session on the committee's inquiry into music tuition in schools. This week the committee will be hearing about the experience and perspectives of practitioners. The committee held an informal session with a number of of teachers this morning to hear their experiences and we would like to start by thanking those who took part in this morning's session. I welcome to committee this morning John Wallace, chair of the Music Education Partnership Group, Professor Jeffrey Sharkey, principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Kenny Christie, chair of Heads of Instrumental Teaching Scotland, Andrew Dickey, committee member of the Scottish Association for Musical Education, and Kirk Richardson, convener of the Instrumental Music Teachers Network from the EIS. On a large panel, there will be a bit of a challenge to get through everything that I'm sure that the committee wants to cover, but whatever possible witnesses should indicate to myself or the clerks if they want to, you don't have to answer every question, but if you do feel you've got something to contribute if you could let us know. I'm going to start a session by giving the panel just a chance to have some opening remarks, so I'll go left to right and start with Mr Dickey. I'm here representing the Scottish Association for Music Education. For some time now there has been a degradation in the provision of music teaching in Scotland in terms of equity of opportunity for children to take part. Pricing has played a massive part in that children across Scotland have had, in some instances, music taken away from them, and in some authorities it's free. The authority that I work in just now is totally free and children can roll up and have their lessons just now and they are happy beings. But to watch the tears of children who have the instruments taken from them and all of the other aspects of that, the social exclusion from the non-taking part and activities that their friends are taking part in is, to be frank, unforgivable. We are here today, and I'm representing a group of over a thousand teachers in Scotland who are here to say that we need to do something about this. The current arrangement is not acceptable. 32 local authorities are taking different stance points. Sadly, we are not represented today by COSLA, who have declined to come to this meeting today, but we need to take a stance on this. We need to make it more equitable and fair for young people to engage in music making across Scotland. We have such a rich cultural heritage in Scotland that we cannot let this go. Thank you. Professor Shackie. Thank you. I'm proud to be a new Scot of four years in length, and this is an amazing creative vibrant nation. We have something that is precious and unique. It has some challenges at the moment, but we can put our heads together and we can solve this. We need to get away from turf and look to creative solutions from all quarters. There are ways that we should be able to provide access and progression. That has often been the missing piece from music. We need to get beyond the urgent concerns that every local authority has to the important concerns that we have in the local area and the national area for the health of our nation. We need to be having young people grow up with empathetic skills, team building skills, creative skills to respond to an uncertain future. I think those things will actually give a return on the investment that will be amazing, and there are other countries that have shown this that we can compare ourselves to such as Finland, which has been investing in the arts, has a partnership between the national level and the local level that feeds into its world-class elite conservatoire, not elite, elite and standard, but with access for everyone. They are an institution that is very keen to partner with us and benchmark with us, and I think we can learn a lot from a nation like that. I think there are new methodologies that we can explore. We want to maintain the standards of our teachers who are working so hard across the sector right now, and we're producing new ones to join, and I want them to have something important to do for this nation. Scotland historically has got a fabulous musical education and educational system. Professor Sharkey's institution was set up in 1845 by Charles Dickens in the thesis that arts and commerce were indivisible in the setting up of a vibrant culture and economy. Let me start with a sort of Dickensian analogy that music tuition in schools in Scotland is a tale of not two but three cities. Edinburgh, UNESCO City of Literature, strives to be a world-class capital city. Glasgow, UNESCO City of Music, strives to be a world-leading city encountering deprivation and social and economic problems in post-industrial society. Dundee, the third city, city of the V&A of biosciences and world-leading in the digital economy. All of these three have got free music tuition, so why when Scotland's, some of Scotland's largest population centres for vastly different reasons have free music tuition as part of a rich educational and cultural offering does not, the rest of the country, it just isn't fair, it's inequitable and it would take £4 million of new money and collegiate working between local authorities and Scottish Governments to sort it. It should be fixed end of story. Mr Cresty. Well good morning, I'd like to thank the committee first of all for their inquiry and for the opportunity for myself and my colleagues to be here this morning and also to associate myself with Andrew and Geoff and John's comments so far. In this country we have a wonderful system, we have a system where all 32 local authorities have an instrumental music service in Scotland at the moment and I'm representing the heads of those services today. However, as we move forward it is becoming a more and more inequitable system. We currently have fee charging policies which range from some areas, as John said, providing free tuition to all, some areas now charging up to £524 pounds and some areas we currently have 16 different concessionary rates in the country depending on where you live in, one being a concessionary rate of £117 pounds. I don't understand why we can provide free tuition in some places and yet a concessionary rate in some places is £117 pounds. It's not all about money, it's about ambition for our country, it's about aspiration for our children and young people and to me it's about excellence and equity which is obviously the driving mantra of the Scottish Government when it comes to education and at the moment we are reaching a tipping point where we are not providing these opportunities for all children and their families in the country at the moment. It's great to be here this morning and I look forward to our discussions. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I represent through the EIS, the Instrumental Music Teachers Network, the workforce that is delivering the product to the young people of Scotland. We are calling on the Scottish Parliament, to us the Scottish Government, to change the law to ensure that musical instrument tuition is available as of right to all children attending state schools in Scotland who wish it free of charge. I also want to ensure that the school curriculum truly reflects the cultural ambition of the nation, the status of instrumental music within the curriculum requires to be elevated and the funding increased and protected to enable wide and equitable access to all children and young people who wish to participate. As a member of the workforce I'm very concerned that annually the instrument and music teacher is separated from instrumental or should I say music education in classrooms. That seems to be an accepted policy for local authorities that you can have one without the other but if we want a proper cultural educational music system in Scotland then you need the instrumental music system and you need the classroom teachers as well but year on year we are cut because we are not in education beside the other teachers in the classroom and we seem to be a low hanging fruit that councils can cut every year and until that's changed this may continue to happen and we'd like to see that changed. We have a fantastic workforce grown over the last 30-40 years all professionally working people yet they seem to be a low lying fruit every year and we seem to be considered along with time buses breakfast clubs I just think we're comparing apples with oranges we should not be in that bracket thank you thank you I'm going to open up to the committee members Dr Allen do you want to take my question? Yeah thank you very much I was interested in what's being said there about the relationship between instrumental music education and music education but in particular one of the things that came out of the the working group in the report that it made some time ago about this subject was the idea or more than the idea the undertaking that there would not be charges made for work leading up to an SQA exam I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's working in the school sector about whether that's being observed or not. I'm the only member of the panel who's actually a school teacher here in teaching in classrooms certainly within you'll have heard already from the rest of the panel here that it's not equitable across Scotland so in one the authority that I work in just now there is no charging at all some authorities are charging for students up into the end of third year now I always find this quite amusing and in that music situation does not automatically start in fourth year for an SQA exam there is a lead up to that so it becomes free at fourth year and many authorities I don't have the figures to hand but I'm sure some of the court will have that but the problem is that they do not have free education up until that point and it's only at fourth year when it kicks in so I have a comment on that I was just speaking to our bied class of fourth years we train classroom music teachers it has to be a partnership I think it's wonderful that students participate in SQA exams up to higher and in some cases advance higher but you're only going to get the progression leading to excellence if that's matched by starting young starting at primary school especially in certain instruments if you don't start strings if you don't start piano when you're in primary school it can be too late so in a censure question we might it may be being statutory honoured but I'm worried about the ability for kids of all backgrounds to have access and progression in all of the instruments so it needs to be a partnership can see John Wallace what's on that instrumental teachers absolutely essential if you want to go on to a career in music now the curriculum for excellence is brilliant in that you know there's many more kids taking music now than they were before but for the SQA qualifications you don't actually have to read music and to act to to make the leap if someone decides well I want to go into the music business and I wrote in my written evidence of how big that is it's something like 4.4 billion in the UK and and it employs about 150,000 people then you have to start sort of specialising quite early and there's this partnership between the instrumental teacher and most of these instrumental teachers they've got degrees they've got teaching qualifications the teachers they're teaching during the school day this is curricular work it's not extracurricular it's not even co-curricular it's curricular I mean why would we spend you know our lifetimes beating our head up against the brick wall doing the jobs that we've we've done to have the credibility of music in schools being a proper subject and instrumental teachers and and getting you know the RSAMD was the first conservatoire in Europe in the world practically to have degree its own degree awarding powers and we went into this having degrees so that a musician or a music educator is a teacher the same as everybody else and so it's this sort of real the instrumental teacher is very very important if the child wants to then take it seriously and go into a career in music but even then if the kid doesn't want to go into a career in music it's a very enriching experience which improves that all of the child's other school work. I just specifically address Dr Allan's point there about the the 17 original recommendations I think that's what you were referring to and when it came to the SQA charges so I agree that it obviously takes a lot longer in terms of preparation to be able to then access your your SQA courses and it may then be freely available come that point but there was a specific recommendation in 2013 that no local authority should be charging when it came to the delivery of music around SQA level and I think that's kind of the number of the issue here these were recommendations that were accepted by parliament and since 2013 some local authorities conceded those charges but some local authorities proposed to reintroduce those charges so I think what we're talking about today is the shifting landscape again and perhaps recommendations aren't strong enough perhaps we're looking towards a set of stronger guidelines in the future if not a commonly understood system or or set of parameters that local authority music services are all operating within. Finally thank you convener finally that I be keen to get your view on how this compares with other subjects now obviously I'm aware that there are some charges associated perhaps with home economics perhaps with PE leading up to or indirectly leading up to the work that needs to be done for exams but can you give an indication of how music you feel is disadvantaged compared to other subjects when it comes to that? Just going to say that sometimes people bring up at this point home economics, physical education etc or indeed with the higher drama on that five drama course as well that you have to see and experience live theatre the difference is you're not paying for the teaching element and you can have consumable resources in home economics that you go home and enjoy the fruits of your labors at the end of a day for example and schools are looking at how they offset some of those costs the differences is you're not paying for the teaching and I think that that's where we are with instrumental tuition at the moment. And to pick up on Kenny's point about consumables other subjects such as higher photography sometimes students have to pay for photography to be published and to be presented which is an essential part and key element of the exam otherwise you cannot present your work as a folio. Art and design some authorities are making students pay up front for materials as well to actually enhance the product at the end and therefore sometimes some would argue we give a better overall project at the end so they are advantaged by the fact that there's money there to help. So there are a number of subjects which are helping with sundry items and these consumables but none are charging for teaching. Thank you. It's worth pointing out that there's consumables involved in music as well if you've got reeds to buy and oils and all these music reeds the whole, absolutely the whole thing, there's the numbers of things that that. I'm going to bring in Ms Lamont. Okay. Thank you very much and someone who's a mother of a child who actually went through the system benefited massively from it because we happened to be living in Glasgow. I recognise the benefits of it and I'm particularly appreciated the skills of instrumental teachers that were involved. I'm interested in whether somebody said there was a tipping point in this and I'm just wondering whether we've created a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we're reducing the number of young people who are going to take up particular instruments. They then are not any tutors necessary and they go and then it's very difficult to sustain it. We got a table which showed that the number of tutors has been reduced by 350 since 2007. I wonder if any of you have any analysis of that. Is it particular instruments in particular areas that are suffering and to the point about the SQA where again you create a situation where because of tuition charging basically young people are directed towards voice and keyboard and these other ones are lost and I wonder whether that issue is significant but also that we're now creating a situation where it's going to be very difficult to sustain it longer term for the range of instruments that you might need. We have reached that tipping point and the improvement service data that was included within the submissions that have shown for the first time in the year past 2017 going into 2018 that we have now lost the number of children participating across the country as well and that's been quite well publicised this week. That actually doesn't include current up-to-date data that even that reports a couple of months out now but what we're hearing anecdotally around the country is the numbers are dropping now so we have reached that tipping point as Ms Lamont points out as well. The workforce has reduced since 2007. We wouldn't say that this is because there are specific instruments that aren't being taken up. This has achieved efficiency savings in some local authorities, some of this has been due to retirals and people not being replaced as well. Sometimes in some situations people are teaching in larger groups now and not requiring those additional staff members. However, the concern that organisations like HITS have is that beyond that tipping point, as you look to the longer term there, we're now getting into a situation that because of a range of various different and ever-changing landscape of fee-charging policies in the country, as we see less children participating in the system, we're reaching now a standstill of staffing, which you could actually say a hamstrung staff with no one to teach in front of them. Does that then lead to less children participating and over the course of time people then saying, now we don't need the staff because we don't have the kids? As you say, over a period of time, is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Our narrative around this at the moment is that we have a wonderful system, we want to develop what we've got, we want to celebrate that, not dismantle it, but at the tipping point that we're at at the moment, we're seeing this gradual erosion from both sides in terms of participation, but also now in terms of workforce due to the decline in participation. I was just thinking that some of the figures are masked, so it may be that somebody is retired, but if there's an incentive for creating an expectation, you can do keyboard, then the more the French horn or whatever which are less likely to be taken up by a large number of kids, we're creating that because we're saying we're going to teach in bigger groups and it's easier if you all do X and Y rather than these more, I suppose, the ones that fewer people would take up. I suppose my sense is to what extent do you believe it's not just happenstances that are actually going to be issues around the range of such instruments that young people might be offered? Can I commend that, Ms Lamont, if you don't mind? What we're seeing just now, as part of these efficiency savings, is—I'll give you, if you forgive me, an anecdote—we're seeing a violin teacher now being trained to teach cello where a whole range of instruments are being expected, but there are real specialisms between both of those instruments. I can't find anyone who can do both equally well. The anecdote that I would give you is that you go to the hospital for your cardiovascular surgery, but it's a neuroscientist who sees you. As much as he is gifted and specialist, she hears she is gifted and specialist in that particular field, it's not what you need. This is what's happening across the people being taught by non-specialists. That might be part of this degradation that I was talking about in terms of quality, as well. That's been lost in those figures, too. Not just the numbers, but specialism. Brian Dugard from Les Lothian many, many years ago, who's no longer with us, he talked about this pyramid of provision. He said that, if Scotland wants to reach for the highest levels, the base of this pyramid has to be wider, and what we've done—we've turned it in from, I don't know, equilateral—whatever it is to high-cellus leaves, whatever it is, but we've made it really much, much, much narrower. Therefore, the provision that we can give is greatly reduced. I can say some challenging stories and some good stories, so we are seeing some local authorities having to make choices. You can study these instruments, but not those. What if the young person really wanted the instrument that wasn't on offer? What if they can't afford it? What if they can't travel to somewhere that offers it? We see it coming through in our Scottish admissions into the Royal Conservatoire. We just had auditions last week. Some instruments have more young people coming through than others, but there are some good stories, some partnerships. We partner with East Ayrshire Schools, where they're teaching group lessons and strings, and we work in a hub in Dumfries House to help supplement that group teaching and then give some individual lessons and then have some of those come into the junior conservatoire. There are examples of partnership and practice that are trying to stem that erosion, and I'd like to see more of those throughout the country. Yes, the learning and teaching of music is very rich and you use different approaches, as in most subjects, Ms Lamont. To answer your question about are the figures masking stuff—yes, they are masking stuff—there's a lot more proportion of group teaching going on in quite large groups. The teachers, their productivity has gone up, I would say, about twofold, because they're still reaching perhaps the same number of students, in fact, more than they were in 2002 when we did the what's going on report, but they're spread much more thinly so that when you want the child who wants to progress into music has got much harder job then of getting the specialised attention that you need to really excel, because grade 8 or ARCM or whatever is no longer high enough to get into a conservatoire, the conservatoire is at a world class level, and it's set at an international level, which is a great bar for Scottish children to aspire to, but now it's a very sad fact that, you know, the national youth orchestra of Scotland, you've got a much better chance of getting into that. Now, if you're attending a fee-paying school in Scotland where you get the rich education that you were used to get in the state system in Scotland in music, so, you know, the figures do mask the greater productivity, there's less critical mass in certain instruments like strings. I always remember another anecdote, you know, where there was one good young corner player, suddenly two, three, four, it's children sort of rise on the tide with everybody else, and we've seen the tide receding in instrumental music in standards in Scotland over the past few years. I was just going to say as well that we were talking about further education, higher education in curriculum today as well, but Ms Lamont's point about the range of instruments also affects that kind of broader music making in the community, and in your lifelong participation as well, it's great if you have to take the decision that everybody will just play the keyboard, because that's all we've got available, but you start to then have a nation of keyboard players, and we don't have that feed into our local orchestras or our community bands and groups as well, so we want to retain that diversity of music making and also opportunities for our young people, that choice that you don't want to just live in an area where you're only provided one instrument and that's what everyone plays. What I would say about the group teaching as well on behalf of my colleagues is we've got some great group teaching in the country as well, when we are looking at quality and pedagogy as well, but in terms of a pyramid, ideally you would like the structure where we do have fantastic opportunities within group teaching as an access, but I think that that's what we're all saying there. Once you're looking at that excellence factor, perhaps in some areas it's reducing the capacity for that one-to-one specialist work. No, no, not at all. There is a lack of equity really to the access given to pupils in charging authorities, where the instrumental teachers' time is under financial constraint. So if I'm looking at pupils who are the, you would say, high flyers who may be going to the further education etc, they do not get in this instance the one-to-one tuition that they often need because they're in a group situation, so that really holds them back because group teaching is the norm and its time is money, and that's against everybody. So if there was our own charging policy there, we would have flexibility in the instrumental teachers' timetable to cater for those pupils' needs, but they're being excluded a little at the moment. On your point about instruments, most charging authorities do not charge year 4, 5 and 6, it's free, but they charge years 1, 2 and 3. If a pupil decides to take music in S3, they are charged for that year, but some pupils do not have the means to do that, so they are then guided towards possibly four classroom instruments. So they are not being offered a wide breadth of choice of instruments, ones that would, you know, woodwind, brass etc, so the choice is restricted there, so there's no equity there either, so that does not help the situation. Yes, yes, I ask you. Good morning, panel. I just want to go back to the general issue of charging, and the effect has an uptake. From the helpful stats that we've received from local authorities across the board, we see that it's very varied and that most authorities are offering concessions for families with low incomes. Can you say how effective you think that has been or is being? I work in a school in the west coast of Scotland, and the cut-off for free school meal entitlement, and that's the trigger point for free music education. I know our colleagues in the other place south of the board are talking about just about managing. It's those people who are the people who are having to say no to their children, we can't afford it, because if they're just over that borderline and it's not a lot of money, they cannot. We've talked about if you're heating or you're eating, clarinet is way, way down that line in many households across Scotland, so yes, there is free education for those on free school meals, but when that entitlement you just go above that, that parapet there. 50 per cent concession you feel is not? If at the end of my working week I've got six pounds left in the kitty, 50 per cent, 80 per cent and 90 per cent, it doesn't really matter. I attended a lecture in my teacher training college and Professor Brian Boyd said that the biggest issue for most of the teachers who go home tonight or the weekend is which bottle of wine would be the most appropriate to take to this party. It's not, it was the 10 pence for the swimming lessons that they couldn't afford, and these are the biggest issues of facing parents across Scotland and with the incomes that come in that they're surviving on and just about managing. This is kicked out completely. Sessions are a bit of a red herring. Well they are because anyone who's, and there's a lot of people just in the cusp, and we talked a little bit about having to justify your poverty a lot of the time, and many people do not want to justify their poverty. It's an embarrassment to have to write to school to say, we just cannot afford this, and of course there are local decisions in terms of families. We would never know about it, and maybe we should know about it, but it's not sustainable here. I suppose many parents wouldn't want their oldest child to have the opportunity of tuition and then deny the rest of their children, so it cancels itself out? Absolutely, and remember, even just, it's not just that you talked about sundries and other items that support things, these are the barriers sometimes to people taking part in that they cannot afford. They know that there's going to be reads and books, and oh by the way there's going to be that excursion, there's going to be that bus fare, there's going to be, they know all of these extra additional things that come across, and they think phew, I'm not getting into this, and that's a real shame. Can I just ask in general, are there any other factors that might affect uptake, other than charging, do you think? Is there anything that would, you know, you could attribute to this at a downward trend? That we don't often recognise from these children. I was recently at the Hits Conference and they had someone come in and speak about poverty and where it lay, and he said that children who are in that bracket become very good at actually, because they're ashamed of their situation, they will lie and deceive friends and peers not to be exposed. I do have evidence of other authorities who have offered some free lessons, they've offered free transport, and they've even offered free accommodation and free trips on residential weekends, but the uptake is not there, they're refusing because of the actual stigma that's been found out. I think that the stigma is a huge thing that we really underestimate in the country. People do not come forward, and I think we just have to be very careful that when on application forms etc for people who want to participate that that information is not seen by staff and pupils, I think it should be really confidential. Just a couple of comments. We run a transitions programme for the conservator based on your ability to pay, and it's oversubscribed, and its ability to continue going is up to the Scottish Funding Council every three years. We lobby to keep it going. There will be inconsistencies in Scotland if we don't solve this. We have a wonderful cultural strategy for the health of the nation, but we want young people growing up to be able to play in those orchestras, to be able to be an audience and appreciate that orchestra. You have to connect the education policy. We have a widening access admirable policy that the world looks to, but where are those students going to come from if they don't have access to these free and affordable lessons in progression? As well in terms of concessionary rates to answer your question there, a lot of authorities operate a policy at the moment whereby, if you live in a household with a combined income of less than £15,800, you are eligible for free instrumental tuition. However, it didn't mean to say that everybody with a family under that was actually accessing instrumental tuition, and it was freely available to everyone. There are hidden barriers to participation as well. Those can include geography, travel, access, siblings, if more than one child in the house is mum what in three trumpets on the go at the same time, or lack of rehearsal space or practice space at home. There are lots of ways to overcome those barriers. I do not think that it is all about cost. I think that it is something that we should promote more about different and more flexible ways to participate, but that takes a lot of local conversations for that to happen. Schools should be doing that. It would incur extra cost. Could they make it easier or more accessible then for children? Again, I do not think that that is all about cost. I think that it is about knowing your local area, your local schools, talking to parents and families, school and family development workers, headteachers, saying that this is something that is available here. How can we make it work here? Is it better to operate in a group teaching context? Is it better to have something after school? Is it better to get the parents more involved in something as an opportunity? I would say that there is an authority with a charging policy that becomes more of a barrier to those flexible approaches, because there becomes more of a client-based service going on where someone is expecting 20 minutes of something for the money that they pay. The opportunity to have more of those creative approaches to make them work for different communities and different school communities has been reduced, because it is then operating to a very business-like income-generating structure. If I can try to answer Ms Mackay's question on the philosophical level, Scotland is a country with many socio-economic problems. It is not only about charging, but if you take a city like Glasgow, it has 47 per cent of its population and the lowest quintile of the Scottish index of multiple deprivation. 47 per cent is like 287,000 people. That is great. It does not have charging, so it does not have the argument there. If you go around—and we have been around other authorities such as West Lothian or Clackmannanshire, which have vast differences in socio-economics, even in those small authorities, you have Leifie, Lynlithgow, the Wild West of West Lothian, Hillfords and Clackmannanshire, Alloa and Alloa Academy. What we have seen on our travels around is that the socio-economic mindset seems to build a poverty of ambition as well. I know myself that music tuition can radically change that mindset, but what the charging seems to have done is that in Clackmannanshire, the Hillfords have got more, so the more people who have got more and in Alloa, the people who have got less. In West Lothian, it seems to be working the same, so of those 60,000 or 1,000 kids in music tuition, the demography has changed. That is what the research that we are doing now, what is going on now, 15 years after the first, is showing. That is depressing me as the figures are coming through, but we are seeing this postcode change in Scotland. Scotland, philosophically, has always been about equality. We are one of the first countries with universally free education and a man's a man for all that. It does not seem to be—we are not heading in that direction with this—and the results of this research will be launched in Parliament in late January, early February of next year. When people see other pupils performing, that is a great catalyst for them. If I, for instance, ask an S2 ensemble to go and play to the S1s who have newly came to the school, they watch that and think, wow, I could do that. Then you say, who would like to come for a trial? Do the teacher may ask the class teacher, who would like to go for a trial and get involved in this? You have a big list of children who all want to come along and they have a trial in the three or four weeks and there is a big uptake and they love it. However, if you go into the classroom and the teacher says to them, who would like to do this? Before you put your hand up, there is a charge for this. The hands just go down. Whether they know that parents can afford it or not, or whether they should go home and ask, you will probably get two or three, not the group that you would have got with it if you do not mention the charging to start with. I read from the connect report submission that you had that even in the concessions, parents who are reading these, it is a minefield because we have 32 variations of concessions, et cetera, and they find that a minefield as well. There are reasons why they are no keen to fill in forms and the whole stigma thing as well. To me, the charging is the biggest barrier that I come across on a daily basis. I have just had a primary project with 15 children, and they have come up to secondary school and they all turned up on the first day, wanting to continue the process. I then said, here, take this home to your parents, and of the 15, I got one return. It is staring me in the face on a daily basis. Thank you, convener. I think that we are all very much persuaded by what I think is compelling evidence about the problem that we face. I do not think that anybody is in any doubt about that evidence. The key question for us is what we do. I am very interested in some of the international evidence, Professor Sharkey, that you mentioned. Just before I come to that, Mr Wallace, could I just confirm something? You mentioned in your opening remarks a figure of £4 million, if I heard you correctly. Could you just explain where that comes from? Well, the local authorities spend about £28 million a year on their instrumental services, and that £4 million is in the fees that they collect from parental contributions to deliver the services. Ergo, if you change the structure slightly and work with the local authorities if you had £4 million, you could take away the fees. Do you believe that that is the total figure that would solve the problem from a financial angle? We have had it put to us rather more than that. I am interested in, from the expert's point of view, whether you think that it is a £4 million. That is realistic. I think that that would maintain and sustain it at the present level, but then you would get much more demand after that, and it would have to then be developed. There would be consequences of doing that. Professor Sharkey, you mentioned in your opening statement about Finland. I have heard you on the record before talking about some states in the United States of America that have looked at different options. Could you just explain what lessons we can learn from international situations that perhaps do this a little bit better than we are just now? I think they have a partnership that works. Their prescription is this. There is money provided centrally, but it has to be used for the art, so there is some statutory element about this. It can't be used for something else. They explore new methodologies such as group teaching, advanced level group teaching. We are going to explore this at our own juniors. I know it is going on in good practice around the country. Maybe we can tighten it up. We can learn from systema's best practice around the world and lead that into individual one-to-one teaching. We need to have one-to-one teaching alongside ensemble work because musicians don't exist in a vacuum. They have to be able to play with one another. We need to be able to celebrate all musics. We have an amazing traditional music culture. We have an amazing classical culture. We have an amazing rock and roll culture. All of this needs to be celebrated and nurtured and an amazing jazz culture. We need to have all access to all of that. We need to recognize that it's not a zero-sum game. When I'm pushing these arguments forward, too many people say, well, what are you going to cut? What would the local authority cut? This is an investment in our future that other countries have shown give more than you put in, gives an amazing return in growing the economy, reducing mental health challenges in young people, growing that empathy. They've seen it work in places like Finland, in areas like Seattle, in the United States. I'm convinced that if we follow this prescription and work together, we can not only, as John said, sustain what we have now but, as John also said, we can go further and make it world-class once again. Do you think that the local authorities who are providing free tuition understand that perspective better than those local authorities that are making charges? Do we have more to do here in ensuring that local authorities understand the full implications of what you are saying? I think that understanding is part of it. I think that the resource challenges will no doubt be different depending on where they are, and that's why I feel that partnership between us as the national conservator and the national government and the local authorities is something that I'd love to see happen. Do you think that that would put very considerable demands on national government spending to have those partnerships? Obviously, it would cost some money. I would define the word considerable. I think that it would be a thoughtful spend that will have, as other countries have shown, an amazing return on that investment. I'm just trying to tease out the reality of the situation, because there are local authorities clearly who have considerable financial pressures that they're facing for understandable reasons, and it's difficult to tell them. In fact, it's not our responsibility to tell them, but it's a difficult thing when we believe that there's local devolution when they are making choices about how they spend their budgets. Therefore, it seems to me, from the evidence from which we have cleaned our own facts, that it needs a national intervention in a partnership deal with the Royal Conservatives. That's what I would agree with that. I believe in devolution, but I also believe that if money is provided in a ring-fence kind of way to keep music flourishing, then that's what it should be used for. My final question, just on that is, is there any sort of gold standard model abroad that you would like to see us spend a little bit more time investigating? I think Finland is a country of similar size, similar cold winters, and a similar love of arts and culture that we could learn, and we'll be partnering with them conservatory to conservatory, so we'll get a lot of information from them. I was just going to say that I think we have a gold standard model here. I genuinely do. We're not talking about building something that doesn't exist. We live in a country where all 32 local authorities have this. We have instrumental music services. We have these professional music educators going back to the figures. 28 million is what local authorities currently spend in employing those people who are already there in the system. The 4 million or 3.9 million that John refers to is what the charging authorities currently bring in terms of fees. Again, that's not even the same figure across the country. That's ranging in what Perth brings in to what Glasgow won't, but in different local authority areas. That 4 million needs quite a bit of detailed looking at as to what that's made up of. No local authority at the moment operates a full cost return in terms of what it's bringing in against its instrumental music service. When you start to explore those figures, the workforce is currently in place. The 4 million is just what the charging authorities are currently bringing in. When we're looking at the decline at the moment in terms of participation, that figure is going to start to reduce it as to what's coming in. The outgoing 20 million will stay though. Your argument is that there's nothing particularly wrong with the system per se, but it's obviously not sufficiently well resourced in finance. I would say that the system is there from a national perspective, though the discrepancies are too great between how the system operates. I think that there should be a degree of local autonomy in terms of how the system is delivered at a local level when we were talking earlier on about knowing your schools, knowing your communities, and making the best, most effective design of a music service to meet all the needs of children and families in that area. I think that the system is there and working. I don't think that the policy aspect or the ever-changing policy aspect of the system is working at the moment against a background of a Government seeking equity for everyone as well in terms of the challenging policies and in terms of the barriers to participation. We can be talking within a two-mile radius in some borders where some people are paying £354, some people don't pay anything. It's not a great system to have. Mr Dickey and Mr Wallace might come back on something that Professor Sharkey touched on in talking about other systems. Systema system, which you'll be familiar with, is happening around Scotland. A study in America was done of that. For every dollar spent on the Systema project, $1.52 was saved in terms of the social, the health, and all of the tangible benefits of a really encompassing and comprehensive music education gave. Remember that system was set up not as a music system, but as a social construct to take guns and ammunition away from their young people and to get them into a really positive destination. I know that the Scottish Government really supports positive destinations, and that's really what we're talking about here as well. The last thing I wanted to say on that was really about this nothing-to-do culture when young people have got nothing to do in the evenings. This is what we're talking about. Kenny talked about our bands and orchestras. This is life-long learning, and people are coming together in towns across Scotland this week performing music. However, we're denying that opportunity because, as Kenny said, we haven't seen the first Scottish keyboard ensemble, but we need a range of instruments and opportunities, and that's what we're hoping to achieve today. In our visits to local authorities, we haven't found one yet that doesn't value the richness of the musical groups, the bands and the orchestras, the general buzz, the feel-good factor that it brings to the school's environment in the authority. We've been working closely with COSLA and the Scottish Government, and you may feel that there's sometimes a no-man's land that exists between the two, but we've found a real willingness to work together on the rather precarious business of trying to get agreement between 32, as was got on the last time that the youth music initiative came out of the what's going on report, and 32 local authorities signed up to that, although there was some lost out on it. So we would like COSLA, at the moment, to enable the creation of guidance on instrumental music tuition for local authorities, and we're presently working towards that aim. And what I say is the sort of way that we seem to be working is in a pasicalia, you know, that's a ground base where it's variations on a theme, and the thing inches forward. So we're working with them at the moment, and that's what we would like to see in the first instance. And if we get that, then we can have the sort of consensus that seems to exist in Finland, where in actual fact, you know, not the whole thing is provided by the state. There's parental contraintributions to the thing in an overall way, not to the own kids or so on, but there's a general consensus that it is a good thing, so it's contributed to. Now, they've got a super deluxe system, which we don't have at the moment, but that would be an aim to go for the high ground just as Australia is considering that at the moment. And with the think of the socioeconomic effects of, you know, joining up with the economic and social philosophy of a country that's grown economically for the last 27 years in succession, then that's where we want to be as a nation. Okay, I'm going to bring in Mr Mundell. Thank you, convener. That's kind of preempted my line of questioning, but after the discussion this morning and your comments, now I just wondered what the witnesses felt they would expect to see from a sort of national agreement or national guidance, what are the core things that we should be looking for, and I know that backwards and forwards discussion is on-going with COSLA, but given they're not here, what sort of things would you expect to see as the core of that agreement? Can I come on on this? I would like to see instrumental music aligned along with the Scottish education music in the classroom, but we're imperative to the learning of the children, and I don't see why that we're separated every year. And just as I say, easy to cut away. In the numbers are falling, we've lost 51 per cent in 11 years, and it's a fast road, and it's declining all the time. And I just think that we should be re-aligned. As I say, the service has grown, and I agree with Kenny here, it's a fantastic service. We have got a great product, it does need tweaked, it does need looked at, but I do think we have a great product. But for some reason local authorities, because they can and because they need to, they have a budget and we're in that element of budgets that can be cut every year for the instrumental teacher, and once we go there'll be no coming back. So I think that's one thing I would like to see cemented as our actual positioning and elevation within the curriculum. Further down into that, are detrimental teachers, I have different contracts from other teachers, and are they part of the collective bargaining and things like that that goes on? We have a different contract from a classroom teacher. At the moment we are affiliated to the GTCS, which has happened recently, and we are on the same terms and conditions as teachers, and maybe in the fabric of a school, I still have to report to parents, I'm still under the head teacher's jurisdiction and my behaviour even though I do all that type of thing. So I do film reports etc, and I do work with my line manager. So I'm embedded in the fabric of the school, but it just seems that success of governance over the last 30 years, I've never actually thought, wait a minute, look at the fantastic job this service offers, why is it out on a limb? Everybody seems to have celebrated the fact of what it produces, going to concerts and all the shows, they say, oh, this isn't this fantastic, you know, but never actually nobody stopped along the road and thought, maybe we should actually realign where these people sit, so they're not considered against other factors out with education when it comes to budgetary cuts. Thanks. Professor Sharkey, first. I came across an acronym in Scotland, GERFEC, getting it right for every child. And I think that's an amazing and noble goal. And so what I would like to see is that we do come together and answer to your question, Mr Mundell, that we do come together, that there's guidance that local authorities would want to partake of, that there are resources, perhaps ring-fenced around this to nurture and protect this amazing service we have, but to grow it as well. I've got a potential army of young people graduating from the Conservatoire and we are committed to performing excellence and teaching excellence as being part of a circle. It's not teachers over here, performers over there. All of the folks who teach for us at the Conservatoire are in the main performers and teachers at the same time. They are ready to help go into this amazing system that we have, but we want to make sure it's nurtured, protected and growing. So what we want to see really is that firstly we must sort of maintain and sustain and develop what we've got left of our formerly world class system. Then secondly, for beneficial sustainable change there's got to be first a change in policy towards music it has to be perceived as curricular and then there has to be structural change in the way that's financed and delivered to make it sustainable in the longer term interests of Scottish children and in the Scottish economy and culture. Thirdly, we've just got to get on and do it. I think we need possibly a review of how this has been provided across Scotland in terms of each authority. There are really good things happening across all authorities. I've worked on another role before which is an overarching role across Scotland in terms of music. The provision is patchy in some places and Kenny's talked about that in terms of geography and access to teachers and whatever. We need a bigger discussion about how we go forward from this point that we talked in this pre-meeting about a new narrative. I think that Professor Sharkey has talked about that in terms of there's a willingness there, there's people out there who want to do this, they want to engage, they want to bring forward the cultural heritage of Scotland which is not to be historic again, it's actually been undermined by the very fact of charging that exists for young people. I think that we need to have a really serious discussion. It may be at another time, it may be at another place, but to follow what John has said, it needs to happen now. We are really a precipice now in terms of funding because once it goes, it is impossible to come back. I talked in the meeting before just about the English system which I worked in for seven years and it disappeared overnight. It was appalling and basically the musical culture in England was destroyed. We've talked about the national youth orchestra being one of the pinnacles of classical music as such, but there are numbers of different organisations. If you look at the numbers of people who come from fee-paying schools, then it is almost exclusive. That is exactly the same for the national youth orchestra, Great Britain. I worked with the National Children's Orchestra in London for a number of years and it is exactly the same. It all came from the same stable of independent private schools. Where is this fair? Where in our statute do we say that this is acceptable? I think that we need a really serious conversation, but I think that we really need to have it yesterday because it really is at that stage. The cultural loss to Scotland. Scotland accounts for 11 per cent of the UK's live music revenue and music tourism brings in around £280 million a year to Scotland and secures more than 2,000 full-time jobs. I just want to note that in 2015 alone, 720,000 foreign and domestic visitors came to the country for festivals and major music concerts. If that is allowed to die, there is a huge loss to this country commercially as well. We need to wake up to that. I am grateful for all that information, but just to push you a little bit further, would you expect any guidance to come out of COSLA to focus on developing standardised practices across all the local authorities? Do you think that it should be setting out minimum expectations of what is expected from instrumental music services, or do you think that that is a step too far? I think that it will do that in giving case studies of best practice and perhaps a practice where it has had deleterious effects and has not worked. Guidance is a great thing to have, but if we think back to where Mr Allen worked on 17 recommendations in 2013, they have velocity and work for so long, but then they need reinforcing. That is why I think that we need words written in some sort of difficult education bills to get through, but I just think that we need it reinforced in statute somewhere of these minimum standards. I do not think that local authorities on their own should be expected to come up with those. I think that it is central government, and then there has to be a willingness to really work together on that. I think that you will get more willingness at the beginning of our Parliament than you will towards its end. That is why I am Festina Lente on this. It has taken a long time to get where we are, and it is going to take a long time to get out of it. There are no quick fixes, but we can do very positive things just now. Guidance will be so much better, and it will last us for two or three years, just like the previous guidance. We thought that it had its job done, but it unravels, especially in times of austerity, and a lot of this is due to austerity. In terms of guidance for national policy, it could be one way forward. Another way of looking at that and reframing that could be the challenge to instrumental music services in the country in order to perhaps achieve GERFEC, as Geoff was talking about earlier on as well. If you look at different programmes that receive funding contributions centrally, things like the Youth Music Initiative, things even like Active Schools through Sport Scotland, they have to abide by an agreement or a local five-year plan or, in the YMI's case, a one-year plan to an agreed series of outcomes over a period of time as well. I think that that would be something that we could look at in the future as well, although there may still be 32 instrumental music services operating at a local level. In terms of those agreed outcomes, whether there are any additional funding contribution, the challenge to music services could be so what are we doing in terms of local delivery around looked after children? What are we doing in terms of meeting the needs of additional support needs through your instrumental music services? How are you ensuring that children within SIMD 1 and 2 can access those opportunities that you are making freely available? What are you doing as an instrumental music service to share practice across the country and also to champion excellence? What are you doing for your high flyers in terms of developing the young workforce in the future as well in the next steps? I would like to see something like that, perhaps considered in the future, an agreement towards a series of ambitious goals. Dr Alam, is this on a supplementary or is it in a new area? Well, it was a supplementary and something that Professor Shaggy said a wee while back if I am still alive. I was interested in what you had to say about traditional music and the wealth of that that exists in schools, but I am also conscious of the fact that much of that happens in schools and in communities because of the dedication of a small number of people, certainly my own local authority area, many of whom will of course be an instrumental music tutor. I was interested really just to hear what you felt, the pressures that you have been describing today, what effect they had on the availability of people to learn about traditional music, and particularly either on the choice of musical instruments that are available or indeed on the ability to introduce people to the corpus of Scotland's traditional music? I think it would probably face the same dangers as classical music. It depends if it is too far to go, if you have the range of instruments on offer, maybe it is only bagpipe and not clarsac or not fiddling. We want to make sure that all of our authorities have access to both teach, celebrate and nurture the amazing traditions of music that exist in Scotland. I do not have specific areas where I know that there is less provision, but I would worry about it if we are not sustaining our local authority music education. Music education partnership group covers the whole non-formal, if you like, the face and angel as well, and there is a tremendous richness in Scotland outside the schools as well, and it is all of those dedicated people who contribute to it. However, if you diminish the core of what is going on in school, you then diminish the amount of aptitude that there is to go out and teach, and you will find the individuals in school, inspired individuals who are doing all sorts of stuff in any community. I am driving 300 miles a week at the moment to do a brass band on the other side of the country. If you diminish the core, you diminish that. Traditional music is not just something that you do for fun anymore. It is part of a rich heritage. It attracts so many people to this country, and it is also a route into employment now. When we started up the traditional music course in 1995, the degree programme, that was a choice that we had to make between rock and pop and jazz. When we started, we did traditional music, and that has provided our professional pathway. Now, Scottish traditional music is up there. With the Irish, they go all over the 38 Highland games, or whatever, that they are, that they are throughout the world. I have gone and played in Moscow, in Bonn and all the rest of it, doing this Maxwell Davies works. Lo and behold, they get a local piper from a local pipe band in Russia or in Bonn in Germany to come and play the Orkney wedding. Recently, I went to Malta. They have 26 pipe bands in Malta. As part of our identity on the world stage, traditional music is enormous. It is a degree subject. We have lots and lots of people treading the international boards. We have degrees in Scottish traditional music, and it is a credible, modern subject. Increasingly, we have people who are studying classical and trad, not only from Scotland but from around the world. We need both those traditions to be strong. Thank you very much for that. If you want to cash yourself back to it, I think that we could possibly say that Martin Bennett, the late Martin Bennett, was really the founder of all of this, who was a graduate from the RSAMD on classical violin, but also then bridged across the traditional, and he shaped what we have today, which is the most vibrant traditional music scene that I have ever seen or have experienced. The very kernel of this, the very beginning of this, was that the RSAMD or the RCS at the time, and Martin, who sadly was taken from us at a very young age, started something that I could only imagine he would be horrified to find out that tuition today has been denied from these young people. A couple of times this morning, the word ring ffernson has been used. Of course, ring ffernson does not exist in local authorities, so if there were additional funds made available, whether it is £4 million to offset the fees that are collected, or whether it is £32 million for the cost of the service, how could you ensure that the money that is given to local authorities actually went into music tuition? I have purposely never used the words ring ffernson or statutory because I know that. Behind the scenes, we have been working on other delivery methods for this. There are delivery methods in music, such as the YMI, Youth Music Initiative, which is delivered on a formula basis to music services. That has worked so superbly since its introduction in 2003, when one of the findings of that research was that 50,000 kids were having weekly instrumental tuition, but 150,000 wanted to do that. Last year, 240,000 kids had YMI, so that has been a great success. There is something in there that is already existing that we do not want any more new initiatives because the education constituency is just an initiative doubt. It has to be subtle in Scotland because we are a developed nation with a very sophisticated model of government. Again, this model of government is envied throughout the world, and we have a sophisticated model of local government, but there are ways and means of working together with that ring ffernson or statutory and so on. They are already existing and we should be developing those. I am perhaps too new to the system to know whether the words ring ffernson or statutory can work, but I echo Mr Richardson's comment that, on the one hand, if you are strongly supporting classroom teaching in SQA and highers but you do not have an equivalent support for the instrumental teaching, there is a disconnect. There will eventually be, I fear, less people wanting to take hires if they have not been exposed to an instrument from a young age. I do not know what the right words are, and maybe, as Mr Wallace said, it is about negotiation and a sophisticated sense of agreement, but we must do it. You mentioned about YMI being very successful and over 240,000 kids carrying out some activity on their YMI programme in 2016-17. 23 of the 32 local authorities currently charge. If that charge was completely removed, what impact would that have on demand? How would they cope with that demand, and would there be a requirement for a selection process or an aptitude test in order to manage that demand? Great question. First of all, I totally disagree with the premise of testing. I have been in authorities and people will smile up and down the country with the YMI saying this again, but when you went into your English class where you tested to see if you could take English as a subject, absolutely not. Why do we test young people? More importantly, why do we test young people on something that they have never been prepared for? I am sure that you studied for your exams at school. Many authorities, and I disagree with this completely, will actually take kids in and say, sing this tune back, tap this rhythm back, and if you do not do it to the level that we expect, and a lot of people may be sitting around this table just now saying, my God, that was me, denied an opportunity to even participate at the very beginning on a test that they were never prepared for. Testing is not the right way forward. The best test that I always feel for people taking up—there are some exceptions to this in terms of aptitude, on-bissure, physical ability to play, the size of the instrument, of course, but the best aptitude test for a young person is their enthusiasm for the subject. How do we manage that financially? My end goal would be that every single child in Scotland would have the opportunity and would be playing an instrument. We were sitting here with a nation of instrumentalists. There is huge amounts of evidence that it will increase our health and wellbeing. There is huge amounts of evidence that it will improve our attainment academically across the country. You sit here as an education committee wanting to raise the aspirations of young people across Scotland. There is a really easy way to do it. We are sitting here today telling you how to do it is to give access to all the Scottish children to music education. How do you fund that? That is a difficult question, but yes, of course it is going to create more demand. Of course it will, and so it should, because then maybe we will be spending less on our social care and our support for young people and mental health services. Perhaps we would do that if we were bold enough today to go ahead with something like this. I am Mr Christy and then Mr Wallace. I was just going to say that, when you pick up on the Youth Music Initiative, we obviously need to bear in mind the distinction between instrumental music services and the Youth Music Initiative as additionality. The Youth Music Initiative operates on a premise of every child having a free year of music tuition prior to leaving primary school. The greater issue at the moment is that what happens after that free year depends on where you live. You could have a wonderful experience families coming along to concerts and getting really excited about that instrument that you have got to learn, and then you could be confronted with a fee. The other thing about the YMI is again the distinction between regular instrumental music instruction and experience, one of the 240,000 numbers in the statistic, can be up to just 11 hours of participation. There are quite different things. Would the floodgates be opened if fees were removed all over the place? What a wonderful problem to have, I would start from. I think that we need to bear in mind that everyone wants to play, but let's start from the place that everybody should be allowed the opportunity to start. I think that that's certainly what we would like to see championed in the future going forward. There are different models, there are different methods, but, again, without that rigid fee structure, you would be allowed the opportunity to be far more creative, far more flexible in terms of how you allowed that opportunity to be taken forward. There has to be, it's not just money alone, your right, it has to be managed change. There is now the opportunity with new technologies and so on to actually get the benefits of music education to many more children. I am working at the moment with the Chinese Government and going over to the Beijing Central Conservatory every few months to work with them now. My first class was 500 kids, so I sent messages that working with 500 kids is a new methodology, but I learned myself in a class of 40 in a junior brass band. That was my first experience, and out of that came my fellow John Miller, who was second trumpet in the Philharmonia and head of brass, and Jim Gurley, who is now conducting the River City Orchestra, Bob Ross, Munich Philharmonic. It is a very good way to start in this big group. The Chinese Government is now looking at culture as an economic force in their education, and they are looking at western culture, and they are getting people like us, because they are deaf to us as well, and at all levels of our education system to go over and show them how it's done. We have to show ourselves how it's done at the same time, learn from what's going on in China, because that's a very vibrant economy. It's got the same problems as we have between the haves and the have-nots, and it needs to bridge that gap as we need to do it. However, what a fantastic problem it would have to solve it. If we could solve it in this country, we can probably even export it to Finland, because when you get into these countries and you see what they're doing, they have similar problems to us. I recently went into a school and witnessed that they had an instrumental music teacher going once a week and spending two or three hours on a whole-class project, where the whole class was given the opportunity to play together as a class, and the teacher was involved. She was learning an instrument along with the class. The kids absolutely loved the fact that they could play better than the teacher, but she had to go away and practice at the weekends and things, no bottle of wine that weekend to keep up with the kids. However, the end result, and as you say, it might not be for everyone after that year, but the thing was that they did it as a class group and performed it as a class group. The parents got involved, they became a real community hub in the school, and there was a lot of success there. They were not tested, they were just in your cum, let's pick an instrument and we'll go for it. They had a great time and it's a very valuable experience. Part of our committee visit on Friday night, we were all hearing about some PEF funding that's been used for a whole-class tuition in North Lanarkshire as well, so that was very interesting to hear. Very patiently, Ross Greer. Thanks, convener. I'm picking up on a couple of threads that emerged particularly earlier on in the discussion. I'm interested in—it's not a discrepancyn, but the difference is that, up until last year, the overall number of young people receiving instrument and music tuition hadn't fallen down, and as Kenny said, we've reached that tipping point now. The numbers last year were not great, and anecdotally it seems that the numbers for this year are going to be worse. Up until that point, you had year-on-year substantial losses of the tutors. I'm interested in some of the evidence that we've received that indicates that what that was resulting in because it was happening in the context of charges going up is a shift in the profile of young people taking up music tuition. The demand was still growing in communities and from families who could afford to pay, but for those who could not afford to pay, that was the obvious result. Ben Tristad, in your thoughts and experience you've had, has that shift in the profile of young people, the kind of 60,000-ish number that sustained itself through the years of tutors falling? Was that 60,000 sustained overall nationally, but it was actually moving around quite a lot? It was growing in privileged communities and it was shrinking in less privileged? What that data doesn't tell you, as you've just identified, is who is actually playing. What we have seen in the past couple of years, as policies have regularly changed, has been quite a transient population. It also doesn't tell us who's sustaining participation. It's just quite a cold number of who's playing at that time during the year as well. I think that we need to do a little bit more work on that with local authorities in terms of that demographic as to who are playing within the system at the moment, how long have they been playing for? Are they sustaining participation or are we just in a kind of countless round of people filling seats until the policy changes again and then we're seeing people give up? What we do know is that the figure from 16, going into 17, the numbers were dropping. The 17-18 report is dropping. We know anecdotally, even from this summer to now, that number has dropped yet again. It's certainly our plan to work with colleagues to try and do some form of further data extraction, probably this side of the spring, to see where we're actually sitting, because it seems to have gone over the tipping point and we are on a radical descent now. I'm looking forward to the outcome of the what's going on now report that our team is working on and was commissioned by MEPEG. I think that it's going to make for some sobering reading of a continuing dangerous drop in the uptake, especially for more disadvantaged areas. Anecdotally, in our transitions programme, we have this amazing programme supported by the Scottish Funding Council that gives you a free place at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with mentoring, but we found it was hard to get musicians of the right standard. We were getting lots of actors and so we tried to tweak it to start earlier, to go into primary schools to get musicians starting earlier so they can reach that standard. Even in multiple art forms we see that access to an instrument, to the lesson, to repairing the instrument, to buying the music, all creates pressure on a family that might not have that income available. I think that we have seen the change. It's a wonderful programme, the transitions programme at the RCS. I have students who are currently on that programme. However, I was asked once by a Scottish official, who asked me if, in my local area of Fergusle Park in Paisley, I could get more ballet dancers for this programme. It's this kind of Billy Elliot moment. We don't teach them ballet in Fergusle Park currently, so why should we expect to have the people on the transitions? We'd love that and that's what I think we're trying to reach out and to give provision for that, but if there's no provision there, why don't they come? The intake in the first year of the modern ballet degree programme at the Royal Conservatoire, 50 per cent of that intake came from the SIMD 2040s, which is quite staggering. The problem with the postcode lottery is that we've got all these numbers to crunch and it's a lot of postcodes. This is going to make, so it's teasing out and analysing those figures. It's been quite a hard thing to do. It's hard to have the hard numbers that will impress the people that wear the striped suits and count up these numbers and crunch them. The other thing that we're trying to do is to identify rural poverty, because we've got that. That does exist pretty big time. People in the Highlands and Islands are on very, very low incomes and if you take the sea into consideration, it's about the size of Western Europe. It's really, really quite a large area. We've done case studies in Shetland and we've done case study in semi-rural and urban as well, Perth and Cynros and we've done part of it in North Glasgow. We've got different things to compare with and we've got a lot of valuable data coming in from the Western Isles as well. Just going back to your point about the moving postcodes, it's very difficult for a local authority to know why a person has left the service or doesn't want to continue. It's sad that I've thought about it long and hard and it's very difficult because you're actually going to the parent and you're asking why your child has left the service. The parent might not tell that child, because they don't want to say, we're not continuing with this lesson because we can't afford it, because they do want to send the pupil back into school to say, I've given up, my mum says we can't afford it. So I don't think, when we're trying to gather evidence of why someone has left the service, I'm not sure how if we get the correct answer. It's very difficult to gauge why they've left. It's a hard one to put together. It's back to the stigma thing again. I think it's important having that data and we'll have the evidence from what's going on. Now the report was quite a big piece of work as well. I suppose the question is though, it's what we do with the data going forward and what capacity do we have as music services, as partners and colleagues and in terms of local and national government, what capacity do we have to make change within that? We mentioned GERFIC earlier on what capacity do we have to really get it out for every child, but using that data as Kirk saying at a local level, I think we do need to be smarter with how we use the information that we have and ask the right questions and identify in some places barriers to participation and explore opportunities and strategies to remove these barriers as well. So it's not just good enough gathering the information, I think we need to be serious about what we do with it next. Do you have a publication date for that piece of work? For what's going on now, John Scott. It's going to be somewhere between January 15th and the 28th. We're going to take it to the cross-party group and music Parliament first and then we're going to bring it to Parliament or we're going to launch it here and then to hits all within the matter of about two or three days. I think it's going to be important because it's not just going to be a wealth of data. When we went to see the Deputy First Minister about this research that we're going to do, he asked us then to provide recommendations and we thought, my goodness, that this is going to be a really, really important, very, very difficult thing to hone recommendations to make them feasible and doable. At the moment it looks as though, where can I find the recommendations? Thanks very much, Geoff. There will be in the areas of instrumental music services development, what should happen there, pupil equity as well, that's very important, SQA provision, possible enhancements to it and also the early learners because that has been proven to have the most beneficial effect on everything else, the instrumental effect of instrumental music. Those are the likely areas, so it's not just going to be data, analysis and hot air and lots of lovely pictures, there's going to be hard recommendations as well. In terms of staff conditions, Kirk might have a particular answer on that. Kenney made that point earlier that now that pupil numbers are starting to fall, it may perversely make it easier for local authorities to justify more cuts to staff because pupil numbers have fallen, but up until now we've had a situation where the pupil numbers have not fallen, staff numbers have, and I'm wondering if there has been any particular impact on the workload of remaining staff and their conditions, where they're in a situation where there are simply less of them but just as many young people as there were, obviously with the caveat of we don't know where the young people and the tutors actually are, what the distribution is? I think I'm reading two questions in there. If an authority does have to cut the staff numbers, then it sometimes becomes almost a campaign of spinning plates, so they're trying to keep the service, maintain the service as is without taking anything out of the service to keep everyone happy, the politicians, the councillors, the parents, so they are spinning plates a little and I suppose then they have to spread the workload out more between the people that are left in the service, but then that tends to really affect the pupils because if you're in one school and then you're asked to then in the afternoon go to another school to cover pupils that were previously taught with someone else, you're then having less effect in the school that you were in. The provision is lessened in the school that you were in, so in that scenario that can only go on for so long, it's almost like a downward spiral, the staff will get so thin, so what can happen there is that lessons can get shorter and groups can get bigger, so the quality of the lesson is diminished, but with the exuberant charges and some of them away above the cost of inflation when they come in, then there is a tipping point there to how good the quality of the lesson is that you're getting and with how many people are in the lesson. Back to the other question that I think you're answering, if the pupils drop out in great numbers and you still have a staff sitting there with no pupils left to teach, then that authority has a decision to make within possibly a year on can they redeploy the staff every local authority to have their own policy, what they do or what they make the staff redundant. I feel that once they go, it's very difficult to bring them back, very, very difficult. I suppose that whichever way you look at it as well, whether it's teachers' numbers reducing, pupils' numbers reducing, ultimately it's a reduction in opportunity, that's what we're talking about. I think that it would be remiss of us probably today not to speak about the impact on health and wellbeing of colleagues that are almost going through this continual funding cycle at the moment on an annual basis in some areas waiting to see if there are going to be cuts made within their local area, what impact that will have on staff, what impact that will have on the children that they teach. As all good teachers are, they're very passionate about the children and the families that they serve. I think that we've got to be very, very conscious of the health and wellbeing of our colleagues and also in some places the frustration that they feel that they don't have the opportunity sometimes to unlock their full capacity because they're perhaps working to a financial target or a number of children that they have to teach in the week. I know that the Scotland on Sunday campaign a number of years ago was titled Let the Children Play and I know that our organisation hits. We'd love to see the opportunity to let the teachers teach in some places as well as we go forward. I'm going to move Gordon MacDonald again. For a wee point of clarification, we've heard a lot this morning about pupils taking part in music tuition has actually dropped, but is it the case that the number of pupils studying SQA examinations in music has actually increased? The numbers that I'm looking at is in 2008 there was 4,451 taking a higher, that's now 5,730 and in 2008 there was 1,055 taking an advanced higher and that in 2018 was 1,712. So is it the fact that SQA pupils studying for an exam are actually increasing in music? I think that we need to be conscious as well that it's part of your higher or your advanced higher now. You don't have to play two instruments, you could be combining music technology with that as well, so that's maybe an explanation with the rise in numbers of figures of young people undertaking music technology as part of those courses as well. That can actually increase the presentation number. It's 10 per cent music technology, if that makes sense. Correct, sorry to correct, but there are separate courses now, so it's music technology, a separate course. Some of the figures in the submission though. Yeah, also in the submission, sorry, I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, but there are separate subjects now, music technology and music performance is always two instruments. The only time that there's not two, there is a performance at the unit for advanced higher, which is going, but you can do composition as your main study and that's only advanced higher. Professor Shack. I'm delighted if there are more kids wanting to study higher in music and advanced higher in music and in some ways it does overlap with instrumental tuition, but we are talking about two different things. Advanced higher in music, it has nothing to do with getting into the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland or indeed necessarily advanced higher at any university, advanced work that requires a high level of proficiency in instrumental playing, so we've got to get that going from the youngest through. I think it's something to celebrate that many more children, and that's one of the successes of the curriculum for excellence and the SQA qualifications, that the instrumental teachers provide about 50 per cent of that qualification and it's quite intensive work and those are the kids generally who have looked at music as a possible vocation and so it's the quality of what they get so they need the really rich diversity of choice. I was just like a first study composition of playing the piano, the cello, the viola, everything. I only did trumpet second study when I went to the academy, but in the end that's what I earned my living through was this thing that I just picked up and learned in a brass band and so it's very important to keep it the subject as rich as the other subjects in school are. It's also a commitment to just one point to answer in terms of music teaching in schools, which this is what I do. There are more anecdotally, and I have to get the figures for that in terms of it, it's a very difficult figure to get. The people who have been presented for qualifications by and large are being taught by their classroom teacher and not always by specialists. I can think of lots of kids in our classrooms who are being taught by just them. I'm their only teacher and I'm teaching them on instruments, but the convener has mentioned before keyboard and sometimes guitar, whatever it is, but they're not getting the specialist instrument tuition. I don't know the numbers on that specifically, and I don't think that that's not available even from SQA, but that's not the numbers that we collect currently. It might be an increase in classroom, so-called classroom instruments, if we call them that, narrow bandwidth, which would concern me that the wider family of instruments is being neglected, and that's my concern earlier on. I don't know the breakdown of those figures. That's possible. I worked with SQA for a number of years, but some data they may be able to collect in terms of their marking sheets where they put down the instrument names, but they're normally done in paper, not electronically, so that might be difficult information to collect, but it certainly will say on it, but you would never know that a person could have independent keyboard lessons outwith that music school, so they may be having private tuition there as well, so it's an unknown quantity, really. I look around at that. I think we're exhausted our questions for you this morning, and I thank you all very much for your attendance. It's been extremely helpful to how we progress with our inquiry, and I very much appreciate your time this morning. I'm just going to suspend briefly. We're still in session, so we're going on to agenda item 2, so if the members of the committee could remain, that would be great, but I'll suspend a few seconds to let the panellists. It's a subordinate legislation, a negative instrument. Do members have any comments on the education student loans? It seemed to me that the recommendation of 30 years made sense, and if that's taken forward a policy area, that is fine. I did have a question about the provision around education psychology, because it says in the notes that this will run for an initial three years, but we're making a decision at the same time that somebody who is trained as an educational psychologist can't access postgraduate loans, but if you're only doing it for three years, is there a danger at the end of that process if somebody was trained as an educational psychologist? They wouldn't then be guaranteed a student loan. It's interesting the policy thinking around this, because presumably nobody willfully takes on extra debt. It's described as financial support, but it's access to a loan in a postgraduate course. I just wondered what the thinking was in notes simply. It says that they didn't want a duplication of funding, but one funding is grant, which I think would welcome the other as a loan, which is not compulsory. I'm just wondering if that should have remained as a safety net. I don't know what the policy of that is, and I'm also wondering on the policy choices that are made by the Scottish Government. I don't know why they have not taken the opportunity here to increase the threshold to 25,000 until 2021. I think that everyone accepts that their current threshold is quite low. You can let me know what the mechanism is. I know that we can object in the chamber, but I don't feel strongly about the provisions in here that are quite important. I'm quite interested in why it hasn't included increasing the threshold to 25,000. I think that the policy intent is to say not until 2021. I don't know what the logic of that is, and I would like to find that out. However, at this point, I've already made about education psychology. If what looks like an interesting package of support is for an initial three years, what are the guarantees subsequent to that? Because you would then presumably have to have another instrument at a later stage that reinstates education psychology, which has been allowed to access student loan. I can't answer any of those points. We can tend to write to the Government and delay our decision on that until next week's meeting. I wouldn't want to create a delay around what are very positive provisions around the 30 years. We can seek some clarification, but I wouldn't want to stand in the road of the provision being agreed to. Those two points that I've raised, there may be nothing that's going to happen in implementing it that would necessarily affect that, but we can still act right on those issues. You said that you went out to the Government for clarification on those points, but we passed the instrument as it stands. I think that we agree not to say anything about the process. Is everybody content to do that? Any other points that people want to raise with the minister? That concludes our public part of today's meeting, and we move into private session.