Delivering subject content through nine life themes
Andrew Lloyd Webber has been joined by stars of the music industry such as Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran and the members of Coldplay, and by various music industry leaders, in calling for public funding to massively expand his Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MISST) charity, which promotes music education, particularly in disadvantaged areas. The benefits of high-quality music education for young people, Lloyd Webber says, “are proven and life-changing”. Life-Based Learning (LBL) values music in schools as both an intrinsically important activity and as a vehicle for developing a range of key skills that support children’s learning and development more generally. LBL is all about opening up children’s minds, helping them explore the world in imaginative ways and express themselves creatively.
Lloyd Webber’s call comes in an open letter to the prime minister Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, that was posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). He says that the transformative power of music for children has been universally recognised and yet music education in schools has been scaled back for years.
From improved cognitive development, communication skills and problem solving, to greater confidence, self-esteem and social development, music has a profound impact on young people’s lives.
from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s open letter
The letter highlights “the unique ability of music to unite. It is a universal language that can transcend borders, cultures and differences, and bring people together.”
It calls for a dramatic scaling up of the composer and impresario’s MISST charity, targeting the most disadvantaged schools in the most disadvantaged areas. MISST was set up in 2013 and currently works with 29 schools in the UK. It provides funding for classical instruments as well as support in the form of regular tuition, opportunities to perform and a programme of excellence.
The charity Music Masters reposted (retweeted) the letter, commenting: “We couldn’t agree more that funding is much needed to enable young people to experience the joy, community, opportunity and plethora of wider benefits can bring [sic], at both primary and secondary level – and beyond!”
A life-based approach to learning would give increased status to music in the curriculum. Music – and by extension music education – is important in and of itself. We have argued elsewhere that music “stimulates our spiritual and cultural faculties, transporting us to other times and places, and perhaps even to other dimensions. And the study of music helps to nurture key life skills and personal qualities such as creativity, teamwork and resilience.”
In our blog Promoting creativity we discussed the 2022 report published by the Times Education Commission. We said that the commission’s final report made a number of points that chimed with LBL thinking on the need to promote creativity and critical thinking:
We have also argued that music has formidable power and reach as a means of communication, with or without the use of words. Effective communication is much more than being able to read and write well, important though of course these fundamental skills are.
We need an approach to learning in our schools that recognises the role that all curriculum subjects can play in developing children’s communication skills. The expressive arts, in particular — art, dance, drama and music — increase the breadth of children’s communication skills and strengthen their connection to the cultural and creative spheres. Michael Mac, creator of Life-Based Learning, has written that music is “an educationally overlooked, but highly social, vehicle of communication between people.”
Image at the head of this article by THẢO TĂNG VĂN from Pixabay.
