Musician Michele Lomas’ main job for fourteen years has been teaching brass instruments to 6-18 year-olds. She was employed by Wiltshire Council’s Music Service for schools. This week she starts a new phase of her life. Now that the Music Service has been abolished she has had to become a self-employed teacher.
Wiltshire Council decided to close its Music Service as part of budget cuts to meet the much reduced funding it receives from central government. This meant that about 70 music teachers were made redundant and Council funding for the two youth orchestras was withdrawn.
Michele Lomas lives in Avebury. She has played brass instruments for over thirty years and has passed her love of the instruments onto her seventeen-year old son Adam, who learns the trombone and euphonium at Wells Cathedral School – one of the United Kingdom’s four specialist music schools.
She started teaching when still at school and she was the leader of the local junior brass band.
At schools around the Marlborough area, Michele teaches all ages and all the brass instruments: trumpet, cornet, French horn, tenor horn, euphonium, baritone (a smaller euphonium), trombone and tuba.
Before the Music Service was closed down, Michele was paid by the hour for the work she did: “A sort of zero hours contract – but with holiday and sick pay and a teacher’s pension.”
What really worries her now she has been forced to become self-employed is the loss of that teacher’s pension, no holiday pay and no sickness pay. She has had to draw up seventy contracts with the parents of students she will continue to teach: “I’ve tried to keep my rate just under what the Council used to charge.”
“There’s a danger that small schools – remote and rural – will lose out because it won’t be economic for private teachers to travel to them. They will miss out on the diversity of instruments on offer.” She has already had to drop a couple of her schools just because travelling time and travel costs would make it uneconomic to teach at them for an hour each week.
Apart from individual and small group teaching, the Music Service funded teaching for whole classes under the ‘First Access’ banner (a political name change from its former ‘Wider Opportunities’ title.)
But as school budgets get tighter such class teaching of music is suffering: “A lot of schools have stopped First Access because it is no longer subsidised. It enabled children to get started and then perhaps go on to individual teaching.”
She knows of one school where some of the costs of First Access classes are being paid for by an outside organisation interested in promoting live music: “There is a danger that music instrumental lessons will only be available to those whose parents can afford them – and so become more elitist.”
When Wiltshire Councillor Laura Mayes was defending the decision to abandon the Music Service, she said that the county’s ‘Music Hub’ would help parents with funding: “The Hub will provide subsidy for families that will struggle to pay. The Hub will provide subsidy for isolated schools.” [What is a Hub ? – see below.]
Wiltshire’s ‘Music Hub’ is called Wiltshire Music Connect and is funded directly by the government through the Arts Council. As the new school year proceeds, we will be trying to find out how these ‘subsidies’ are working.
Another issue raised by the termination of the Music Service is the supply of instruments. Wiltshire Council owned a great number of instruments – most of them were passed to the Hub.
These are now being loaned out: “They’re charging a rental – instead of getting instruments as part of the teaching charge.” For the first year the charge is £30 for any brass instrument. In the second year this will go up – with rental for some instruments doubling.
It is a big change in the way music is made available to school-age children and young people. When I asked Michele how it felt as a newly registered self-employed person to be one of the government’s ‘new jobs’ – she smiled: “I’m a business now.”
In a following Marlborough News Online report we will investigate how the Wiltshire and Swindon Youth Orchestra and the Wiltshire Youth Jazz Orchestra will continue without Wiltshire Council funding – funding that ended last week.
Very Frequently Asked Question: What are Music Hubs? The Arts Council replies: “Music education hubs are groups of organisations who are passionate about delivering excellent music education for children and young people. The Arts Council is committed to making sure that this goal is achieved.”
There are 123 music education hubs in England. For 2015-2016 the government has increased funding to the Music Hubs – via the Arts Council – by £18m. This brings the total amount of funding for music education hubs to £75m.
Hubs are peculiar beasts. They are not ‘legal entities’ – so although Wiltshire’s music hub is funded solely by the Arts Council, its Director and other part-time staff still have to be employed by Wiltshire Council.
The hub looks after Wiltshire’s three Young Musicians groups and is setting up eleven ‘Clusters’ to support young musicians. Wiltshire’s hub is based at an office at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford on Avon.
Concern among villagers about the future of Avebury’s Chapel
