In Monday’s (9/15) Telegraph (London, U.K.), cellist Julian Lloyd Webber writes about Making Music, a new Royal Schools of Music survey. “The biggest problem, according to Making Music, is that ‘while more children than ever are playing, many still have no access to music and children from lower social groups remain disadvantaged.’ But why is it so important that all children have access to music? As chairman of Sistema England … which has used music to deliver hundreds of thousands of children from lives of poverty and crime … I am privy to the extraordinary statistics from the programmes we support in six of England’s most challenged communities. Since In Harmony Liverpool … was inaugurated in 2009, the number of children exceeding ‘expected’ progress rose from 35 percent to 69 percent in maths and 36 per cent to 86 per cent in literacy…. Sadly, though, the report shows that music is still most likely to be pushed aside in the poorer inner-city schools—exactly where it could be most beneficial.… While things are much better than they were 10 years ago, there is still a long and winding road ahead before we can say that all our children have access to music.”
Posted September 22, 2014
