Make your voice heard against council proposals to outsource instrumental music service

The Scottish Brass Band Association is supporting a campaign against proposals by East Ayrshire Council to outsource its instrumental music service (IMS) to a charitable leisure trust.

SBBA is joining teaching unions, parents and pupils who wish to retain IMS as part of the educational syllabus and are against the transfer of the service to the East Ayrshire Leisure Trust for the 2025/26 academic year in a bid to help the council plug an estimated budget gap of £32 million.

The SNP Government scrapped charges for learning an instrument in Scotland in 2021. As a result of this decision there has been a significant increase in the number of pupils taking music lessons. However, East Ayrshire is now reviewing how its instrumental music services are administered with a view to saving money.

Solicitor and trombone player Ralph Riddiough, a long-time campaigner for IMS in schools, is urging all supporters of brass and instrumental learning provision in schools to make their objections on these proposals known to their local councillors.

He is organising a flash mob to play outside the council offices at 9am on Thursday 31 October when the councillors are expected to vote on the IMS proposals.

“I ask all parents whose child is learning to play a music instrument in East Ayrshire schools to join me and fellow protesters at this event to make our strength of feeling known to the council,” he said.

“Music teachers need to be employed by councils – not charities, not community groups, not social enterprises.

“There is a legal argument waiting to be made that transferring an education service to a third party – not outsourcing or subcontracting, but actually hiving it off – is unlawful. Hiving off a council swimming pool or a library into a leisure trust is one thing. Transferring teachers is a totally different ball game and it needs to nipped in the bud."

SBBA president Carrie Boax is disappointed by another ostensible challenge to the pledge that instrumental music tuition in schools would be free of charge, a concession that was hard won from the Scottish Government after a national campaign.

“Music education isn’t just about learning to play an instrument and reading dots on a page,” she has said. “It teaches children life skills like discipline, confidence, self-assurance, competitiveness, application, teamwork and inter-personal relationships, among other things, and so the sooner that this type of tuition can start in schools the better the long-term advantages.”

John Wallace, former principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and patron of SBBA, described the East Ayrshire Council proposal as “a very retrograde step for music education”.

EAC officials say instrumental music is generally offered through independent music trusts in much of the rest of the UK, although in Scotland the only area is Highland, where the service was transferred to High Life Highland in 2018.

Councillors are expected to make a final decision on the proposals at the 31 October meeting after a phase of “meaningful consultation”.

Ralph added: “School education should be delivered by education authorities, not financially precarious arm’s length leisure trusts. There are lots of comments and column inches about the benefits of music and the joy it brings. The reason music is in the firing line every year is that council officers and councillors don’t understand, or accept, that our IMSs deliver ‘school education’.”

He is urging everyone concerned by the EAC proposals to write to their councillors to voice their objections. If you have a child learning to play a musical instrument in school in the EAC area or if you feel strongly that IMS should be kept as part of the education curriculum, you can make your feelings known to your local East Ayrshire Council representative here.