National Assembly for Wales

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the meeting of the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee. I will be acting as temporary Chair this morning, in accordance with last week's motion and Bethan's absence this morning. Do any Members have a declaration of interest? 

I declare membership of the Musician's Union. 

That is noted. 

Okay. We move, then, to item 2, which is the music feasibility study, and I'm delighted to welcome the Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams, and Melanie Godfrey, who is the deputy director of education business and governance. So, welcome, Minister. Now, of course, you commissioned a feasibility study into music services, and this followed on one of the recommendations that was made in a committee report about 18 months, or two years ago, from this committee. So, we're naturally pleased that one of our major recommendations was taken up, and this morning, we'll have a chance to talk to you about that feasibility study, which has recently been published. 

But, before we move to questions, do you want to make a general statement, or shall we just move—

I'm happy to move to questions from Members, Chair. 

Okay. So, given that report, and obviously, our earlier report, what's your current assessment of the viability of music services in Wales?

Well, I think, David, what the feasibility report does is really enforce the evidence that the committee had taken previously, in the 'Hitting the Right Note' report, and our own assessment as a Government around the complexity of music services, and how there is a patchwork of provision across Wales. That, quite rightly, leads to concerns about the principle of equity in the system and ensuring that all of Wales's children have an equal opportunity to be exposed to music and to participate in music. The report also then does raise some questions about excellence. And equity and excellence, as I said when I appeared before the committee previously to talk about music services, are the two fundamental principles that I'm concerned about—how do we give everybody an equal chance, and how do we ensure that that provision is of really, really good quality?

So, the report talks about some of the vulnerabilities around workforce issues and staffing issues. But, what the report doesn't do, unfortunately, and that's not the fault of the authors; it is the nature of the system that they have been asked to report back on, is that there are no simple answers to solving this issue, nor is there one single way in which we could develop music services into the future. The report is very clear about the need to continue to develop policy in this area in the spirit of co-construction, specifically with the stakeholder group that was established. And my intention now is to go back to that stakeholder group, as suggested by the report, to look at the various options, and to work with them on next steps. 

And if I may use this opportunity, I'd like to extend an invitation to you, as temporary Chair of the committee, to be a part of that stakeholder group when it next meets, because I'd be very grateful to have that ongoing committee involvement, given the interest on this subject. So, if you, as the Chair, or a Member—

Or a representative from the committee. 

—or a member of the committee wanted to be a part of that stakeholder group, I'd like to extend that invitation. 

Well, I'm sure I speak for everyone that that's very much welcome, and I'm sure that the committee will take up that opportunity. You described—. The current situation is a very complicated one—I think the report uses the phrase 'mixed economy'—so, there are lots of ways in which music services are provided, you know, a core service or a charitable co-operative, whatever. Is that part of the problem, or do you think that that's the system that has now emerged in the last 20 years or so, and we need to work with that and to make it better? Or is the problem it's a mixed economy?

Well, I think you're quite right, it is a highly complex system, but that's not to say that it is broken in that regard, although there are improvements that can be made. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with different approaches in different localities to providing a service to children. What I'm interested in is not so much the mechanics and the gubbins, but the output of that particular system in terms of the experience and the opportunity for children.

First of all, I think it's important for me to say and for the committee to recognise that, despite all the challenges, there is excellent practice out there, and I think we'd all agree on that point. There's no one system that is intrinsically better at providing that service than others. So, we have traditional services run by individual local authorities that are providing a good service, but we'd have some of the alternative models that have arisen out of cuts to traditional local authority services, which are providing excellent opportunities. I took the time to visit the co-operative model in Denbighshire. Now, the feedback from professionals and from schools on my visit to that project was that, actually, that co-operative model was providing more music education to more schools on a more consistent basis in a very cost-effective way for schools. And when we look at the issue of staff, that co-opertive model, as it says in the feasibility study, is providing high levels of job satisfaction for those people who are employed, because it's owned and run by the musicians themselves.

It's highly complex in the sense that we have cross-border working, so some schools don't use the music service in their own local authority; they actually drive that service in from a different local authority. So, I think what the report says is that there isn't a single model that they could recommend to us as the way forward, but clearly, we will all continue to have concerns about potential inequity in the system and different approaches. So, trying to bring some uniformity, or some confidence that that is happening is important to me. And perhaps music services on its own isn't the way to solve that. So, as we approach the introduction of our new curriculum, the expectations that that new curriculum will have may address some of these issues around equity because, of course, of the important part that expressive arts will play in that curriculum going forward. So, I don't think we can see music services outside a wider piece of education reform, whether that be initial teacher education, professional development, or indeed, the curriculum.

I think that's very helpful, and I'm sure the committee would be in agreement that what has to be achieved is access for all children to good or excellent music services. One idea that came out of our earlier report—and, indeed, is echoed in the feasibility study—is to ensure there is that equity of provision, in terms of the outputs, and that there is a national body responsible for overseeing the whole mixed economy, if you're going to call it that. I'm sure Members will want to look at this in more detail, but is that an idea that you find attractive?

If we look back to the report, they do not finally settle on that being the solution to this issue. And I'm happy to have ongoing discussions with the stakeholders over that. I have to say, my concern about creating an all-Wales body is that we'll end up spending precious resources on an all-Wales body, when my priority is using the resources that we do have for music education actually in our schools. So, that's my concern.

My other concern would be, we already have quite a crowded field in the middle tier in the Welsh education system, and we're working really, really hard to ensure there is coherence in that middle tier in Welsh education. Adding an additional body into that middle tier again has, potentially, disadvantages.

But my concern is we'll spend our money—what little money we have—on another body, when really my priority, and I'm sure the priority of everybody here in the committee, is to spend that money in schools, on a service, rather than on an organisation. But we will take that back to stakeholders.

It's very helpful to have an idea of how you're thinking on these issues, and this sort of candour and directness is helpful, I think, in the scrutiny of policy, whether you agree with it or not. Another idea perhaps to bring greater co-ordination and ensure that there is equal provision around the country is to have a national plan for music education. Mick will now take us into this area.

I just wanted to start with a couple of points from what you've already said. You talked about going forward. Of course, going forward, you have to know where we are at the moment and where we've come from. Reading this feasibility study, in general, do you think it's not unreasonable to take the view that music provision in education is in crisis? 

It is certainly under a lot of pressure, and there's a lot of challenge in the system. That arises from a number of factors. I think it would be correct to say that the biggest influence on that has been a period of extreme challenge in public expenditure. It's a non-statutory service for local authorities. We know that, despite efforts around local authority budgets, they have been really challenged, and local authorities, understandably, have focused on their responsibilities for statutory services. I think we would all understand that and we would all agree with that. So, that's part of the issue that this report tells us. So, public expenditure certainly has driven some of the decisions around local authorities'—because remember, it is they that have this responsibility, not us as a Welsh Government—around some of the decisions that they have made.

There is also, and the report touches on this—. I'm not saying it's the main factor, but we do know that demand for those services is variable, as schools make different decisions about how they spend their money. So, not only do we have pressure on local authority budgets, we have pressure in schools' budgets. We also know that, in some parts of our school system, especially as children get older, there is—understandably, again—a big focus on core subjects, which has led to, in some ways, a shrinking of creative subjects within the curriculum, as teachers concentrate on maths, English, Welsh, science. That's being driven, in many ways, by policy from the centre as we drive things forward.

So, there are a whole number of reasons why people are making these decisions. But, 'crisis'? I would not describe it as a 'crisis'. Under pressure, yes, but as I said, we should recognise that there is excellent practice out there, and many schools are doing amazing things. I was at Penyrheol Primary School in Gorseinon on Monday. I interrupted their music lesson. They have a music teacher that comes to the school once a week to provide music tuition to children. They played for me, on their acoustic and electric guitars and drums, 'Stuck in the middle with you'. Story of my life, Mick: stuck in the middle. They used their budget to provide that opportunity for their children. Interestingly, they also have an artist that comes in once a week to provide specialist provision around art.

So, there is good practice out there, but clearly there is more that we can do—nationally, as individual local authorities, and those with an interest. For instance, we are in discussion with the royal college; as an institution here in Wales, I believe that they have a responsibility, as part of their civic mission, to support work in this area. Bangor University is doing work within their arts centre, in Pontio, with local schools. So, there is a collective responsibility to drive this agenda forward, so that we can have that confidence, as I said, in both equity and excellence.

Okay. Look, I don't deny that there's excellence around the country, but the report highlights—. Well, it makes grim reading: five local authorities with no music head; poorer students have a lower take-up, particularly those on free school meals, a point made regularly by the Musicians' Union; terms and conditions have deteriorated or been eroded; increasing use of unqualified staff; music services are not formally inspected by Estyn. Do you agree that all those factors really lead to the way that there is a desperate need for a national music education plan?

I think there is definitely the scope for a national plan, but that cannot be separate to the work that we're doing on the national curriculum and the new curriculum, and I'm a bit worried about how those two would interact. So, I'm not saying we shouldn't have a plan; I'm saying that plan really needs to arise out of the reforms to the curriculum that we're making. We need to do some more work, as the feasibility study says, with schools in particular to feed into that plan, and that plan would have to be co-constructed. Now, there's definitely potentially a role for Government in helping develop that plan, but it has to be done with key stakeholders. It can't be something that can be imposed from the top down, and it can't be something that is seen as completely distinct from the requirements of our new curriculum.

And, again, if I may, we had a very useful discussion and debate yesterday, didn't we, about the place of history in the new curriculum? I don't think we can just see music services as a stand-alone lesson. It has the ability to really develop linkages right across the AoLEs, whether that's maths, humanities, language and communication. So, again, I think we need to look at it, not just as a single separate subject, but as a wider piece of work across the curriculum linking into the curriculum plan and to our Creative Learning through the Arts programme. 

I think you're certainly right in terms of music, not only in terms of self-esteem, but in terms of the mathematical, the literate elements—all those things that it actually contributes to. But the fact of the matter is we are in a situation where basically, to put it bluntly, the poorer you are the less likely you are to get music, and that's a very worrying concern. Do you think there is a real problem though in terms of—? You talked a little bit about what Government can do. There was a report out by UK Music today, that basically sums up what the Musicians' Union again are reporting, that the industry contributes £5.2 billion to the UK economy. It is obviously a very significant economic—. And actually has a commercial, as well as an academic—and all the other things that are wonderful about music. Do you think that, to some extent, the problem is that music has become sidelined within education provision? It's not recognised properly for what it is in terms of its contribution to education, but also its contribution to the broader economic and commercial aspects of music.  

I think there is definitely anecdotal evidence that would suggest, especially in the secondary phase of education, that expressive subjects, creative subjects, have been pushed to the margins. And that's why the curriculum will be so important in this regard, because expressive arts, as one of the areas of learning and experience—all of them have equal status.

It is my intention, when the Bill is published, that we will be very clear in our expectation that all schools will be required to deliver all areas of learning and experience, right the way through to the age of 16, to provide children with those opportunities, even if those children are not taking a formal qualification in that particular subject, so that we avoid the narrowing of curriculum and choices for children and we keep that education as broad and wide as we possibly can.

Because I think you're right: there has been a diminution and a narrowing of some of those expressive subjects. And when you speak to children—. I always ask them, 'What would you like to do more of? What do you get too much of and what would you like to do more of?', very often, children talk to me about wanting to have more time in the curriculum for expressive subjects, whether that be music or art. They want more of that.   

Just one follow-on point, I'm sure others will have many questions. It is absolutely a fundamental part of our equality agenda that wealth and affluence and background, et cetera, should not be the determinants of whether you have the advantages of music and the educational aspects and everything else that goes with that. But quite clearly, it is the case at the moment that basically, to put it bluntly, working class kids have less opportunity in terms of music, have less access, less participation than the more affluent, for a whole variety of reasons that I know have been explored. What specifically do you think needs to happen to rectify that?

Mick, in the new financial year, this Government will spend over £100 million on the pupil development grant to address the problem that you have just highlighted. I have spent time outside of this Government and all of my time within this Government on tackling—or a determination to tackle—that very point that you made: that no child's educational opportunities and educational destiny should be dictated to by the socio-economic background from which they come. And that's why, as I said, we will invest record amounts of investment in those children's education in this year, not just in terms of the traditional PDG grant, but we will be extending the PDG access grant. Whilst people, quite understandably, associate that only with uniform, that grant is available for parents to be able to purchase kit and equipment to allow their children to make the most of their educational opportunities. And that PDG is a sign of this Government's absolute determination to close that attainment gap and to give those children a fair chance and an equal chance. And many of our schools, we know, use their PDG resources to ensure that their children have these musical opportunities.

As soon as you mentioned expressive arts, I could see interest from other Members immediately. Carwyn, did you just want to come in on that?

Just one question at this stage, Chair. Good morning, both. I was interested in what the Minister had to say about weaving—if I can use that word—music throughout the curriculum, rather than it being seen purely as an academic subject. We've had this debate with Welsh, of course, where there are two ways in which people might want to learn or study Welsh. One is to acquire it as a skill. And for others—a smaller number—they wish to study it as an academic subject and study its literature. But that doesn't apply to everybody who wants to learn the language or speak it fluently. The same with music. One of the issues we have explored here is whether—. We've done it indirectly—but the relationship between music as a GCSE and A-level subject, and music as a skill that people want because they enjoy it. You've rightly mentioned that we shouldn't simply look at music as a qualification and that's the be-all and end-all of it. You rightly said that music should be more broadly available throughout the curriculum. So, the question really is: have you any ideas as to how that might be done?  

Yes, and, actually, using music as a key to unlock areas of the curriculum. So, son of the Amman valley, as you are—

Well, my father and my mother were, but—.

So, you will be familiar with—

I'm qualified to play for them.

So, you will be familiar with John Cale. 

Yes.

John Cale. And John Cale is of the Amman valley and most famously associated with the Velvet Underground, but actually has written music across entire genres. His most famous album is Paris 1919, inspired by the peace talks in 1919. Now, what a way of unlocking in our new curriculum—. So, you could be studying the musicality and the music of John Cale, but that opens you up into history and what happened in the peace talks in 1919, Lloyd George, the role of that Welsh statesman. So, it's an opportunity, I think, for music to be able to unlock other aspects of the curriculum. So, for children perhaps who don't feel that they're interested in history, the fact that they may be very interested in John Cale, actually is a way into some of those other subjects.

Think about Joseph Parry and the work that you could do and the principle of 'cynefin'—teaching children about Joseph Parry, his journey to America, how he comes home, his writing of Myfanwy, that quintessential Welsh piece of music, how that then influenced the South African national anthem. What a way to unlock other aspects of the curriculum by focusing on the musicality of Joseph Parry and the writing of Joseph Parry.

If you're in the Gwent valleys, the Manic Street Preachers—how you can use study of the music of the Manic Street Preachers and This is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and then you're talking about Nye Bevan, and then you're talking about the contribution of Wales to the development of the national health service.

So, you see, Mick, we've marginalised, in our current curriculum, music over here. But, actually, we can grab music—we can grab music and we can work alongside practitioners in other areas of learning and experience. And for that child who I said who might think that history is really boring, and history isn't the subject for them, you can get them into those subjects by looking at the Manic Street Preachers, or John Cale. And that's my vision for the new curriculum and how we can use music as a conduit for teaching and learning and inspiring children.

I'm keen to move us on, and we do need to focus on music services.

Sorry. Sorry, you've got me onto my curriculum, and then—

It's deeply related; this is not in any way irrelevant, but, just briefly, Carwyn.

No, I just feel obliged to point out that John Cale was in fact from Garnant, which is in the Amman valley, but this week, of course, the UK No. 1 in the iTunes charts is somebody from Brynamman. I feel obliged to point that out, given that that's my mother and father's home village.

I feel we should all start singing.

You don't want me to sing. No, no, no, no, no, no; you would not—

I think Dafydd Iwan was mentioned yesterday in the debate on Welsh history as well, and we have Grace Williams from Barry and the place of women composers, for instance. These are really interesting concepts, and the talent that we've had in Wales is astonishing. Anyway, Delyth.

Sorry.

Please don't apologise; this is fascinating, and this, I hope, links the two elements in. I'm interested in and I agree with the fact that you were saying, Minister, that music can't be viewed as a standalone subject, it is so integrated into the other arts, into literature, with mathematics. Do you think that there is a fundamental disconnect between that principle and the way in which music services are delivered in a patchy way? It seems to me that one of the—. We were talking about expressive arts and how music is one of those. One of the things that music can provide children and young people with is joy. So, quite apart from—. It's very difficult to quantify—possibly impossible to quantify—but it is that sense of finally something that they can actually—. Just, like you say, just through pure expression, it's the element of joy.

Now, I have anecdotal evidence of certain headteachers or certain schools just deciding that they will not continue with music services, of course because there's pressure on budgets, but it also can sometimes anecdotally come down to whether or not the headteacher or the head of governors, whoever is making that decision, whether or not they feel that music is a priority as well—obviously, under lots of different budgetary pressures. Do you think there's anything that can be done with that? Do you think that there's anything that should be—I don't know—provided or encouraged in headteachers and in governor boards to appreciate the importance of music, particularly in some schools and areas where there are going to be so many demands on the budgets? The danger is that it will just be seen as a 'nice to have' rather than something that is so engrained and interconnected into all the other elements we've been talking about. 

Well, I agree with you, Delyth, that we need to create the opportunities within the curriculum and music services. So, for children for whom they can just get joy, it is useful for their sense of well-being, through to those children who have a talent, an innate talent, and who actually want to study music as an academic discipline and see their future in music-making. So, we need to be able to create the environment that meets the needs of all of those children.

You're right: budgetary pressures, I think, underpin a lot of this within local authorities, but, with the curriculum, because expressive arts and music is a named element of the expressive arts AoLE, because there will be a statutory requirement to deliver all of those, and all are given equal status and weighting, headteachers and governing bodies, when they're designing their curriculum, will have to have due cognisance of the expressive arts. And what good teachers know is that music not only is a conduit into, as I said, some interesting stuff about history and the geography and cultural identity in Wales—. One of the ways in which we develop oracy in our children—and, of course, oracy is absolutely crucial, the first building block of children being able to read—is singing: nursery rhymes and singing. For some dyslexic children, for instance, collective singing is one way in which we can help, in a safe environment, to develop their oracy skills. So, that's a really important language acquisition tool as well. We know that there are strong linkages between music and maths. So, actually, music isn't an add-on or a 'nice to have'; it can be a conduit for developing very important literacy and numeracy skills in our children. But that can't be addressed by music services alone. This has to be about our expectations of the curriculum and what schools will be required to deliver under that.

Thank you for that. Turning back to the national plan for music education, do you agree with what the feasibility report suggests in terms of what the contents of the plan should be or do you think there's anything that's missing or that shouldn't be there?

No. I think the elements that they've identified are the right elements and allow us to pick that up as part of our wider education reform journey. So, yes, as I said, very happy to continue to discuss with the stakeholder group the desirability of a plan, but what they're saying about initial teacher education, what they're saying about professional learning, can feed into reform programmes that we're already doing. So, this report is a useful addition to that. So, when we're thinking about our professional learning offer, we can have discussions about the need to ensure that this particular group of professionals could be a part of that. I think, for me, the overriding message for this is: (1) we need to do a bit more work, especially with schools, to understand some of the behaviours and the drivers for those behaviours in the schools, and to go back to the stakeholder group to say, 'Okay, this is what the feasibility report has said to us. What do we think are the next steps?'

Okay, thank you. And, on funding, the report says that there may need to be dedicated Government funding as part of this. Do you agree that the Government should meet some of that funding, or do you think that the Government won't be in a position to be able to do that?

The first thing to say is: at the moment, the responsibility for these services is not a function of the Welsh Government. It is a function for local government, and, I have to say, in the discussions that I have had with the Welsh Local Government Association, there doesn't seem to be an appetite from them to have these responsibilities taken away from them. So, I'm not sure of the views around this committee table, but local government absolutely see themselves as having a continuing role in this area.

With regard to resources, we have, during the past in this Parliament, been able to make some investment available, which flowed through the WLGA into our schools system, primarily for the purchase of instruments, and to subsidise some tuition in some local authorities' cases. As always, in identifying money to be spent on new things, that requires me to identify where we are going to disinvest from, and, whilst people are always very happy to give me a long list of things that they want money spent on, people seem to be remarkably reluctant to tell me what we need to stop spending money on, and we will continue to review budgets as and when those budgets are made available to us as a Welsh Government.

Thank you.

Carwyn.

Thank you, Chair. I had three questions originally. Two of them you've answered. One was: if there is a national plan, what role do schools have? You've addressed that. And the other was the interaction between any plan and the curriculum, and you've addressed that too.

From my perspective, it's a question now of 'What next?' You've mentioned the fact that—well, you've not mentioned it specifically, but it's obvious there is no consistency of provision across local authorities, or indeed, across schools, and perhaps, if local authorities aren't able to deliver, then other models will have to be looked at in order to ensure that a proper music service is available across Wales.

So, really, my question is this: what's the plan? You've mentioned that you're open to a plan. You're concerned—rightly so, I think—that it shouldn't interfere with the rollout of the curriculum, but, in terms of a timetable of action, what are your thoughts?

Well, the next stakeholder group will meet to discuss the feasibility study on 29 January, because the stakeholder group have not had a formal opportunity to discuss the feasibility report, and we will be guided by the outcomes of that meeting. We would want to move as swiftly as possible, but, again, if I'm being blunt—and there's no point being anything other than—we are constrained by the capacity within Government and the capacity of outside the Government organisations to be able to move forward, but I detect a determination on behalf of everybody involved to want to make progress in a timely fashion. But I'm very happy to come back to the committee post 29 January—well, hopefully, a committee member will be there—to be able to provide further details of a timetable of actions, subsequent to that meeting, if that is acceptable.

Thank you, Chair.

John, I think the Minister's already given some indication of—

Oh, sorry.

—direction on the next questions, but you may want to probe her approach.

Yes. I think I'm in a similar position to Carwyn, but—. I think I'd like to start off as others have, Minister, by saying that this is an important part of equality of opportunity, isn't it? And we want to see all our young people in Wales having the opportunity to discover their talents and interests and develop their talents and abilities, and it's really powerful, actually, when you speak to adults sometimes, and I have recently, where they've actually mentioned music as something that they very much regret not having had the opportunity to experience adequately and explore their interests and talents and develop them when they were in school. We're in a position now where, actually, the situation might be worse now in Wales than it was 20, 30 years ago, and it's very concerning that we may be moving backwards rather than forwards on an important aspect of equality of opportunity, because people feel that so powerfully as adults that they missed their opportunity, as it were, to a large extent. So, I do think, as others have said, and you have said, that this is really important; that we do get back on the front foot, as it were, and start making progress, given recent experience.

So, you said there, Minister, that having had the feasibility study, you're not particularly inclined towards a national model or a national solution, necessarily, although there's further work to do. So, given that you, in your opening remarks, identified this patchwork of provision and this need to move to equity and excellence, which I think we'd all sign up to, are there models out there, then, that could be spread around Wales? You mentioned the co-operative approach in Denbighshire, for example. Is there anything unique there or do the conditions that allow that to flourish and deliver effectively in that part of Wales exist right across the country?

The Denbighshire example is one that was driven by a crisis. So, the local authority there gave notice on their decision to close music services, and the tutors themselves responded to that with the creation of the co-operative. And as I said, having visited the project, spoken to headteachers, tutors and amazing children who avail themselves of that opportunity, it did seem like a solution that was fit for that particular area. Subsequent to that, Wrexham County Borough Council have decided to adopt a similar model.

I'm a great believer in solutions that fit a sense of place, and that isn't necessarily going to mean a uniform solution. But what we are interested in, as you said, is that equality of opportunity. So, the mechanisms by which we develop that, I think, potentially could be different. You don't have to have the same replicated everywhere as long as the outcomes that are being achieved by that are ones that we're confident provide that equality of opportunity. So, I do think we have to recognise that some local authorities have maintained their service because they see that's the best solution for them, and I wouldn't want to impose, from the centre, a single one-size-fits-all 'You have to have this' or 'You have to do it that way.' I believe in subsidiarity, John, as a principle, and I'd rather local communities find solutions that fit for them rather than a national Government, as long as, as I said, we focus on outcomes.

I think what's clear to me and what, perhaps, all of us would have hoped the feasibility study would do would say, 'This is how it needs to be done', and I don't think, in all honesty—and I don't think it's just my view—I don't think, in all honesty, we can say that the feasibility study makes an overwhelming compelling case for a national organisation. It doesn't say, and if it had, then I would take that on board. But it does not say that a single overarching Welsh organisation is the way to solve these particular challenges. It is much more complex than that, and there is further work to be done, I think, with stakeholders to understand what is the optimum model for delivery.

I think the plan, and setting national expectations that arise out of the curriculum reform, is something that perhaps does give us an opportunity to at least provide that overarching national picture, with a focus, then, on local delivery and local delivery models that best meet the needs of those schools. Because that's what we've got to think back to all the time: the method for interaction is our schools. If we want this to work, we have to talk more deeply than we have done in this part with schools about what is a system that is going to work for them and is going to create the demand within that school for these services, and is operated in a way that makes it easy for schools to engage rather than difficult because of all the things we ask schools to do. And I think that's the bit that's really missing in here, and the report identifies it, the need to work with more engagement with our schools sector to understand what is a system that will work best for them.

Could you tell the committee—?

Just before we move on to another item, Mick wanted to—

But what the report does say is that terms and conditions have deteriorated, and if the people who are delivering, who are doing the teaching, are demoralised and their terms are going down and down, et cetera, clearly, that must be a concern to Government in terms of a plan, that there should be some consistency of decent terms and conditions for those delivering, otherwise, one of the key cogs in the whole process is causing it to implode to some extent.

The data is anonymised in the plan, isn't it, in terms of turnover of staff and whether recruitment and retention of staff is poor, or whether it is good? Again, that shows you that there isn't a single model that says, 'That's the way in which you have high levels of recruitment and retention.' So, some of our local authority models report good recruitment and retention, the co-operative models report good—. So, again, there is no consistency there.

But, clearly, how we treat people in their work and make it an attractive career is something that is really important. That sometimes is around terms and conditions, but it is also about access to professional learning opportunities, and it is about knowing that you're part of a service that is valued by schools and there is a demand for you in that. So, you're right, we do need to look at how we treat people, but, again, the report doesn't necessarily say, 'There is a direct correlation between the model that is employed and then the outcomes for recruitment and retention of staff.'

In terms of the outcomes, then, Minister, and the minimum standards that we might expect, is there a role for legislation, do you think, in establishing those and making sure that they are adhered to?

I'm going to be absolutely blunt with you, John, there is neither the time nor the capacity in this particular Assembly term for me to look at the issue of legislation. There's no point me pretending anything else. The department has two substantive Bills that we need to get through the parliamentary process in the remaining, what, 15 or 16 months of this administration. We also have not insignificant amounts of subordinate legislation. So, the department simply isn't in a position at this moment to think about legislation. That's not to say that future administrations might not want to look at that, but there's no point in me telling you something when we're not in a position to do that at the moment.

Have you formed a view as to whether legislation is desirable?

No, I haven't. I understand absolutely the desire to fix things by legislation, but there are ways in which Governments can achieve real shifts in policy without the need for legislation. It doesn't always have to be the default action, and, sometimes, quite understandably, as a new organisation, a new institution that has these new powers, we always want to use them and to legislate, because that gives us a sense of certainty, but there are other ways in which we can ensure that some of the policy issues—real policy issues, which I'm not ducking away from—can be achieved without legislation. I wouldn't want us to think, because we can't legislate in this Assembly term, that means nothing can be done. That's not the case. There are things that can be done without that.

Let me take you on to something that might, therefore, follow, because you're not going to make music services statutory, and they've never been statutory, but in recent years some education authorities have withdrawn from providing the service and have left it to schools to either provide them internally as best they can or to contract with some other in this mixed economy model. This has resulted in a certain patchiness around Wales. Our report said that this ought to be looked at, and the alternative forms of delivering these services need to be examined and supported, so music teachers that might form a co-operative, for instance. Now, the feasibility study seems completely silent on this. Is this an area you think we ought to be looking at and the Welsh Government might be in a position to be giving advice and some modest assistance then to groups of people or charities that might get involved in this type of provision?

I think that's possible. Certainly, for instance, Welsh Government is very supportive of the Wales Co-operative Centre, which is there to provide advice around co-operative models and co-operative businesses. I don't know, Mel, if there are any other mechanisms available to support innovative, alternatively provided solutions.

There's the example, isn't there, in the survey of the charity provision in Gwynedd? So, that's another alternative delivery model that's happening out there that we can learn from, and there are aspects, as the Minister said, about joining up. One example is that under the reform programme, for example, the ways of working in schools is changing. So, schools don't work necessarily so much on their own; they work on a cluster basis, and that cluster basis can be primary schools together but also with secondary schools. So, there's an element here as well of join-up by the schools themselves, and working together and sharing resources as well. That's yet to be played out as we roll out the reform. 

But that's certainly something that we can look at, about what mechanisms could be made available, signposting and practical support to support people who wanted to develop an alternative form. 

It's obviously not your responsibility to deliver the service, but are you aware of and concerned about certain parts of Wales where music services seem quite deficient to you?  

Obviously, that is of concern to us and we have ongoing dialogue with the WLGA on this agenda, given that it was primarily their responsibility. Again, if I can be just blunt about it, I think the pressure on local government budgets has meant that this is not seen as a priority for them. But we will continue to engage with the WLGA and local authorities on this area. The discussions that we have had—. Because the previous report, the task and finish group that was chaired by Karl Napieralla, did say that there needed to be greater co-ordination between local authorities to ensure consistency of coverage, and we will continue to have that dialogue with the WLGA. But I think we have to recognise the significant pressure our colleagues have been under, and that has led undoubtedly to some of the decisions that they have made.

We're an interactive committee and we have had some Twitter contact, so I'm now going to put a question from someone who is following these proceedings, possibly a professional musician, I don't know—I'll leave it to others to speculate. We've concentrated very much on music as an experience; it's an important experience that's available to children and students. But you can also look at this as some will be so proficient that they will acquire a real skill that will allow them to play a musical instrument to a great level of proficiency, even opening the doors possibly to a professional career, or certainly performance in our rich cultural environment at all sorts of levels—talented amateurs, and all the rest of it. We've not really talked much about this: that right to test your own abilities, and some will have this gift.

I heard a piece on the BBC recently about how, in France, they've traditionally looked at our system as something of a gold standard because we do try to provide musical services, whereas there if you were a professional musician, you've very often come from an upper middle-class family because they do not have a tradition of teaching music in this manner in schools and giving students the access to musical instruments and tuition, and so forth.

So, music as a skill: is this a key area for us in terms of our national life and opening to our citizens the full range of things that will enable them to flourish then because, presumably, if these services are not doing so well, there'll be people going into adult life never knowing that they had this gift, and that's a real sadness, isn't it?  

Yes, you're quite right, David. As I said in answer to Delyth, we need to create the opportunity for those children for whom it is going to be a pleasurable experience, but also not create a system that cuts off the natural innate talent of some individuals to be professional musicians, somebody that, hopefully, through an early introduction to music in school finds that love, but also has that talent identified and therefore nurtured—within the school environment, outside of the school environment, and a pipeline through to local ensembles, local youth orchestras, right the way through to our national organisations for music. So, you're quite right, we need to be able to create a system that identifies that talent, and nurture and support it. That's why we did put some money into local authorities for the purchase of musical instruments. We organised—at the suggestion of Mick Antoniw—a musical instrument amnesty here in the National Assembly, and Assembly Members were very generous in bringing in musical instruments that were in attics, or perhaps under stairs, in cupboards—

Not that knackered.

And we worked with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to have those instruments refurbished and sent out. So, you're right, we need to create the conditions of that system, to allow a pipeline of able and talented individuals. You'll have seen from the survey report that there is, again, a mixed approach—some schools and local authorities providing significant subsidy to instrumental lessons, to provide that level playing field; in other local authorities, I think the figure is £260 a term. And for many families, that would be prohibitive, wouldn't it? Again, I'm aware of some very innovative practice in some of our local schools, to ensure that some of the barriers to participation are broken down, so, for instance, a school that gives out its facilities for free for the local county-wide organisation to practice in their school. And they do that for free, because they said, 'If they're in our school, our children can get there.'

They'll get interested.

And the barrier to being able to travel to that provision—. I know a school that uses some of its PDG grant to purchase season tickets on public transport, so that that transport barrier—that you can't get to that practice—. Or perhaps the annual membership of a county-wide organisation, which could be above and beyond the means of a family to pay for annual membership of that county-wide organisation—the school uses the PDG to ensure that that child, who has that talent to play at a county level, can participate in that. So, schools are cognisant of this, and are taking very practical steps to break down those barriers.

And I think we'd all agree that mastering a musical instrument is a great skill. It's not one I have. I would dearly—in retrospect, perhaps, I realise the loss that I didn't take fully that opportunity. It's reliant on the music tutor workforce immensely, isn't it? I think that translation into a general interest and appreciation of music, to really being able to master it—these tutors are essential. And there is some evidence that our current system is not sustaining this workforce adequately. Are you fearful that we do need a more formalised system or we're going to lose this capacity?

You're absolutely right. There is a skill, isn't there, to doing whole-class work, to that pedagogical principle of providing one-to-one expert tuition? What is clear to me is that we will need to consider, as part of our overall workforce development plan, the needs of this specific group of tutors. And I think, in the past, we've concentrated—understandably—on the main body of our school workforce, but that does not mean we should not be thinking about the specific needs of this group of professionals, as part of our overall human resource plan for the teaching profession, including access to professional learning. And that's been one of the useful pieces of evidence that has come out of the feasibility study—of us needing to pick that up in our workforce plans.

Right. We've reached a crescendo, I think. I've got Mick, then Delyth, then John. Mick.

Just firstly to say that I think there still are issues with regard to the availability and access to instruments—I'll leave it there. Because I just think it's one of those things that needs to have ongoing assessment, and I'm not quite sure whether that data is available. But quite a lot of money, indirectly or directly, from Welsh Government into things like the Cory Band, into Welsh National Opera and so on, and various orchestras has taken place. Now, Cory had a very interesting exercise: they were given funding, I think, from the Arts Council of Wales, part of which required them to go into schools, and that was very, very successful. But then, of course, that comes to an end, and that comes to a stop. But, of course, the response was, I think, that there were many—certainly, the initial responses were that many people were beginning to take up brass instruments as a result of that. Do we do enough, in terms of the funding that does go out in terms of music and orchestras, to ensure that there is a social legacy—a greater input into our education service? Some of the things that we have going on at a very professional level are very inspirational, but it does seem to me that there's almost a gap in terms of access. Is that something that you think needs to be addressed?

Well, the first thing I should say is that that is outside my ministerial responsibility, and I wouldn't want to park my tanks on my colleague's lawn. But, clearly, that kind of interaction is really important. We are coming to the end of a very successful Creative Learning through the Arts programme, which was match-funded by the arts council and the education department. We're coming to the end of that programme, and I will be announcing in further weeks what a continuation of that programme will look like, focusing very heavily on professional learning for our teaching staff, to be able to give some sustainability, so that when an individual project comes to an end, those skills are still retained in the school within that particular professional.

You'll also be aware that the Government, because there were manifesto commitments from parties to establish our music endowment fund, Anthem—. Now, initially, it was education money that helped to provide the seed funding for that particular project because the other department didn't have the money to do it at that time. We didn't want to wait. We had access to some resource. So, we are trying to work on a cross-Government basis. You're absolutely right: we all have to put our shoulders to the wheel here. It cannot be left simply to the Welsh Government, local government or individual schools. We are blessed in Wales with, as you said, amazing, amazing choirs, bands, musical experts, and we need to be able to harness those talents.

Within my own department, we are saying to our universities, especially the royal college here in Cardiff, 'What is your sense of civic mission? What can you bring to the table in terms of providing these opportunities?' So, you know, we're working with the higher education sector to be able to bring expertise and open up the opportunities there. And I must say that I'm very grateful to the universities and the higher education sector in Wales, who very much see themselves as having a responsibility in this area. But I'm sure that my colleagues will be able to send a note on what the arts council and that part of the Government could do to help support this agenda.

Thank you.

Delyth.

I'd like to return to something that you had been saying to David, in terms of professional development and the role that your department might have in helping the music teachers with their professional development. It's just a plea, really, with any plans for teacher development generally, just again so that music teachers are not seen as a 'nice to have' and that service is not seen as a 'nice to have'. I have experience, when I was learning a musical instrument in school, of some teachers refusing to let me go out to lessons because they saw it as a 'nice to have'. So, again, it's more of a plea for you to consider, in teacher training generally, for teachers to be aware that music services, even though they might be brought in, are not something that are an optional extra, but are central to the curriculum.

Sure, and that's part of our initial teacher education programme. That needs to be considered in our professional learning programme for existing staff. But what you've just described there, as teachers being reluctant to release children out of lessons to go and do instrumental tuition—that is part of a system of accountability that we have created that puts pressure on schools to feel that way. That's why, of course, as well as developing a new curriculum, we are developing new assessment and accountability arrangements for our schools so that we don't drive those kinds of behaviours.

Thank you.

John, did you want to—?

Yes. Minister, you mentioned schools with good facilities sharing those facilities with other schools, and being part of a more general effort to provide music tuition and opportunities. Did the private schools in Wales, then, engage in your experience in their more general mission to improve educational standards in Wales in that way, in co-operating with state schools and making available their facilities and the services that they provide, as far as music is concerned?

I have to say, John, on a nationwide basis I am not familiar with the detail of that. So, there could be things that are happening that I am not familiar with. So, I wouldn't want to say 'yes' or 'no' either way. On a purely anecdotal basis, from a constituency perspective—obviously there is a well-known private school in my own constituency—I do know that that school does look to provide some of its facilities for wider community usage outside of the usage of their own pupils. For instance, the theatre spaces that Christ College Brecon has—I do know that they are let out to community organisations for their usage, but I would not be able to give you a definitive answer. I'm quite happy to go away and see what information we do have in the department to be able to write a note. But I'm not in a position to give you a full answer at the moment.

Is it something that you might consider, in terms of—[Inaudible.]

Well, obviously, we don't have any statutory responsibility for the private sector above and beyond Estyn. Obviously, we have a role in evaluating performance of those schools and, as Minister, I have to sign off applications for new private providers, as to whether they are good enough to go onto the official list of private schools. But, obviously, those schools often have charitable status, and I'm sure that the management of those schools are cognisant of that when they're making decisions about how they see themselves as part of a wider community.

Is it something you might consider encouraging? 

School-to-school working, in its widest possible form, we know is one of the most effective ways—. The private sector in Wales is very, very, very small compared to what it is across the border in England in particular. So, I don't know whether that really is a mechanism by which we can achieve what I think we all want in this committee to achieve. I think it is working with the vast majority of schools where most of our children are, which is in the public sector—that's where we can have the biggest bang for our buck. But, as I said, I'm quite happy to provide a note to the committee around any discussions that we've had with the private sector on this agenda. But it's a very small—very, very small—sector. The vast majority of our children are in our state school system and it is collaboration and action there that will address the needs of this committee and our aspirations.

Well, thank you, Minister. That brings us to the end of this session. I think I speak for everyone that that was very useful and I appreciate your candour, and it was a model on how to answer questions, I would say, rather than—. Some of your colleagues occasionally frustrate us—

You're going to get me into trouble, David. [Laughter.] 

—in not necessarily giving us the information we're after or direct responses for which they're then accountable. So, I do appreciate the effort you've put into this session. We will get back to you on who will represent us on the stakeholder group.

We will contact the secretariat with the exact details. It's 29 January, and whoever the committee feels is appropriate or somebody that's available—we'd be very glad to have that continued connection between the work of the stakeholder group and the committee. It might be easier than continually writing back and forth. 

Yes. Thank you very much.

We'll just break until 10.40 a.m., so we can get ready for the next set of witnesses. But can we be pretty sharp about it, okay? Thanks again. 

Welcome back, everyone. We now move to our inquiry into live music, and this session particularly, music promotion. And I'm delighted to welcome Dafydd Roberts, chief executive of Sain, Gwenan Gibbard, Sain and Danny KilBride, director of Trac—you're very, very welcome. I just remind all Members that, obviously, these sessions are conducted in Welsh and English, and, when Welsh is spoken, there's a translation on channel 1.

So, I would just—well, thank you, first of all, for helping us with this inquiry. We'll have very specific questions, and I'll go around and ask Members to put those to you, to help us gather evidence. But, on the general health of the sector, do you have anything that you want to say by way of introduction—all of you, or one of you, whatever, however you want to conduct this session?

I think, certainly, all genres, and the main focus of our inquiry is the viability of the live music sector. But you can't divorce that from recorded music either. So there's a great relevance to the crossover, so that's fine.

Mr KilBride, do you want to add anything?

Yes. Firstly, I have to say that my experience backs up everything that Dafydd and Gwenan have said, and for those of you who don't know, I've been performing since I was nine years old and I'm now 57. One of the things that does strike me that backs this up is that, although as a musician, one has to have a relationship with some form of recorded music; one has to have a relationship with publishers and stuff at a level in your career that you would never have done many, many years ago, the bald fact is that wages, as a musician, haven't raised since my grandmother was complaining about miners earning £5,000 a year. And the number of places that you can perform in where you can get paid for it, due to things such as developers hollowing out city centres in order to create shopping centres or blocks of flats, has gone down, so whilst those of us who survive in the music industry are more resilient and more robust and more imaginative than perhaps we would have been 30 or 40 years ago, there are, as Dafydd said, fewer of us making a living at it. There are still only 1,200 members of the Musicians' Union in Wales and that hasn't changed since I was on the branch committee in 1996.

On the one hand, those of us who do perform live music are more imaginative and more creative because we have to be, but the world that we do it in is poorer in terms of measurable numbers and opportunities. And even now, I'm off to New Orleans next week for the Folk Alliance International to sell the idea of traditional music from Wales, and to support VRï and Rusty Shackle, bands from Cardiff and Newport who are out there. We are doing it in a vacuum of strategic support, and I think that I'd echo Dafydd's sentiment that it's very difficult to tear away the live music scene from the recorded music scene, and audience development, the funded sector, and the way we work. However, we do what we can, so—. I've been thinking an awful lot about this, and the statements that Dafydd's made and that Trac wrote and others who contributed to this: show a world where we're not desperate, but we're not as happy as we were 20 years ago. 

Is this vulnerability then reflected in the venues that are available, especially the range, then, and where are the gaps? The Welsh Government has commissioned a study on particularly the grassroots venues, were any of you involved in that? What's your view? Interestingly, you said there weren't as many venues that could pay, basically, as there were when you started out, so I think your views on that would help us as well—all the witnesses, but perhaps we'll start with you, Mr KilBride.

Well, one simple example that I think illustrates the sector: the Uplands Tavern, which is round the corner from where I live, where I'd done my first performance, in Swansea, was able to have live bands four nights a week and pay not fantastic but respectable amounts of money. But as soon as their brewery insisted that they get a Sky Sports package, that hollowed out £30,000 out of their entertainment budget, and the first people who didn't get used were musicians, because they were investing all that money in sports tv.

So there are ways that we can look at this about how we can help independent businesses and supported cultural and third sector organisations make choices about how we invest in outcomes. But I have to say that if we leave it to the broad free market to do, given that we have this dreadful tendency of imitating Tesco and sort of squashing all thinking of—thinking of alternative provision as opposition, rather than an enrichment, it's difficult to do the right thing when the pressure's upon you to make returns on investment or to insure yourselves, to a prohibitively expensive point, to put on a music festival or a concert in your church hall. We are living in an environment that is less enabling.

Do you want to add anything to that? I thought that example was very instructive, the availability of sports broadcasting now and how that's squeezed out some of the sector. So, that's helpful evidence.

Did you want to add anything, Gwenan?

And, finally from me, by way of introduction, because we will follow up these questions in more detail: the health of the festival sector—does that help or hinder? Does it take attention away from what really is necessary in the viability of the general structure, or is it complementary and helpful? I don't know who might want to start, if anyone wants to engage on that.

Okay, we'd better move on to our specific questions, because we've got—. Unless—. Did you want to add anything? 

No, no, no. I've nothing to add—it's already been covered.

And I'll ask Mick to take us on.

Okay, I have a few questions I want to ask about support and advice, but perhaps, just to start with, there's a report out or there's a news report out today from the Musicians' Union about the music industry generally. It talks about £5.2 billion to the UK economy—the figure's revealed, and it says that the report reveals

'firm evidence that the British music industry is in great shape and continuing to lead the world.'

Now, where does Wales fit within that economic environment, because it seems to me this very much misrepresents what is actually happening in Wales, and probably parts of the UK as well?

If I may, the only figures that come to mind are the ones that I wrote down. The measurable creative industries in the UK are about £92 billion and the measurable creative industries in Wales are £825 million, which does not reflect the ratio of our populations, and, even if we generously take away half of that for London, as an international capital, we're still approximately £1.5 billion short of parity. We—. I believe I can speak confidently for us and most of the music industry—it's very difficult to find any figures for the Welsh music industry. You can't go to the Office for National Statistics and find them. It's very difficult to find them countably and easily, and what I have that allows me to speak comfortably about that is very nearly 50 years of working within the music industry, and my gut instinct says that we're not as well represented within that £5 billion as perhaps we might be, but I don't know whether there are, in fact, statistics that we could call upon. Daf, Gwenan, do you—?

You did refer earlier to a vacuum of strategic support, and that seems to be one of the things that emanates from what you're saying. There is massive growth, et cetera, but it's not clear precisely whether it's related to that sort of industry and what the impact is within Wales. Would you say that it is a major area of concern in terms of the economic strategy in terms of the Welsh music industry that is of concern to you? 

That was a £160,000 fund at the time and it was abolished in 2014. Is it clear to you that there's been no replacement for that, or no-one has stepped in to fulfil that? Is that a fair reflection? 

Yes. 

I think it's true to say many individuals have tried to fill bits of the gap through their own work. My work has the advantage in the traditional music of Wales that I work with professional musicians, and I use what we can to support them. When we developed all our professional training strategies back in 2012, they were all designed to help the artists be the best artists they could be, because there were other people, such as the Welsh Music Foundation, working to develop the music industry so that the artists would have agents, managers, promoters and music professionals, marketers, to work with so that, between them, they could both do that. It's very difficult to do that on your own, and I'm not sure that money in and of itself is the important thing. The important thing is people, is focus; it's people being paid 35 hours a week to think about this and develop strategies and develop relationships and be there. The money is what helps and enables it, but, really, the biggest loss in the Welsh Music Foundation was a team of four or five full-time and six or seven part-time people who were passionate about developing opportunities for Wales-based music, because one of the things that Dafydd referred to is that we have an international music capital several hours' drive away. And so Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Dave Edmunds, all my musical heroes of the 1970s, moved to London and ceased, effectively, to be Wales-based businesses, and so we have two things to address when we talk about a Welsh music industry: one is generating talent that can do well for Welsh musicians, and the second part of it is retaining a core element of that within Wales in the same way that France retains, and Brittany retains, as much business as it can within the geographical territory of the cultural group.

Canada works very, very hard—certainly, the province of Quebec, the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton work very, very hard—to retain the musicians' home base, no matter how far they travel around the world. One of them, my friend, is married to an Australian woman, and they spend six months of the year on literally the other side of the globe with each other, but Cody's base is Prince Edward Island. His income, his cultural identity, the music industry, his management team, his main agent, industry support, the label, the studios that he records in—they are based on a tiny island with a population smaller than the city of Newport.

And this is typical of many other cultures. Many other countries' approach to the music industry is not just to create great music, but also to retain the production within the geographical territory of that culture, because that's what enriches and creates a thriving home musical culture, and a thriving international business is a symptom of a healthy culture at home—not the other way round. We don't create a Welsh music industry in Wales by selling our songs to Canada, or America or to Disney. We create a thriving Welsh industry at home by having a thriving Welsh music sector and a thriving amateur sector, and buildings to support it, and businesses that support it, and music that happens at funerals, live music that happens at weddings, funerals, churches, in kitchens, in schools, in every possible part of a musical nation, and some of that is professional, and some of that professional work is very profitable internationally.

That, I feel, is how we should be focusing ourselves, so it's back to Dafydd's thing of step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, and trying not to do step 4 or 5 before we've done step 1 or 2, or even decided what the journey is.

Just in terms of that, I'll combine just a couple of small points I wanted to specifically ask about, particularly for the record as well. Of course, Arts Council England have set up a capital fund for grass-roots venues. Taking a pure consequential formula, I think it would only amount to about £75,000 for Wales, but, nevertheless, I'd like your comments on that. And then, one other comment that actually came from the Musicians' Union during an evidence session, and that is the concern about the availability of rehearsal and recording spaces within Wales. I wonder if you could perhaps just address those two things: (1) should there be an equivalent fund—would that be of benefit within Wales, if there were, even if it's not an enormous sum—and, secondly, the issue of availability of rehearsal and recording spaces.

Thank you.

Delyth. 

Working, as I do, for a portfolio organisation of the Arts Council of Wales, with an investment review coming up this summer, I can be indiscreetly candid. I believe that there are passionate, excellent experts within the Arts Council of Wales team, and within the client base, that do excellent work. One national development agency for the folk music of Wales being a perfect example, I would advocate. However, what they do is not enough. What they do is based around a whole load of historical things that, perhaps, we in Wales, at a wider or higher level in public life, need to address.

For example, they have approximately £32 million a year to spend, of which about £1 million is operational in terms of running the buildings and the staff, and out of that £30 million, they historically distribute about £5 million, I think, maybe a bit more, to music. And one chunk of that goes to the friends of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and one, bigger chunk of that goes to Welsh National Opera, which means that then there's a remaining couple of hundred thousand pounds going to more supportive organisations like Trac, Community Music Wales, and Tŷ Cerdd have some basic revenue support and they have some delegated funding to distribute towards stimulating the classical music scene in Wales. Once you've taken all of that out, there's not very much left to spend on music, and they are, within our experience, as generous as they can be. VRï, who are going out, and Rusty Shackle, to New Orleans next week are being helped by the international opportunities fund, which is part of the Arts Council of Wales and other arts councils of Britain, a joint fund with the Performing Right Society, and that's great, but as Dafydd says, it doesn't then automatically guarantee that once you've got all of that and you've got some leads in Canada, the United States or Mexico, and you want to go out there and you want to do a couple of tours to develop your market, you then can't go back to them and say, 'But this £4,000 that you've given us to pay for our flights and our hotels and a daily allowance of £30 a day to live in a giant American, hugely expensive convention hotel is backed up by another £12,000-worth of tour support and development that allows us to develop these opportunities, go back to deepen the relationship and keep doing business.'

So, I'd say that there is a problem with the Arts Council of Wales. I don't think it's of their making; I think it's of their historical remit and I believe that in the specific reference to music and live music, we possibly need to do as Dafydd has been recommending and we've been recommending, that you go back to a strategy for, 'What is the music industry of Wales good for?', and, 'What is the participatory music sector in Wales good for?', 'How can we enable this?', and then, 'What becomes the Arts Council of Wales' role in supporting that?'. Is it a role in supporting industry through their music industry development fund, or is that better placed within Creative Wales? Is their role the development and stimulation of the creation of great art at a professional level or is their role to create a culture of participation in art and music, in which case, they should be, perhaps, investing a lot more in choirs, amateur music-making groups, folk clubs and whatever other—?

So, at that level, once as a nation we've answered that, then I think we'll have a much better chance of having a clear vision of what we ask the Arts Council of Wales to do; what we ask the music industry of Wales to contribute to within an arts and well-being or an arts and health policy; how that fits within the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015; and how—. Points 1 of an internationally responsible Wales, a thriving culture and language, a resilient Wales—. All of these things are—. The Arts Council of Wales, like Dafydd said to Mick Antoniw's question about funding for rehearsal spaces, on its own, it's not really very helpful to take away the problem when there's a big hole in the side of the Titanic and we need to have not driven into an iceberg in the first place.

So, to summarise as best I can, I think there's great work that is done. I don't think it goes far enough. I think the reason that it doesn't go far enough is, one, the Arts Council of Wales doesn't have 10-year funding, so it can't make 10-year plans; two, I think the responsibility of, perhaps, the Government of Wales might be to look at the arts council in its longer term investment in benefits as, perhaps, it does with the national health service and with our education system. My wife works for an arts and education network, which is a five-year project training teachers to look at the new curriculum that's going to be coming in in another two or three years' time. That level of long-scale planning, even medium-scale planning, doesn't exist. So, I think it's useless to ask a carthorse to sprint.

And, furthermore, the Canadian model is very interesting, because it's deeper than just the big names stuff. I don't know of a single Canadian musician who would call themselves an independent professional musician who does not rely on the Canadian Government and the Canadian provinces, through the Canada Council for the Arts and the provincial arts investment teams, for help with flights, for loans to help them attract instruments and all the rest. There's an investment in Canada in the arts because they believe, one, it keeps people working; two, it makes Canada a better place to live; and, three, the longer term returns of keeping someone whose only talent is making music out of teaching in a school very badly makes for a better world for the kids as well as the musicians. It's a level of investment that they have and recognise that we perhaps might learn from.

If you talk to Dr Shain Shapiro, who advised Cardiff on its music strategy, when he was working for Canada Council for the Arts he memorably said every industry is subsidised, every industry is subsidised, and music should be no different.  

I've spent several years working with the creative industries team on the research and consultation into Creative Wales, and I'm very, very pleased that it's finally going to happen. Is there more that you could take in and do? There's always more—there's always more. I think the main thing we do is we use Creative Wales as an educative process to develop the music strategy. I don't think we can develop a strategy for music in Wales, or anything in Wales, in a vacuum and then deliver it in a crystal ball to a bunch of civil servants, and then say, 'There you are. Go on, then', especially with something as fluid as music.

I'm a professional musician. I'm also an amateur musician. I'm also the chief executive of a national development organisation. I also play in a couple of pub bands and, occasionally, we get together and we play in kitchens and in bunkhouses and places all over the world for the fun of it. Making music is a fluid process.

Gwenan is another perfect example of an internationally renowned excellent traditional musician and classical musician, and an exponent of cerdd dant, and at the same time you also work with community groups and with choirs, and you work with a record company and you're working with intellectual property, and we've had Gwenan teaching basic folk songs to eight and 12-year-old kids, and working with our professional development programme.

Music is fluid. Rock music is equally fluid, we just don't see that. Rock musicians, as I said in my testimony, endure penury quite quietly, and then they make £20 million. We all live in this fluid world. Creative Wales, as an organisation, and the Government that looks after it and sponsors it, could do well to recognise that developing a music strategy is a fluid process.

We can all see the changes, and Dafydd especially, in producing vinyl as the main validation of a musician's professional thing, which then brings an income stream. We now have a production process where crowd funding and marketing and selling the idea of the album is the entire process. The minute the CD comes out or the streaming goes live, the project is dead.

Music making as an industrial process has changed so much that Creative Wales should, I think, maintain a fluid, flexible attitude towards what is good for Wales, what is good for the people of Wales, what is good for the people who make music in Wales, what is good for the audiences of Wales, and how do we manage that interface between making money and the cultural and social capital that we create and distribute. I think that's what we can do.

Carwyn.

Thank you, Chair. 

Thank you. We set up the course, Gwerin Gwallgo, for 12 to 18-year-olds, and it's now grown. We've added Gwerin Iau, which is, of course, for eight to 12-year-olds. And we now have a national youth ensemble that comes out of it, which works for 18 to 25-year-olds, which has been offered its very first ever £1,200 gig at a festival in Wales this summer, for which I'm extremely proud and extremely glad. But it's not just me, it's a lot of other people investing their time and talent in bringing on the talent of young people, as you suggested.

All human beings have talent. We know this. Talent is everywhere. Something like one in five of us could be able to play an instrument; one in four of us can sing. This is a universal, human thing. The problem is creating systems that spot it, that recognise it, that enable it, that are evolved enough to, for example, have a music teacher in a comprehensive school who can see a kid who's got a talent for the trumpet and make sure that they can find a way of getting hold of some support for their family to be able to lease or buy a trumpet and then put some extra hours in.

There's a friend of mine who now spends most of his life playing French horn in Miss Saigon around the world as an extremely talented brass player. But for every Aled, there's going to be 300 or 400 kids who don't turn out to be pit musicians in the West End. We have to recognise that all of those people need to be recognised, need to be encouraged, need to be able to make the choice that perhaps following the life of a professional musician is not for them. Or if they can't cut it as a bass player or a drummer, to run PA systems, work as music managers, run festivals, work in the support industries of music. The support industries of music is mostly made up of people who no longer want to be musicians or can either deal with the heartache of not being good enough or they could never get a gig.

The talent, though—. To get to that point, we almost certainly have to revisit how our education system works. Because we have children for at least 10 to 12 years, six or seven hours a day, in the presence of educators, in systems that are designed to educate our young people. So, we need, I think, very definitely, to concentrate an awful lot on spending more time investing in the capacity of our formal education system to spot, nurture, and train our young people as an equally valid part of their education experience.

It's no good having my daughter go to Career Choices four years ago, when she's 14, and being told by a teacher that the arts are a soft option. I am quite comfortable performing to 20,000 to 30,000 people around the world, my wife has spent her entire life managing arts projects, and her genetic father has been a professional storyteller his entire life. The arts are not a soft option; the arts, as a profession, are very often a very difficult option, in which we earn significantly less than we could if we concentrated on many other things.

I believe it's our role as a society to use our education systems to look at how that can work within the third sector, within youth clubs, and within engagement systems, to ensure that the people who are working with our young people have the ability to recognise musical talent and the ability to either train them themselves or to pass them on to people who know.

So, is there a problem? Yes, there's one major problem, which is GCSEs. As I said in my testimony, I did eight O-levels, and that was considered a lot back in the 1970s, and it was only given to people who were likely to go to university. My daughter, who wasn't, was made to take 11 GCSEs and had her arm twisted to take another two because they were trying out something in the school. And that meant that her schooldays, from her fourteenth birthday, which was in early September, were taken up with 12 hours of schoolwork. Now, how are you going to be a talented step dancer or folk singer or guitar player or composer or brass player, either at an amateur or professional—? How are you going to develop that talent if you're too tired to breathe properly, if you're too tired to dance? If don't have time to play a guitar, how are you going to do it?

Our problem—we have a problem with our school system—is that we've so over valued some of the trappings of science, technology, engineering and mathematics that we haven't necessarily recognised that, without cultural importance, our education systems are pretty much meaningless. If you can't read poetry, you can't write; sorry. So, our talent problem is there's a block there, at 14, in schools. That's something that you guys can think about and do. There are other problems in terms of youth services, which work with a lot of the kids who don't spend time in formal education. When the clubs disappear, the spaces where kids can perform their first gig, play their first guitar—they disappear. Those are two areas, I think, that the Government can look at and see if it can't make a difference.

Well, thank you very much. The clock has beaten us, I'm afraid. There were a couple of other areas that we would have touched on a bit more, about schools and GCSEs, and also some of the plumbing issues like planning licensing and business rates. We'll write to you just in case you want to give us any views on those things. But I think the range of evidence you gave this morning was very rich; it's given us a lot of insight. So, really, thank you for your contribution this morning. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much for the invitation.

I'd suggest to Members if you want a comfort break, you just leave and come back as soon as possible. But I'm going to try to start the next session immediately, okay? But if you do need just to excuse yourselves temporarily.

So, we move on, and I'm pleased to welcome Ywain Myfyr from BBC Radio Cymru, and Andrew Walton, an artist who goes under the title the Welsh Whisperer. I hope I've got that right. So, gentlemen, you're very welcome, and I think you've already participated a bit in our Wrexham event, so it's absolutely splendid to see you in Cardiff, helping us further with our inquiry into the live music scene in Wales. So, without—

I'm sure you've appeared. [Laughter.] 

Diolch yn fawr for that correct introduction. I slightly misled the committee.

The first questions will be fairly general, so rather than invite you to make introductory remarks, I think perhaps if we go into the questions and then you can add to them if there are areas you don't think we've covered that are of particular interest to you. So, I'm going to ask John Griffiths to start.  

Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. Bore da.

I wonder if we could begin with your overview, really, as to the health of the live music sector in Wales and the UK. 

Just to follow up on venues, in terms of venues across Wales, and the size of venues, would you point to any particular gaps across Wales—the length and breadth of Wales?

The Welsh Government has carried out a mapping exercise on grass-roots venues across Wales. Were you involved in that?

I've made inquiries.

Yes, okay. Could you tell the committee as well about your view of the health of the festival sector in Wales?

Okay. Diolch yn fawr. 

Mick.

Just a few questions about some of the support and advice available. You've already commented, actually, that there needs to be more support, more advice. There used to be a Welsh Music Foundation fund—not enormous amounts. Particularly to you, Ywain, did you ever have contact with that, or any access to it? Did it offer any benefits?

On funding for locations and so on, venues for live music, there is a capital fund that's been set up in England. Can you, perhaps, just outline what some of the funding problems are in terms of live venues that you've experienced? What sort of funding help would actually benefit you in terms of the work and the performances that you do? What are the sort of things that might give assistance to you if we had such a fund in Wales?

That's fine.

Delyth.

Carwyn.

Diolch. Thank you, Chair. 

John, we're back with you, if you want to ask those questions.

Yes. There's been a reduction in pupils taking music GCSEs in Wales. Are you aware of that? Have you noticed effects from that?

Okay. And one other question from me just on rehearsal space. To what extent is that a problem, the availability of rehearsal space?

The final questions we want to put to you you may or may not want to answer, but it's basically about the role of local government. And the first one is very much on the technical side of all this—licensing, business rates and planning issues. Do you have any views of how they affect the viability of local venues?

And the final question builds on this. Obviously, local government can provide quite a role here, especially if we have an active strategy, like Cardiff council is developing a music strategy for the whole authority. I just wonder—the idea of regional music boards, where people in the industry come together to give advice to councils. Do you think that might be useful, or does the thought of going to a meeting strike—? Well, I don't think it strikes you with terror, given your performance this morning. But is that something you'd invest your time in, that sort of board, or do you think, at least for the stakeholders, for you to join together and nominate people onto such boards might be helpful?

Diolch yn fawr. We've finished our questions. I would give you the opportunity, if there's something that you wanted to say—that you've come here and you were just waiting for the question to be asked and it hasn't. Now's your opportunity. But please don't fill the space just because you feel you have to. But if you want to add anything we've not covered that you think's important, I'd give you that opportunity now.

I think I speak for everyone that that was an excellent evidence session and a lot of valuable insights that will be of great practical help with our inquiry. We're particularly grateful, given the fact you've had to travel so far to get here as well. So, thank you for the time you've taken this morning. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch yn fawr.

I'm delighted to welcome our final witness to give evidence this morning to our inquiry into live music and music education, or to look at music education, rather, in this session, and to welcome Bethan Jenkins from Lewis School Pengam. I think we're in, in my experience anyway, the unique situation where we heard such good practice in evidence about Lewis School Pengam that we felt it would be really useful to hear directly from the person who was quoted to us as responsible, and that's Bethan. So, a great welcome to you this morning. Thank you so much for taking an interest in our work and coming in to speak to us.

So, a general question to start, before I ask my colleagues perhaps to look at slightly more detailed issues: what's the formula at Lewis School that's perhaps a little different to common practice elsewhere that has given you this reputation of excellence?

That's quite a hard question, actually, to start. We're an all boys school, I don't know whether you're aware of that, and I think the nature of an all boys school—they're very competitive, initially. As a result of that competitive nature and making the kids actually believe in themselves, I think that's probably the ground, base level. From there on in, I just think giving them high aspirations and making them actually believe that they can actually get careers in the music industry and then promoting that, and then bringing good practitioners in to support that network, is probably what's happened in Pengam, but it's been going on for probably about 10 years now.

So, you kind of start from that position that—depending, obviously, on the talents that the students have—ultimately, it could be a profession for them—

Yes, very much so.

—and that's quite a high bar to set, isn't it?

Yes, but, over the years, I think, because we've managed to prove that to the boys in school—and the girls who are in the sixth form, obviously, but the boys in the school—because they actually believe that it's a valid profession and they can achieve in it and it's as good as going and getting a degree in university, I think that has very much created a little bit of a rollercoaster, a domino effect, so when we got one involved, then—. I'm going back—

Yes. You've got role models afterwards, then, haven't you?

Yes, but I think, going back, I heard Trac speak a minute ago, and they talked about the Lorient festival, and one of the first bands that we had in school was Ofelia and the kids would do a lot of performances in school. And a lot of kids see kids perform, even in just classroom situations, so the sixth form might be in a practice rooms and you'll grab a sixth former and say, 'Right, perform to a class', and they're seeing that on a constant, daily basis. So, I think, because they're used to seeing that, and then those sixth formers will then go out and gig and then they hear about it online and then the kids will see that this is a valid profession, really, to go into.

Thank you. Mick.

One of the areas we've looked at, of course, is the availability of resources and funding, and from reports and evidence that we've had in it's clear that this is a very significant feature, that's there's probably been a running down or a decline in provision for resources available to music. It's become perhaps a poor sister within the education system. Is that a fair comment, a fair assessment? What are your views? To what extent does it impact on what you're doing and trying to achieve?

Holistically, probably throughout Wales. But I go out specifically to find funding to put more into the system. In Pengam—that's how I refer to it, Lewis School Pengam. In Pengam, we're a PFI school anyway. So, as a result of us being a PFI school, we've got a good resource base there from the start. So, that's one area of our funding. Because we've got a recording studio within the school, we've got 30 plus Macs in school that allow the kids to access all the music software that they need to be able to do the music industry work that we do. So, that's our equipment.

And then we've got the funding on a peripatetic level. So, our peripatetic staff come in, and that's through Caerphilly music service and through other providers. So, we've got that stream of funding coming in. And then I will go out and source—and thank goodness for David Chamberlain from Caerphilly arts, who's helped fund the scholarship scheme that you've probably heard bits about. I don't know if you know much about it.

I'm not sure. If you want to add, that's fine.

So, our scholarship scheme started in 2012 with me approaching our then head of music service, who was Keith Errington, saying, 'Is there anything that we can do for the cultural Olympiad?' because it was the Olympic year. 'Is there anything happening in Caerphilly at the time?' 'No, there isn't, but I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll put you on to Dave Chamberlain and see if there's anything happening in Caerphilly.' There wasn't at the time, but David Chamberlain then said, 'But we can put a programme in place in school. I tell you what, I'll give you some money. What are the kids good at?' I said, 'Songwriting.' As a result of that, he said, 'I'll go and find a songwriter for you.' And then, ironically, Amy Wadge came on board. She'd just had her two children. I don't know whether you know who Amy is, but she is Grammy-award-winning now. And as a result, she ended up putting in place a scholarship scheme.

As a result of her coming in and doing week-long workshops where we wrote, recorded and produced an EP of five tracks, and we performed it over in Newbridge Memo, kids were identified and put onto the scholarship scheme. Amy then became a peripatetic member of staff—it's unbelievable, the story couldn't be written—and she came in every week and then mentored those kids who were identified. And then one of the kids—at the time, he was in year 9—Alex Stacey, is now working in the industry and he's writing. He's been signed by APG and has written for OneRepublic and had things on The X Factor, and he's doing particularly well.

That scholarship scheme just then kept on going. Amy went off and won her Grammy and is writing at a very high level in the industry, but is still very supportive. And then we get producers back into school, and we give them the opportunities of going off and writing and doing sessions with different people, as a result of Dave's funding.

So, I know that's a roundabout way of covering the funding angle, but I certainly think there are three strands that make it work. But as far as the music industry bit, it's thanks to Dave and Caerphilly county borough. I hope that's—

Carwyn.

Yes. Welcome. I hope we're not that intimidating. We are all men, though, I notice, on this committee; that's not the best look. [Laughter.] You mentioned earlier on about the music software that you have access to and the fact that some of the students were using the software as part of the work they were doing with the music industry. I just wanted to expand on that a little bit and ask what sort of contacts do you have with the industry, not just in terms of performance but also in terms of production? You already started to intimate that with what you said earlier on. So, what do those links look like?

The first link, really, would be Amy—she came in and did all her songwriting and her writing. So, in my head, how it works with the music industry in school is you've got a writing strand, a production strand, and then a performance strand to it.

Some kids will be particularly good at writing songs. It's called toplining—I don't know whether you're aware of that. And then some kids would be very, very good at production and arranging a track. So, they could just hear it from an acoustic guitar, and then somebody else could hear the whole track in their head, and then put it on to the computer.

As far as the songwriting strand is concerned, there's a lot of support in Pengam as a result of that, just because of the people that we bring in. They're very much songwriters and topliners. They tend to be our ex-pupils who come in. I've got my colleague Steven Butts, who's a very good songwriter himself. So, we've got that support network there.

Production-wise, it's very hard to get a good producer into schools. They're very thin on the ground. But we do have support within that. We've got—[Inaudible.]—he goes by his name; Daniel Evans, his name is. He comes in and does some production for us with the kids. But that's the only real music industry connection we have. I won't talk about the performance thing, because it was specifically about production.

Okay. Well, from the performance angle, what sort of links do you have with industry from that perspective?

Just, really, our ex-pupils, who are gigging on a regular basis, and pupils currently in school as well. So, Owain Felstead, who's in year 13—I don't know whether you've heard of him—he's just come off the Forté scheme. His influence on others, because he's still in school, is fantastic. Because he was on the Forté scheme, they were able to give him some tips on performance, and he was able to perform with people who are older than him in the industry. That had its problems, though. I've got some pupil-voice things, if you're interested, saying about what's happened gig-wise.

But the kids seeing other kids perform, and the boys actually doing it themselves—it's working within the school system—and then ex-pupils coming back into the system and performing for others. I don't think it's specifically, 'Oh, yes, we're going to get this band in from so-and-so or go and watch them.' I think it's very much the boys helping the boys. And I suppose that goes back to your first question, really, doesn't it? How has it worked? I think it's very much a tight-knit community of everybody helping one another.

Thanks.

Presumably, an awful lot of the students take GCSE music, do they?

Yes, we've got higher numbers.

But, presumably, those who don't take music for GCSE, still, some of them will be involved in some of these activities.

Yes, some of them will be.

How does this all work?

There's not many, because we've got such a high percentage of our cohort doing GCSE. We've got two courses. They choose their GCSEs at the end of year 8, so you've got them in year 9, 10 and 11. So, we run two courses: BTEC music technology and GCSE music. In both those cohorts, in all year groups, we've got on average 25 pupils studying for GCSE music or the BTEC course. So, we're picking up roughly 50 to 55 pupils across our cohorts. Our overall cohort is only 120, so we're looking at nearly 50 per cent of our cohort actually studying music in school, which bucks a massive trend, doesn't it? I know that. And then they obviously go on to—because we then run two courses in years 12 and 13: there's BTEC music and AS music, and A2 music as well on top of that.

We've heard from some witnesses that there's a problem, with some schools, anyway—indeed, many schools, I think, is what some of the witnesses said—that the practical side of music GCSE tends to be quite traditional, so it's string quartets or orchestral chamber music, that sort of approach, up to, indeed, the production they're supposed to put on, and that the contemporary side is much weaker. Now, obviously, what you've described is the reverse. I'm sure you still do the Radio 3 stuff, but from your observations of other schools and the state of GCSE music, is its relevance sometimes a problem? Because obviously what gets your quota up so high is that the students think it's relevant and interesting and fun.

Yes, it's just really difficult, isn't it? In Pengam, it's very much to do with the genre that we promote within the school. Because we've also got a DJ, beat box and rap teacher within school as well. People have said it's progressive. I sometimes quote this at some people, but if you go back to Mozart, he was writing for the clarinet; the clarinet was a new instrument at that time. He wanted to write for the current new trend, didn't he? What do the kids want to do? They want to write what's now and what's current. It's a spark in your head, isn't it? If you want to pick up the guitar, it's hard then to learn about all the string quartets. Yes, it is relevant; we have to know about it. But it's that spark. Once you get that spark and you've got them onside, it's easy then to go into all the other—

Mick.

Just one point. You've got, obviously, a large number of people who are doing it. One of the results of the Government's feasibility study is that, increasingly, students from poor backgrounds are not taking up music. There is a very distinct linkage in between affluence and non-affluence, and so on. Do you see that within your school, and how do you try and overcome it?

We support our free school meal kids. You have to pay for peripatetic lessons at school, £50 a term, but the FSM kids don't have to pay for that. As a result, there are quite a number of FSM kids who are having peripatetic lessons in school. I think, once we've identified those and then the talent is there—

And access to instruments?

Access to instruments is there, and access to the space in the department. Because they might not necessarily be able to go home and practice. So, we're there at 8.10 a.m. or 8.15 a.m. and they can come and practice during that time. Our department is open at breaks and lunches and after school. So, the provision is there at that point. So, the support is in the system. There's obviously always more you can do for those kids.

How do you fund the instruments, incidentally? Because brass instruments are phenomenally expensive, the maintenance and so on.

They won't tend to play brass or strings. We're talking about guitars, a pair of drumsticks. That's the other thing, we were kindly donated 50 drumsticks six months ago, that's fantastic for us. If companies could get on board with schools and donate instruments and have access to that, that would be fantastic for departments and schools, to help them. I approached Roland a few years ago, and they've got a scheme, or did have a scheme, where they would take money off instruments going into schools. There's a scheme in England as well called UCan that's a similar scheme, but I don't know whether there's much—I've never heard of anything—in Wales, where you can have a good bit knocked off by multinational companies. And people donating drumsticks, leads—that's the other thing that music departments go through a lot of.

How diverse is the music teaching, then? Because if you're saying they may be into guitars and so on, what about the diversity of other instruments and so on? Do you have that?

Yes, they do access it, they can access it through Caerphilly music service; they do provide woodwind, brass, percussion, strings. But the nature of our—

Are instruments available for them to do that?

Yes, through Caerphilly music service.

Okay, thank you.

John.

First of all, Bethan, just following on from the questions that Mick asked, those parents that do have to pay—do they all pay?

The majority of them, yes. We've just developed a new system in school, which has been—. It's all going through ParentPay—I don't know if you've heard of the online system called ParentPay—and that has helped greatly in the payment of our lessons. But that, obviously, heavily subsidises the overall cost of the peripatetic tuition coming into school services.  

Right. And those who don't pay, their children—

We've got to come to some kind of agreement with the parents at that point, because some parents obviously want their children to learn those instruments. They're not FSM kids, but they're right on the breadline, so they can only pay £20 here, £20 there, and then we come up with a solution for them to be able to do that. 

Okay. Arts Council of Wales, Bethan: do you have much involvement with them? Are they supporting the work that you do? 

I was involved in the lead creative schools scheme and the creative collaborations scheme. The songwriting strength that we had in school fed into those schemes. But, currently, I'm not involved in anything they do. I was also an arts champion for south-east Wales arts network, but I had to give up my position because what I've been asked to do in school is a bit more.  

So, would it be fair to say that Arts Council of Wales haven't been significant in the work that you've done around music in the school? 

Yes. Within the songwriting scholarship, they haven't really been involved within that side; it was David Chamberlain and the arts people in Caerphilly, rather than the arts council. 

The collaboration between Arts Council of Wales and education in terms of culture and arts, and the idea of getting outside arts and cultural organisations more involved with the school and vice versa, is that something that you've been part of in Pengam?  

Yes, as far as the creative collaborations grant was concerned, we put on a play that the pupils wrote and performed over in Blackwood Miners' Institute, but that was for a specific amount of time, it wasn't embedded within the school system. The lead creative schools scheme ran for three years with our feeder primaries, but to keep that collaboration going with the feeder primaries is quite difficult. So, that would be my experience with the—

And that's not happening now. 

It's not happening as much as we would hope. We've got a creativity day coming up, so hopefully the integration between the primaries and the secondaries will be better than what it's been. But as far as what we do on an industry level for our kids and how the pupils have actually got jobs at industry level, the arts council's creative education initiative hasn't been involved, really, within that process. Does that answer your question?  

Yes, that's fine, Bethan. Just one further question from me. Obviously, your school's very successful in terms of music, isn't it—music provision and music standards, and the number of pupils who are taking music and succeeding in attaining high standards. And it's got knock-on benefits, obviously, for career opportunities, and so on. You've got a virtuous cycle going, haven't you, with the ex-pupils coming back and inspiring new pupils, and so on? To what extent would you say that success in terms of music benefits the school more generally, in terms of all the other subjects and general standards of education in the school?   

It gives the kids a lot of confidence, within the system, that they can achieve. There's been no real measure of whether the music has actually impacted on our results as a school as a whole. So, that would be an interesting study to look at. But, on a confidence level, you obviously see music influencing kids. It's mental health, isn't it? It's massive in the news, how music and the arts help mental health. That's something that we see more and more now: the mental health problems of young people in schools is huge. It's something that needs to be addressed pretty rapidly. For people to actually realise that the arts would help mental health, and sport, I think, is really important.

Okay, Bethan, thank you very much.

The final question we have for you is: given the model of excellence you've developed, do other schools come and speak to you, and are you able to offer them advice?

That's an interesting question. About four or five years ago, we tried to create a bit of a hub in Caerphilly with other schools involved. We did a songwriting programme based in Newbridge Memo that about three or four schools attended. But to be able to keep building on that songwriting strategy—I suppose it is—within the other schools, the teachers in those schools have to be on their game to keep that up. And with all the other pressures in education, I think it's very difficult to keep that up and going. I just think that we were very, very lucky initially—it was just a fluke, wasn't it—to get Amy involved, and it sort of sparked the cycle and we just rolled on that. What did you say—it's a virtuous cycle that's kept going? I think we're just very, very lucky to be in that position.

Okay, thank you very much, Bethan. Is there anything you want to add that we've not—? Is there any information we've not drawn out of you that you think is relevant?

Only that I heard, when I was in the waiting room, about live sound and live lights. There's not much happening, there's not much support. There are qualifications out there, but we've never put a qualification in place. There are always boys in school that are very interested in live sound and lights. I think there needs to be some kind of scheme out there for live sound and lights for young people, especially for 16 plus, because it's 18—. When they're 18, they can go and do more, but 16 is a really crucial age.

That's another problem that I've also seen as well. Owain—I questioned him yesterday about gigging—he's a pop artist, and when he's gone and gigged in pubs and clubs, he's been allowed to be there until 9 o'clock at night, and then he's been told, 'Ta-ra, you're not allowed here anymore, you're under the age of 18.' I think something needs to be done for those types of kids. What provision are we doing for—? Sixteen is a horrible age, anyway. We all know what it feels like to be a 16-year-old, and to not be able to go and do your passion at that age is really hard.

And the pop scene as well in Wales—I don't know whether you're aware. We've got these fantastic bands and an indie scene going on, but for pop artists there's very, very little happening—gig nights that are specifically pop based. But when you become a songwriter within the music industry, when you're a topliner, that's all you will do: write a pop song, commercial, throwing out these tracks that are for multi-user, listener-friendly use. They are purely pop artists. There is nothing available to put those kids—. Can you imagine if we had three or four kids in Wales who were pop artists? What's that going to do to our economy? It's going to be massive for our economy. I think that that's really important.

Because Owain has really felt—. Being on the Forté scheme has helped him, but he's come up against all of these. His age hasn't helped him. The fact that he's a pop artist—he's found that difficult as well. So, I think that's an interesting pupil-voice slant to the discussion as well.

Indeed, and a very good note on which to finish, if I may say so? Bethan, thank you so much.

Thank you.