Save Midlothian Music

To: Midlothian Council

We ask Midlothian Council to reverse its plans to restrict primary school music tuition to current pupils, thereby gradually eliminating music tuition from primary schools altogether. By removing music at the primary school level, we will dramatically reduce the numbers of young people who are able to pursue music at secondary school, university or college, and in later life. This represents both an unprecedented attack on the cultural richness of our local communities and a failure in our obligation to ensure that all of our young people have opportunities to express themselves through the most powerful of art forms.

As you are aware, Midlothian faces significant challenges with respect to the aspirations and destinations of its school leavers. Music and the arts offer possibilities for all children to be inspired in school, as well as alternative routes to success for many young people who may not engage on other academic levels. The arts are central to the core aims of the Curriculum for Excellence, and have proven benefits for individual confidence and self-esteem. If we deny these opportunities for our young people, we remove a crucial outlet for their participation in the community, potentially increasing the senses of alienation and exclusion that many young people already experience.

We feel that a removal of music tuition in primary schools will have a long term detrimental impact upon future generations, and that the financial and human costs of this will far outweigh the 48,000 per annum saving achieved in the short-term. Please do not further disenfranchise our young people. We ask Midlothian Council to work with its local schools, music teachers and parent councils to identify ways of maintaining music provision in primary schools.

Sincerely,

The undersigned.