Current status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 20 November 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports that most local authorities are unable to deliver instrumental music tuition to all interested school pupils and are operating waiting lists for instrumental music tuition due to capacity issues, what urgent action it can take to resolve this.
The most recent Instrumental Music Services Survey 2023 Instrumental Music Services: Results from the IMS Survey 2023 (improvementservice.org.uk) (published in December 2023) confirmed that the number of pupils accessing free instrumental music tuition was the highest on record since the survey began in 2012.
It is for individual councils to make decisions about their own provision. For those local authorities which do operate waiting lists, it is clearly important that they work to accommodate as many interested pupils as possible.