At the time of writing this editorial there is a governmentally organised curriculum and assessment review taking place in England which is about to report. This review will affect all subjects taught, particularly in secondary schools, as well as the assessments and examinations which accompany them. In England, music is currently a statutory subject in the National Curriculum, and as such it is intended to be taught in all schools for learners up to the age of 14 years, with it becoming an optional subject after this, where the youngsters involved choose whether they will do it or not. As noted above, this curriculum and assessment review has not yet reported, but it has provided an opportunity for interested parties to respond with their thoughts regarding it. Clearly though, being able to teach music in the classroom to all pupils ages 5–14 across England, as is the current situation, relies on having a workforce of music teachers to deliver this. As we await the outcome of the curriculum and assessment review, we already know that from 2026, despite under-recruitment to music teacher training over many years (apart from through Covid) it has been announced that new music teachers in England will no longer be eligible for a training bursary and will need to pay tuition fees, whilst trainee teachers in a range of other subjects will receive generous tax-free training bursaries and scholarships of up to £31,000. Whatever the outcome for music in the curriculum and assessment review, access to music teaching as a career will become more challenging and yet the importance and challenge of attracting musicians into the profession who are representative of our diverse communities remains ever important.

Now clearly what is reported back is primarily going to be of interest to an English audience. However, it seems worthwhile at this juncture to consider more widely what the implications of such a review might be, and what sorts of things may be of concern to different audiences around the globe.

To begin with we know that for many audiences in different countries, the very notion of a government department being involved in teaching and learning, and the nature of what is taught in classroom music lessons will seem very strange, and, potentially, for some, rather concerning. But putting these worries aside, let us pose a question we have considered before, and which many of our international papers in the BJME concern themselves with, and that is this, expressed very simply:

And, to which, we can add a further one-word additional question:

We know from many conversations we, the co-editors, have had at conferences we have attended, that for some on the world stage this question is almost beneath them, and unworthy of serious consideration. We have heard statements like “it is obvious”, and “why bother asking the question, music is music”, as well as “western classical music is what matters, and we need it taught in schools as it’s important”. All of these answers are well and good in their own right, but in England at least, children and young people often ask of their teacher “why are we doing this?”, not just in music, but in all subjects. So, why cannot we ask this self-same question of ourselves?

The difficulties that arise in trying to address this question are further compounded when we dig into what music in schools actually entails. In the English situation, classroom music, or generalist classroom music, as it is known in some quarters, is what is being investigated by the curriculum and assessment review. In some countries this would look – and sound – very different; bands orchestras, and choirs in lesson time, learning to play musical instruments en masse in the classroom, and rehearsing specific repertoire, all of these would be normal in some places. In England, though, music lessons are not that, they are, to use that word again, generalist in nature, and not necessarily taught by music specialists. This is particularly the case in the primary school years.

So, for the purposes of thinking internationally about such a review, let us pose the question as to what music education might entail if there was not a weight of tradition, of location-specific histories behind it? If there was to be a blank slate, as it were, what would we want to be taught and learned in classroom music lessons? Or, to go a step further, would we actually want it to be on the school timetable at all, are there people who would prefer it to be only an elective subject, where children and young people, of whatever age, choose to do it?

Of course, in our neoliberal age, this immediately takes us to the bean-counter’s question of who is going to pay for it? What is the role of culture in a hard-pressed taxation system? What should be paid for, and, again, why?

All of these are difficult questions, and as an international community of music education scholars, the “why” questions should be occupying us as much as the “what” and “how” matters. And whilst it can be the case that for many of our international colleagues these are not troubling issues, nonetheless such things have the nasty of creeping up on us unawares, and England may not be the only country that reviews what takes place in schools classrooms, in which case it is probably best to have some answers ready, if asked!

All of which brings us to this current edition of the BJME, which opens with Susan Young’s fascinating commentary on new materialisms in early childhood music education, skilfully situating the focus on materialisms within the wider educational domain. She raises important points about how easily those caught up in ‘new ideas’ overlook relevant interdisciplinary research from the past, whilst sometimes presenting these ‘old ideas’ as new. Young also highlights how this “new materialist approach is surrounded by an aura of enthusiasm, creativity and positivity such that challenges are perceived as hidebound, censorious or even arrogant”; a point that resonates across music education in England, particularly given the worrying sidelining of academic research within recent policy and practice.

Staying with early childhood, Alejandra Pacheco-Costa, José J. Roa-Trejo and Fernando Guzmán-Simón’s article “Music on the move: understanding music as otherwise knowledge in early childhood”. This article “explores cognitive approaches to music and movement, as well as posthuman concepts such as agency, embodiment, affect and desire, (de)territorialisations and assemblages”. The authors provide vignettes from classroom music lessons to examine the practical relevance of examining music through a posthuman lens and draw conclusions about the complexity of musical learning being better understood and progressed through analysing it using multiple theoretical paradigms.

Katy Ieong Cheng Ho Weatherly’s article “Using the model of generative change to facilitate informal music learning” reports on a study in Macau. Using the author’s adapted version of The Model of Generative Change (Ball, Reference BALL2009) as the basis for research, this article reports on a study with 41 first-year education students undertaking a Musicianship course at a university on Macau. It provides a compelling account and critique of how Participatory Action Research was employed to explore these students’ experience of the formal-informal continuum. The article illuminates “a potential gap in the education system’s ability to foster an understanding and practice of informal music learning”.

Social justice in music education is a theme running through many articles published in the British Journal of Music Education. Katya Davisson’s article “The common denominator: the case for an anthropocentric music education” explicitly examines the impact of studying a wide range of music from ‘the theoretical perspective of a Western aesthetic’ (a phrase coined by Eric Lewis (Reference LEWIS2019). In the first part of the article, Davisson critiques the ideology of the previous English government’s non-statutory Model Music Curriculum, and the importance of “unearthing and interrogating its underlying ideologies that present Western Art Music as self-evidently superior and preserve the cultural hegemony of the Global North”. Following this, the article goes on to critique how policies and practices lead to a current musical ontology and analytical criteria employed in schools and the impact of these on multiple aspects of young people’s world view. It concludes with suggestions of how to bring about change in the music classrooms of tomorrow, which is interesting timing as we eagerly await the conclusion of the review of the school curriculum commissioned by the new Labour government discussed above.

Next, we move to an article from Australia, in which Ke Wang and Michael Webb present evidence from a case study exploring East Asian-Australian pre-service and early career music teachers’ experiences of teaching aspects of their heritage music. It highlights a series of interesting findings related to East Asian-Australian attitudes towards teaching particular musics, these teachers’ own personal experiences of their heritage music and the barriers and enablers to weaving culturally diverse music through Australian school music education. As with the previous article, the challenges raised resonate with music education in many locations around the world.

Drawing together research data from 11 countries across America, Europe and Asia, Jon Helge Sætre, Morten Carlsen and Henrik Holm outline key similarities and differences in instrumental teaching practices in higher music education. They challenge the reader to consider multiple aspects of the teacher-student exchanges including those related to autonomy and power relations, and those that appear to come from institutional norms. Their model of structures and differences in instrumental tuition provides a thought-provoking framework for individual teachers and institutions to reflect upon, celebrate and develop their own practices and policies around instrumental teaching.

The final article in this edition brings the impact of policy decisions in England sharply back into focus. Robert Gardiner’s article “Enabling more equitable teaching of advanced GCE level (A-Level) Music in England: a partnership approach” outlines an approach taken by a partnership between a music conservatoire, a Free School and a Music Hub to develop a localised route to A-level music for pupils in one area of England. The approach has been successful in bucking the national trend in this school and local area, although the author points out the issues with schools competing against each other for pupils and the negative impact this can have on other schools in the vicinity. Nevertheless, the model outlined, whilst not universally replicable, has multiple interesting facets that may help schools in other areas to secure and grow provision in these challenging times.

Before we finish this edition’s editorial, we would like to express our thanks to the many reviewers from around the world who give up their time and offer their expertise for the blind peer review process on which the British Journal of Music Education relies. We were saddened to hear of the passing of Elizabeth Oehrle, who served for many years on our International Editorial Panel. Elizabeth’s incredible contribution as a ‘pioneering activist in the field of music education’ is celebrated in an obituary published by the University of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa and can be read here: https://music.ukzn.ac.za/obituary-dr-elizabeth-betsy-oehrle.