Was Covid-19 the beginning of the end for school music education?

Introduction: COVID-19 impacted a wide variety of social environments, including education in schools, but its continuing impacts are less well understood and researched. The pandemic was particularly problematic in school music, where music-making and creating was significantly impeded. Five years on, the picture remains patchy, but the impact of COVID-19 appears to be a continuing and unrecognised dynamic in music school settings.
Aim: The research presented in this paper will focus on Key Stage 3 Music (11-14-year-olds) in secondary education and presented theorisation and findings from research conducted during the pandemic. The presentation will go on to identify gaps in understanding and knowledge about what we know about how COVID-19 continues to impact schools and educative experiences of young people
Method: The study uses a sequential explanatory mixed-methods methodology to investigate research data. This consisted of a national online research survey (n=59) from 6 regions across England, and semi-structured online research interviews (n=12) with music subject leaders in schools. Results were analysed thematically and using processes of descriptive coding to allow conceptual mapping to occur.
Results/Findings: Results indicated impacts of school interpretations of ‘COVID-19 safe’ environments as interpretated and enacted by school leaders impacting accessibility of music education to young people. These are developed into 10 themes of COVID-19 impacts of music in schools including: teaching music unmusically, destabilised musical collaboration for young people in schools and shifting music teacher identities. The presentation will include how these themes continued to present themselves in school environments since the pandemic.
Discussion/Conclusion: The research is theorised into a model of funnelling of music education and what this has meant for the way music education is practised and realised in secondary schools. This research presentation will then consider how COVID-19 has impacted music education provision in England and how this related to the existing picture of provision for young people. It will conclude by suggesting that the hidden impacts of interpretations of what was permittable during the pandemic have become part of unspoken framing of musical opportunities in schools.