The municipal schools of music in the cities of Dublin and Cork, a legacy of British rule originally established in the nineteenth century, were administered and funded under the Vocational Education Act (1930). In 1949, Order S.I. No. 74 broadened the terms of the 1930 Act to include choirs, orchestras, theory of music and musical appreciation in vocational education, thus opening the potential for music schools to be established in some or all VEC areas. In the same year, County Cork VEC established an already existing small community music provision as a Music Scheme of Provision under the Order and in 1960, Limerick City VEC established a Municipal School of Music under the 1949 order. Unlike the Municipal Schools of Music, the County Cork Music Scheme supported adult choirs, pipe bands and brass and reed bands. During the 1950s and ‘60s the music provision expanded to include traditional music and instrumental music for children.
Hopes expressed during the 1950s that instrumental music services might be established in all VEC areas were never realised, although a small number of rural VECs temporarily funded rudimentary instrumental tuition for a time in mid-
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twentieth century. Writing in Music in Ireland (1952), Aloys Fleischmann expressed the hopes of the time as follows:
As encouraging signs one must refer to...the new scheme of the County Cork Vocational Education Committee by which a network of nearly a hundred choirs is to be created all over the county... It is in such schemes for the promotion of music among the younger generation that any real hopes for the future lies.
(Fleischmann 1952, pp.275-6).
During the 1960s and 70s instrumental music services within the four VECs expanded significantly, until, in the mid-1980s, the VECs experienced severe financial stringency reflecting wider national and international economic contraction. In 1986, the Department of Education withdrew official recognition of the VEC instrumental music services. Teachers were not appointed to fill vacancies arising from resignations and retirements, with the result that work in the VEC Music Services was not perceived by instrumental teachers as a secure career path, resulting in uncertainty in the retention of teachers as many part-time teachers sought full-time employment elsewhere (Personal recollection). Employment conditions of part-time teachers were, for many years, a cause of resentment. My employment as violin teacher at County Cork Music Scheme began in 1980 and I have personal experience of difficult conditions, such as the cessation of salary during school holidays.
It is notable that 1985 was designated Music Year and was marked by concerts and musical activities throughout the country. The Irish Committee for European Music Year commissioned Donald Herron to compile a report on the provision of music education in Irish schools. The Arts Council Report, Deaf Ears? depicted an impoverished and inequitable music provision across all categories of music education. Herron’s Report examined music in Primary and Post-primary education as well as instrumental music education and compared music education in Ireland with that in the rest of Europe. The Report concluded that in 1985 the state of music education in Ireland was not much better than in the previous decades.
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The majority of Irish primary school children leave school musically illiterate, with little vocal or aural training and with a repertoire of songs that is usually learned by rote. As a consequence they have no worthwhile basis from which to extend their repertoire, or to avail of music as a subject at post-primary level, the curriculum which is anyway quite discontinuous with that at primary level. Primary schools have little or no money with which to buy instruments, and even if they had, a large proportion of teachers find difficulty implementing the primary school music programme and particularly the creative sections. There is an insidious view held by some that the arts would be better served by voluntary effort outside school hours…
• All institutions, agencies and individuals providing instrumental tuition outside the schools charge fees. This fact necessarily excludes many young people.
• The non-school system of provision cannot hope to provide for all instrumental group experiences. Their role is to provide tuition in individual instruments. • Major portions of the country are denied the full range of instrumental tuition. This
facility is available only to a fortunate few areas, and within those areas only to those who can afford it.
• Ireland’s unfavourable position (in European terms) is not due to lack of demand as any of the organisations or institutions involved will attest.
…While there are some very hopeful developments such as the music schemes initiated by certain Vocational Education Committees, the overall situation is little short of appalling. (Herron, 1985)
Heron’s report provided an analysis of the poor state of school music and the inequitable provision of instrumental music education in the country. He concluded, that ‘Irish young people are grievously disadvantaged when compared with their European counterparts…the young Irish person has the worst of all European ‘musical worlds’’ (Herron 1985).
In 1993, Cork School of Music and Dublin College of Music became constituent schools of, respectively, Cork and Dublin Institutes of Technology, ensuring their continuation and development as third-level institutions. While City of Cork VEC divested itself of its instrumental music education provision, City of Dublin VEC retained an instrumental music centre at Kylemore College, Ballyfermot, which had already existed for many years as an outreach music-centre of the College of Music.
During 2000-01, a review of the music provisions in the VEC areas of County Cork, City of Limerick and City of Dublin, had a markedly positive outcome for those three Music Services. The O’Brien Report (2001), which emerged from the review,
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recognised the existing teaching allocations, accepted the need for individual tuition and formulated a method of calculating an overall pupil-teacher ratio. Significantly, the Report accepted the concept of affordable fees, which were maintained at the existing level of 20 percent of real cost. New permanent posts and posts of responsibility were recommended to the Department of Education and Science. The Report referred to a widespread demand for music tuition in the country and recommended its provision:
If the Department takes a decision to recognise the music schemes as an integral part of the educational service, the question arises whether it would then become simply demand–led. Other VECs would immediately follow suit and those already providing the service would extend their operation. We are told that large waiting lists exist already. The service is a costly one, has the potential to become more so and it is inevitable that it would develop. While this is true, Departmental control can be exercised through the provisions in the annual estimates. In general, it can be argued that an extension of the service currently being provided would be no bad thing.
(O’Brien 2001)
As Schemes of Provision, the Music Services are funded by local VECs subject to official Department of Education and Skills allocation of teaching hours. The O’Brien Report (2001) established a working methodology for calculating staffing and fee-levels. Naming the three largest Music Services, the report pointed to the fact that fees do not relate to tuition costs. In those cases the fee income at that time represented about 20 percent of actual tuition costs (p.13).
The question of the level of fee, if indeed a fee is appropriate at all, is one which merits attention. On the one hand it could be argued that the service being provided by the three VECs in question is a particularly valuable one from the educational and cultural viewpoint and it is a service that should in fact be provided in the schools as part of the curriculum. This being so it might be argued that the service should be provided free of charge. On the other hand the service is provided, as it happens, to a largely middle- class element of the population and as such a more economic fee should be charged. I believe that on balance the answer lies in between these extremes – there should be a fee but one that is not exorbitant. (O’Brien 2001).
The report recommended retention of this arrangement as a middle course between free tuition and full commercial tuition fees. It is interesting that the author of the report briefly reflected on an argument for providing free access during mainstream
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schooling but countered by identifying instrumental music education with middle- class participation. The factoring of a middle-class status quo into the setting of fee- level clearly indicates an official policy position accepting that instrumental music would be targeted at middle-class families. This is highly significant as the O’Brien Report recommendations underpin methodologies for determining funding and staffing allocations.
The low priority accorded musical participation during childhood is manifested in the severe geographic ‘patchiness’ of provision, the miniscule scale of local supply and a socially inequitable pattern of access and participation. Although music service provision in a handful of VEC/ETB areas is 80 percent publicly funded (20 percent by parental contribution), access to the instrumental courses nonetheless correlates with social class membership. Non-provision of instrumental music services in the majority of local VEC/ETB areas implies low priority and a level of scepticism with regard to the benefits to be derived from funding such services. However, in those local organisations, instrumental music education is regarded as a valuable public good; albeit one that excludes a majority of potential participants. The inequity of both provision and access calls into question the fairness of providing quality affordable instrumental music tuition to only a tiny proportion of citizens. In order to approach the provision of instrumental music in terms of social justice, it must be established that a majority of citizens are missing out on a public benefit or ‘good’. If the personal and social benefits to be derived from playing musical instruments amount to a general personal and material enhancement, such as is the case with numeracy or literacy, then it might follow that all school-going children would be entitled, as a matter of fairness, to a basic instrumental music education.
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