Skip to main content
Ed Watkins

Ed Watkins

Music educator and choral conductor in London; founder of Inner Voices youth choir and Elemental, lead author of the DfE's Model Music Curriculum and Ofsted's Research Review in Music.

Sep 29, 2026

6:25
Is it a music problem? Is it the school funding? Is it curriculum problem? What do you reckon it is?
6:31
I mean, so on, obviously we'll talk about lots of aspects of this today.
6:35
On this one, this is just this, these are educated guesses as to why, because a lot of the problems, a lot of the challenges in taking A-level music have been the same.
6:48
So as you know, there would have been similar challenges for a child making that decision in 2010 because the course is reasonably similar and the GCSE that introduced it is reasonably similar.
7:01
So the pathways haven't changed enormously.
7:04
But what some of the things that might have changed are the huge focus we've had on STEM within our sort of school system in the last 15 years, which has been a very good thing for those subjects.
7:19
And, you know, has been it's been sort of wonderful to see the improvements that our school system has made over time in various different ways.

28 MINS LATER

35:28
So in terms of the figures then, so are you saying in your research that the majority of the A stars for A-level predominantly come from the independent, or is there perhaps something else that you can read in the data?

We value your privacy

We use cookies to understand how you use our platform and to improve your experience. Click “Accept All” to consent, or “Decline non-essential” to opt out of non-essential cookies. Read our Privacy Policy.