At the start of September, I assumed the voluntary role of chair of governors of The Purcell School, the world-renowned specialist music school in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
I started out as a music-teacher, before heading schools for 28 years. Nonetheless, I’ve barely governed, let alone chaired one. So what’s possessed me to take on this significant responsibility?
It’s this: I hope I can help the school in what I regard as a vital mission. The Purcell School, one of a small group of specialist music schools (with equivalents for dance), exists to meet the need both of exceptionally talented young musicians to fulfil their distinctive potential and of the nation as whole to flourish artistically.
Let me try to justify that ambitious claim.
First, if education is to be “suitable” to a child’s needs (as the 1944 Education Act declares), a specialist music (or dance) school is almost the only kind of institution that can adequately support a prodigiously talented musician or dancer.
“Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of 10,000 hours precisely describes the development of a top professional musician or dancer.”
Yes, some outstanding musicians make it to higher education and into the music industry by other routes. Yet those few invariably live close enough to attend one of London’s junior conservatoires every weekend (with precious few alternatives in other UK cities) and to receive tuition from a top teacher/performer based (as most are) in or around the capital.
Then there’s practising: Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of 10,000 hours precisely describes the development of a top professional musician (or dancer). UK schoolchildren pursue a full broad curriculum until GCSE at age 16, and I mean no criticism of mainstream schools when I say few can offer much flexibility to musicians or dancers either in the number of subjects they study or in personalised school timetables. So those hours of practice must be squeezed in before and after school.
By contrast, Purcell pupils have orchestral and ensemble rehearsals and their own personal lessons during the school day, within an adapted curriculum. Daily concerts furnish performing experience, and boarding (for most) saves hours spent on the school run, allowing for yet more practice, and still a period at the end of the day to unwind.
On arrival at The Purcell School, students invariably describe their happiness at being able to concentrate on the music that drives and inspires them, surrounded by like-minded and similarly talented peers. Sadly, they frequently rejoice also in their freedom from bullying suffered in mainstream school because they were “different”.
“Purcell students describe their happiness at being able to concentrate on the music that drives and inspires them.”
Purcellians, proved through audition to be prodigiously gifted, are privileged to benefit from their specialist school: yet few come from wealthy backgrounds. Some 70 per cent are funded by the government’s Music and Dance Scheme, the places means-tested: most parents’ incomes are modest, allowing them to contribute only a small proportion of the cost, a fine example of “levelling up”, if you ask me. Almost all of the remaining 30 per cent are supported similarly by bursaries: fund-raising for these is a major focus (and, post-Covid, a challenge) for the school.
Specialist dancers and musicians proceed with few exceptions to higher education to perfect their skills, thus forming the next generation of performers and teachers.
“The specialist schools very precisely furnish the next generation of performers.”
Pandemic and lockdowns have wrought terrible damage in the arts: but the rapid resurgence of, for example, commercial theatre (especially musicals) reminds us of the income they generate for the country. Pre-pandemic estimates put music’s annual contribution to GDP at around £5.8 billion (rather more, I suspect, than the much-vaunted recent Australian trade deal). Moreover, the shift of much Hollywood movie-making into UK facilities will see a corresponding growth in work for session musicians who, acknowledged as the best in the world, will record the soundtracks.
As newly-departed education secretary Gavin Williamson recently proclaimed (in a dismally utilitarian vision), schools produce the workforce of the future. As it happens, the specialist schools very precisely furnish the next generation of performers. Without them, the nation’s arts industry would suffer a swift, steep decline in both quality and quantity.
So in retirement I’m doing what I can to help The Purcell School meet the needs both of its students and of the country. Maybe I’ll get some opportunities, at the same time, to demonstrate the truth of the claims above.