That news item refers to the latest statistics on the performance of music education hubs (MEHs) in 2016/17 (which are funded by the Department for Education, via Arts Council England), just released by (ACE).
Numbers of children being reached by whole class ensemble teaching (WCET) are indeed up to 711,241, an increase of 8.8% on the previous year, reaching 9.23% of the total school population in England. But:
- WCET is not reaching every child by any stretch of the imagination
- where it reaches them, it is only for one to three terms of their entire 13-year school life in a whole class setting, on an instrument not of their choosing
- that may mean that more children are now having at least a taster of an instrument, but after their one or three terms learning an instrument, if a child wishes to carry on, parents have to pay.
