“I want to ensure that music counts”: Sir Keir Starmer on education and access to music

6 August 2025, 17:39

"I want to ensure that music counts" - Prime Minister on arts education funding | Classic FM

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer spoke to Classic FM’s Dan Walker about the role of music in the UK curriculum, the life skills students can gain from a musical education, and his own relationship with music.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Sir Keir Starmer, has today announced a new funding package aimed at young people, to help them ‘re-connect’ with their communities.

The £88 million investment will go towards a number of schemes and programmes, from youth clubs, Scouts and Guides, to music, sport, and art activities.

Starmer spoke to Classic FM Breakfast’s Dan Walker from Milton Keynes Central Library, having just shared a music lesson with a group of children on their school holidays.

“Not enough children have the opportunity to play music,” the Prime Minister told Dan, saying the subject is a “hugely important” part of the UK school curriculum.

“That’s why we’re here, in Milton Keynes – this is a school holiday activity and they’re playing instruments, and for some of them it’ll be the first time that they’ve ever done anything like that.”

The class was learning to play the choral ‘Ode To Joy’, from Beethoven’s Symphony No.9. The composer is a particular favourite of the Prime Minister’s, as he added: “You know, with Beethoven, the master, bringing together voices into a symphony for the first time ever.

“And here we are in Milton Keynes with children who are 7, 8, 9 years old playing the chorus with their fingers. That is brilliant, and we should do more of it.”

Read more: Prime Minister Keir Starmer plays flute, recorder and piano, and was a Guildhall music scholar

The skills young people gain from a musical education, Starmer says, are valuable beyond just their academic studies. They also learn vital life and communication skills – something he recognises from his own experience as a Guildhall scholar in his youth: “As everybody who’s ever done music will know, you’ve got to work in a team,” the Prime Minister told Dan.

“You have to play your note or your instrument at the right time, you’ve got to have eye contact.

“Those are skills that go way beyond music. I don’t know how many businesses say to me: ‘Keir, we can do the technical skills they need for our business, but what we lack with young people is the eye contact, the confidence, the working in a team’.”

Those are skills that the Prime Minister feels have positively impacted his career, and gifted him “a real life-long love of music, and curiosity about music, which I don’t think I would’ve ever otherwise got.”

Music still plays a large part in Sir Keir Starmer’s life: “I listen to music all the time,“ he told Dan Walker. “Every day, I will have music on. If I’m working late at night in my study in the flat, which I often am, I’ll have music on in the background. It’s hugely important and matters to me.”

Read more: Sir Keir Starmer: ‘We have lost sight of the value of music and arts in schools’

However, the education system has seen a stark decline in the provisions of creative subjects for more than a decade. According to a 2024 report by the Cultural Learning Alliance, half as many students were studying the arts in 2022/23 compared to the 2009/10 academic year, and 42% of schools no longer enter pupils for music GCSE.

Sir Keir Starmer called the statistic “a real shame.”

“In the curriculum review I’ve been clear,” he told Dan Walker. “I want to ensure that music counts towards the curriculum, because at the moment it doesn’t really count and therefore many schools don’t do it, and therefore many children don’t get the opportunity.

“We have to change that and give them the chance, and that will give them lifelong enjoyment if nothing else. And some of them will turn out to be brilliant musicians, and it will give them, in my view, something really important which is confidence.”

Read more: ‘We want every child to get the chance to play a musical instrument’ – Sir Keir Starmer

The Prime Minister also shed light on how music plays a role in his life as a parent.

“When our children were born – they’re now 17, my boy, and 14, my girl, they’re my pride and joy – and when they were born Vic [Starmer] and I said we wanted them to be happy and confident. And music and sport [and] drama can give children confidence in a way they may not have confidence in the classroom.

“Because it gives them a voice, it gives them something they’re good at. And confidence is hugely important.”