We celebrate the 30th year of this Music Awards Scheme with good news that in terms of overall commitment, range of musics covered and volume of activity standards have never been better.

The Music Standards Fund, and the Welsh and Scottish equivalents, continue to make a material difference. And this year especially, the initiatives and financial contributions of Youth Music were making key and very visible differences to extra-curricular music.

It will not escape readers notice that there is an imbalance in the submissions from England, ie none from the East or West Midlands, Merseyside, South or West Yorkshire. Yet this is not necessarily a serious matter, for year by year the list of participating LEAs changes; so next year may well see several submissions from those regions.

We are pleased to contribute to the growing body of evidence that pupils are motivated to take up or stay with music by the experience of hearing and seeing live music performed by musicians in school settings.

As always, we pay tribute to the heads of music services, LEA advisers, teachers and, in many cases, parents who demonstrably work above and beyond the call of duty to make music education succeed in their areas (and sometimes even outside their own areas!).

The first part of our report is devoted to those submissions which, while not, this year receiving an award, do nonetheless qualify for an honourable mention for what they have achieved in the year and, importantly, for the promise contained in their entries of even bigger and better things next year!


NB. Notwithstanding an unfortunate clash with a demanding and important DfES survey of Music Services' provision (the outcome of which will influence Government decisions about future performance standards), which some Music Services had to prioritise, we received a good number of submissions. In 2003 we will ensure that our questionnaire is circulated earlier to enable even more authorities to respond.

[ Download the whole report in Acrobat PDF format for easy printing ]

[ Photographs by courtesy of Gateshead Music Service ]