The Royal Academy of Music has announced a new funding scheme aimed at “widening access to world-class music education”.
The project, which will fund a foundation year study course for disadvantaged state-educated students, has provoked criticism from private school figures as no privately educated candidates – including those who attended independent schools through bursary schemes – will be considered for the new scheme.
The RAM has stated that the programme will “provide a targeted pathway to conservatoire training for talented young musicians who have previously faced significant obstacles to advanced musical training”.
They added: “The Academy will be undertaking a focused recruitment effort to find talented, state‑educated musicians aged 18 to 20 who’ve experienced financial or other barriers to opportunity, with at least 50 per cent to be recruited from outside London.”
This detail has been met with pushback from private school bosses. Philip Britton, chair of the Heads’ Conference, a collective of independent schools, told The Times: “There are plenty of less well-off people in independent schools and plenty of privileged people in state schools.”
“[It is] time to cut across this idea independent school pupils can be discriminated against as a group,” he continued. “All sorts of people feel it is fine to join the lazy bandwagon.”
The RAM is the UK’s oldest conservatoire, and counts among its alumni a number of world-famous musicians, including Annie Lennox and Sir Elton John.
A number of Britain’s most successful musicians have been educated privately, including Charli XCX, Ed Sheeran, and Lily Allen.
Pop artist FKA Twigs attended private school on a scholarship, describing herself as a “bursary kid”, before going on to study at the prestigious Brit School.
Singer-songwriter Ella Eyre also attended Somerset’s Millfield School, a private institution, on a swimming scholarship, and went on to study at the Brit School.
Academy principal Jonathan Freeman-Attwood said that the new RAM programme, which begins in July, is designed to help “those who desperately need and deserve it”.
“The academy has been growing its widening participation work with increasing energy, investment and output in the last decade,” he told The Times.
“A focused foundation year gives us the chance to do what we always dreamt: to identify talented and committed young musicians for whom a shortage of access to teaching and opportunity has left them on the cusp of what is needed for pre-professional programmes.”
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