The Constitution and Lived Experience of English Primary Music Education Policy

The National Plan for music education (NPME), launched in 2011 at a time of Coalition Government in England, sets out the strategy for English music education until 2020. It is a policy which has been criticized for adopting uniform approaches to public music education and for emphasising teacher-led music education pedagogies. In this paper, I draw on Scheurich’s Policy Archaeology methodology to examine the social regularities at work within contemporary English music education policy making. I consider the processes of governmentality at work
within the operationalization of the NPME, and the social justice implications for music education, as we move towards the end of the policy period.