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Opinion22nd July 2026

Rethinking GCSE Music

In response to recent articles about the importance of Key Stage 3 music, Greg Coughlin, Â鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½’s Secondary Music Specialist, explains why GCSE music needs major reform.

Â鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½ MusicÂ鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½ Isaac Newton AcademyÂ鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½ Kings Academy

In this image

At Â鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½ Isaac Newton Academy, Ilford, every student in Years 7–9 learns an instrument through large group, timetabled lessons.

This article was originally published by on 17 July 2026.

In response to recent articles about the importance of KS3 music, I’d like to draw attention to how GCSE music is becoming obsolete. If current trends continue, music may not exist as a curriculum subject beyond KS3. Over the last decade, student numbers have fallen from an already low base, many schools have cut music at KS4, and the course remains inaccessible for most pupils. A subject that should be at the heart of school life is diminishing, with disadvantaged students facing the fewest opportunities and the weakest outcomes.

The final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, published by the DfE in 2025, lays bare the scale of this decline. In 2009-10 only seven percent of pupils chose GCSE music, compared with far higher uptake in art, PE and drama.

Today, participation has dropped to just five percent. Familiar pressures – stretched budgets, staff shortages and a narrowed EBacc curriculum – have contributed, but these alone do not explain music’s downward trajectory. Other creative subjects, such as art, which retains a 27 percent uptake, have fared far better, pointing to deeper issues within the design of GCSE music itself.

Bucking the trend

Against this backdrop, the Â鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½ network is bucking the trend and showing that decline is not inevitable. Â鶹avÓ³»­´«Ã½ students are twice as likely to take GCSE music than students nationally (11 percent compared to five percent). And they are 32 percentage points more likely to pass their GCSE music compared to the national average for disadvantaged students (83 percent compared to 51 percent).

in Birmingham – which has 72 percent of pupils on free school meals – ranks alongside my school, (INA) in Ilford, in the top non-selective state schools nationally to deliver music in terms of uptake and progress.

At INA, more than 100 pupils in Years 10 and 11 – around 30 percent of the cohort – currently study GCSE music. The school consistently ranks among the highest performing nationally for GCSE music progress and uptake, with all students passing and over half achieving grades 7–9. Crucially, this success is achieved entirely through curriculum lessons and after school provision, with no reliance on private peripatetic tuition. A-level music also runs every year — now a rarity in state schools.

These outcomes arise from deliberate choices:

• Every single student in Years 7–9 learns an instrument through large group, timetabled lessons, following a clear progression linked to GCSE content
• Music is allocated two periods per week at KS3
• Use of music technology – including sequencing, beat making and production – provides inclusive routes into musicianship, reflecting how young people make music.

This shows that with access, time and high expectations, pupils from any background can excel. But INA should not be an outlier.

Unequal decline

With the Curriculum and Assessment Review now under way, there is real potential to restore GCSE music’s relevance and accessibility. But that promise will only be realised if the subject receives meaningful reform.

Music’s decline is deeply unequal. In schools with the highest proportion of pupil premium students, 61 percent do not run GCSE music at all. In more affluent schools, that figure is just 10 percent. Even when less advantaged pupils take the course, the attainment gap is the largest of any GCSE.

In most subjects, students who work hard throughout KS3 and 4 can achieve strong GCSE outcomes. However, this is not the case in music. Success in GCSE music still relies on access to private tuition and external musical opportunities – which many families cannot afford.

The practical, joyful act of making music lies at the heart of our subject. But developing technical performance skills requires significant curriculum time, alongside accessible performance routes such as singing, technology, drumming and keyboards.

Too often, GCSE music assumes students already perform at around Grade 3–4, leaving schools that develop skills within lessons at a structural disadvantage. This creates a predictable cycle: pupils with private tuition opt in; class sizes shrink; schools cut the subject; and access narrows further.

The right kind of change

We now have a rare opportunity to rethink the qualification. But within this wider context, it is vital that reform does not entrench inequality further. Proposals to reduce coursework, cut composition components, or remove ensemble performance are profoundly misguided. Coursework is not the problem – it is part of the solution. Most of my students at INA have no musical experience beyond the classroom, yet they routinely achieve average scores of 94 percent for both composition and performance.

The central barrier is the appraising exam, which is too long, too content heavy, and overly reliant on prior grounding in the Western classical tradition. Teaching this content consumes curriculum time that should be used to develop students’ performance and composition skills – absolutely vital if students are not developing these skills in private peripatetic lessons.

Reversing GCSE music’s decline will require more than qualification reform alone, including a renewed focus on KS3 as a genuine technical foundation. But the right changes to GCSE music could make an enormous difference, ensuring that music – the most popular art form on earth – remains a viable and accessible subject for all.

Now is the moment to secure music’s future and lay the foundations for future generations to learn, to express themselves and to dream. If we miss this chance, there is a real risk that the subject will continue to fade from our schools.