A National Plan for Music Education: A comparative “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” analysis across England and Wales

In 2022 both England and Wales released policy documents entitled A National Plan for Music Education. While the English policy was a long-awaited update to a similar policy published in 2011, the Welsh policy was unexpected and seemingly lacked precedent. Despite some attempt to align itself with the concurrent implementation of the new Curriculum for Wales, it more closely mirrored the English policy in seeking to address inequity in music education provision through the development of local music services providing extracurricular instrumental and vocal tuition. In light of these similarities, in this article we undertake a comparative policy analysis framed using Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” approach. We explore the way in which the English policy problematizes access to “excellent” music education and proposes new discursive and institutional structures to “level up” opportunities. In contrast, we highlight how the equivalent Welsh policy conceptualizes the problem of music education as relating solely to access to “learning to play a musical instrument” and proposes the expansion of extracurricular music tuition through a national music service as the solution. Finally, we compare these two political approaches and ask whether the notion of “good-enough” music education could disrupt elitist notions of training in high-quality art musics and unlock new possibilities for music education.