GCSE Music - time to pull together to make it better

You may be aware that GCSE's are going to be over-hauled. Can you spare a few minutes to give your views?

Since early 2013, there has been work going on to ascertain a cross-section of views of the GCSE Music and what can be done to make it even better in the future. In recent months, the Music Education Council (MEC) has pulled together a working party from across organisations to draft ideas for a new GCSE curriculum which were widely debated at a MEC meeting in London a few weeks ago.  I have been in charge of drafting the ideas of the teachers and other music professionals, who in turn have been feeding in the idea from the organisations (and even pupils) which they represent.  

Ofqual and some of the examination boards gave presentations at the recent MEC meeting; it is clear that Ofqual value the input from the sector all working together in this way, particularly since there is no longer subject specialism for music at Ofqual these days.  They were complementary about the cohesive, sector led work which has taken place to date.  Perhaps at last we are starting to put music education's reputation for not pulling together (embarrassingly mentioned in the Henley Review of Music Education), well and truly behind us???

In order to canvas further views, I noticed that the ISM have launched a survey on their website.  You can access it here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCSEmusicreform

GCSE Music, along with all of the other arts subjects, is already on sticky ground and fighting for its place in the  curriculum.  The EBacc u-turn never really happened, despite the sensational headlines, and on one of the main accountanbility measures, schools are still judged on pupils' results in subjects which exclude the arts.  

If you have a few minutes to spare, please add your views to the survey above.