Michael

Good questions. I agree that sending my children to independent schools doesn't support the National Curriculum, but nor does it oppose it. My position, I guess, is that if we are to have an exhaustive National Curriculum, it should include music, but I'd prefer a less exhaustive one - and if we did have one, it might have saved me and others a fair bit of money, and resulted in greater social cohesion.

Re ICT vs. music - that raises a whole bunch of other questions around the problem what what exactly should be taught under ICT is difficult to specify, because the subject changes so fast. I did once do some voluntary work in this area, and encountered the ECDL - European Computer Driving Licence - whose contents felt to me as if they had been dictated by Microsoft to give the impression that theirs was the only way to do things. Music, by contrast, has a long, well established tradition of education, of which it will be sad to lose any more. Talk to singing teachers about how the sol-fa system has been lost. It is hard to appreciate it if you're not at least a bit familiar with the area.