Andrew Lloyd Webber Calls for Public Funding for Music in Disadvantaged Schools

Lloyd Webber has written open letters to the Prime Minister and Sir Keir Starmer calling for public funding to scale the work of The Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST) .

Music education is a cause extremely close to Lloyd Webber's heart. MiSST was founded with one simple aim: to ensure that music and musical performance was at the very heart of a secondary school education. It has provided free musical instruments and weekly music lessons for 20,000 children in disadvantaged schools over 10 years.

The letters, which have been co-signed by host of music industry leaders, including Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Katherine Jenkins, Nicola Benedetti, Julian Lloyd Webber, the Kanneh-Mason family and Professor Jonathan Vaughan, Principal of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, highlight the cognitive and social benefits of introducing children to music from a young age, particularly in today's divided world. In the letters, he calls for both Sunak and Starmer to "reverse the tide on musical education and recognise the transformational impact it can have for our children, schools, communities and society at large."