LEADING pipers fear young musicians will be forced to turn into private tuition to learn to play a skirl after it was revealed fewer than one in four Scottish schools offer pupils the chance to take up country’s national instrument.
Schools in almost a third of Scotland’s 32 council regions do not offer any bagpipe lessons, according to a Freedom of Information request.
But it claims every school in Dundee, Edinburgh and Stirling offers the chance to learn the pipes.
Bagpipe tuition across Scotland remains inconsistent – just 21 per cent of primary schools and 24 per cent of secondary schools offer lessons.
Some pupils find they can learn the instrument in primary school but when they get to secondary school find there are no classes offered.
Tom Johnstone of the Scottish Pipers’ Association, said piping is considered "cool" by pupils today compared to several decades ago when it was considered an "oddity".
And he added: “The bottom line, as I see it, is that prospective pipers need to seek either private lessons via the College of Piping or the National Piping Centre unless they can either find a local band willing to teach them or are lucky enough to be in a school which provides tuition.”
Of Scotland’s 2,398 schools, just 575 - or 24 per cent - offer bagpipe tuition.
The figures came to light following an FOI by the Scottish Conservative party.
Mary Scanlon MSP, the Scottish Conservatives education spokesperson, said: “It is indicative of the SNP’s poor record on music tuition that even the national instrument isn’t widely available for students to learn.
“In many areas across Scotland, it means parents will have to pay for expensive private lessons if they want their child to play the bagpipes, and not everyone will be able to do that.
“We clearly need the Scottish Government to look again at music lesson provision in Scotland’s schools, to make sure this disparity is brought to an end.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “This Government believes that music has a vital role to play in our children’s learning, including learning to play a musical instrument. That is why we invested £1 million in 2012 to boost the supply of musical instruments in schools and give more children better access to a wider range of instruments, including bagpipes.
“And through the Youth Music Initiative (YMI) we have supported more than 225,000 young people in and out of school to get involved in music making over the past year and we will maintain our annual £10 million budget for this programme in 2016/17.
“The YMI included £100,000 for the National Piping Centre to deliver projects for young people.”
Aberdeenshire, Clackmannanshire, East Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire, Midlothian, Moray, Renfrewshire, Shetland, South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire all have no schools which provide bagpipe lessons.
My opinion is that piping and drumming is considered "cool" by boys and girls nowadays compared to 30/40 years ago when it was a bit of an oddity and mainly confined to Boy Scouts and Boys Brigade Pipe Bands.
My local school, St Columba's Kilmacolm offers piping and drumming tuition at a cost to their students and have a thriving pipe-band.
It would seem to be the case that it is the private schools are leading this and most probably because they [the parents] can afford it.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that prospective pipers need to seek either private lessons via the College of Piping or the National Piping Centre unless they can either find a local band willing to teach them or are lucky enough to be in a school which provides tuition.
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