31. Memorandum submitted by Professor
Curtis Price, Principal, Royal Academy of Music
Thank you for your letter of 3 March asking
for my views on the Government's White Paper The Future of
Higher Education.
The first manifestation of the effects of the
White Paper on my institution came in HEFCE's recurrent grant
letter of 4 March 2003. Our core grant has been cut by 5.5% to
provide funds for redistribution across the sector for widening
access. This equates to a loss of core funding of £196,000,
of which only some £32,000 will be reallocated to the Royal
Academy upon delivery of an acceptable strategy for widening access
and retention.
The effect of this is that Royal Academy of
Music, by many measures the premier music conservatoire in Europe,
is being severely penalised for recruiting and retaining excellent
students. We are deeply committed to widening access for those
who meet the required standards and are well advanced in developing
effective strategies, but HEFCE, far from giving us the means
to implement these strategies, is reducing our grant.
For the Royal Academy of Music, the White Paper
seems to be having exactly the opposite of its intended effects:
fewer resources for teaching, research, widening participation,
and student retention. This comes at exactly the moment when we
should be investing in all these areas in order to maintain our
capacity to train professional musicians to the highest international
standard. Does the Government really want future artists of the
stature of Simon Rattle, Leslie Garrett, Felicity Lott, Annie
Lennox, Joanna MacGregor and Elton John (all ex-Academy students)
to have to go abroad for the kind of training they should receive
here?
March 2003
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