Mona Siddiqui - 25/08/2026

Available for over a year

When my children were at school, I knew I wanted them to have the opportunity to learn at least one musical instrument. Of course, I hoped they would learn to play and read music, but to also appreciate the discipline that’s part of any creative art. My eldest was around 11 when he first complained about piano practice he said, `all my friends have given up’ and I just said `I know it’s hard now but when you’re 18, playing the piano will be the coolest thing you do.’ I had only enjoyed a few piano lessons as a child and to be honest I knew I wanted them to continue with music because I hadn’t been able to. But I also saw music as central - not marginal - to their education, something that would help them understand life, learn to see and listen to the world more deeply. Of course music can be learnt and played in many ways but the recent Ofqual report which shows A-level music entries fell by 4.9% should tell us something uncomfortable about what we value. The number of young people also taking arts GCSEs in state schools has fallen by just over 40% since 2010. It shouldn’t surprise us that in an education system increasingly driven by grades, employability and measurable outcomes, music can look like a luxury. It’s futile to pit the arts against the sciences – both are creative, have intrinsic worth and contribute economically and culturally to any society. A civilisation needs both the knowledge to change the world and the imagination to ask whether it is changing it for the better. But maybe the true value of the arts lies in its subversive potential, the capacity to leave us unsettled. A piece of music can break open a memory, a poem can make us see a familiar injustice differently, a song can turn strangers into a community. In a world seemingly obsessed by the power of technology, the arts always whisper `look again’ to remind us of our humanity. Like all forms of beauty, music can connect us to eternity. This understanding was intrinsic to the Islamic intellectual history, where poetry, imagination and the aesthetic experience were not seen as distractions from truth but as ways of approaching it. The great Muslim polymath al-Ghazālī saw beauty not as an escape from God but a way of noticing God. There are many reasons why young people don’t take up or continue with music at school, but if we ignore the arts, our lives will be poorer for it. After all, before young people learn how to make a living, they also need spaces where they can learn how to feel, to wonder and to love.