Introduction

Music Education Hubs (MEHs) are required to submit an annual data return to Arts Council England (ACE) about music making in their area, as part of their funding agreement. We are asking for your help to gather the information we need. MEH funding directly benefits your young musicians, including: subsidised First Access, subsidised instrumental tuition for low income families, instrument hire scheme, and free CPD for Associate Providers and teachers in schools. An accurate data picture of musical learning enables us to share and celebrate the fantastic work that you are doing.

Many questions are structured to collect aggregated data for the Arts Council. Other questions ask about your work and how we can help you. There are 5 sections:

1.    Instrumental & Vocal Tuition (and other individual and small group music making such as songwriting and music tech).
2.    Groups, bands, choirs, ensembles.
3.    First Access / Whole Class Ensemble Teaching (WCET).
4.    CPD, curriculum teaching, early years & anything else.
5.    Details of schools where you work.

We ask all Associate Providers (individuals and organisations) to complete the introductory 'About you' section of the data return and the CPD questions, even if you have no data to report.  Members of Salisbury Area Music Co-operative and Swindon Music Co-operative don’t need to report data about work they do through the co-op to us as the co-ops will give us that data directly. If you are a member of a co-op and do teaching work outside of the co-op, please tell us about non-co-op teaching on this form. You do not need to tell us about work which is through another organisation (such as Wiltshire Young Musicians, Salisbury Area Young Musicians or another Associate Organisation) as they will give us that data directly.

In order to target Wiltshire Music Connect's tuition subsidy effectively, we have started to ask for more detailed data about your pupil's circumstances (tuition subsidy other than from the Hub, Pupil Premium and Special Educational Needs). We understand that tutors do not always have this information. Please only complete these columns if you already have accurate data – we are not asking you to estimate numbers or to spend additional time gathering this data.

It’s possible that not all sections will be relevant to your work – you’ll be able to skip through the sections which aren't relevant. We value all kinds of music making – if you feel that the work you are doing with children doesn't fit into any of the categories, then please tell us about it in Section 4.
A few pointers:
  • This Data Return concerns children you will have worked with during the September 2023 to August 2024 academic year.
  • You don't need to differentiate between students you taught for a whole year and those who ceased lessons during the year or who started later in the year.  Just count each student once.
  • If you’re not able to get all of the more detailed information we need (such as gender and Key Stage) then please estimate. 
  • To be more inclusive, an additional non-binary/other gender category has been added to the answer options for questions about pupil numbers.  Where you know that a young person you teach identifies as non-binary, you can show this in your data submission.  However, no one is requesting that you survey your pupils about their gender identity.   
  • It is not possible to start completing the form, save some data and then return to finish later.  Please use the PDF version to collate all your data before you begin.

Click here for the PDF version of the questions.
FINAL DEADLINE: Monday 1st July 2024 at 12 noon. 

Please note: Due to the Music Hub reinvestment process in 2024, ACE require hubs to submit their annual return much earlier than in previous years.  Wiltshire Music Connect have brought forward the window we are asking Associates to submit their data by 2½ weeks.

For activities taking place in July and August please submit estimates for participants and if there’s significant variation, please let us know in September.   
                                                                                                            
We'd encourage you to submit your data return as soon as possible.  As an incentive, we will do a prize draw to win money to spend on musical instruments or equipment relevant to your work for data returns submitted by 12 noon on Monday 14th April 2024 (3 x prizes of £100).  Everyone who submits a data return before the final deadline of 1st July will be entered into a second prize draw (another 3 x prizes of £100) which will be drawn after the final deadline.  You can choose to enter these prize draws at the end of the data return.                              
Data Protection
In 2018 we reviewed our Data Protection processes to ensure they are compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).  Anonymised data is not subject to the GDPR.  As long as no individual child is identifiable in the data we are asking you for, then there is no problem with you sharing it with us.  Please be aware that you shouldn’t share any data which would enable the identification of an individual young person, without parental consent.  We need to advise you that Wiltshire Music Connect contracts a third party to analyse research and monitoring data on our behalf (including this Data Return). They are contractually obliged by us to comply with Data Protection legislation. Our privacy policy is available on our website.

T