Following our heads up about the annual declarations, T&CS and Safeguarding email sent on 19.06.2024, we’d like to give Associates a further heads up for expected changes coming in September.

As they stand, proposed changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education are unlikely to affect most Associates’ work.

There will be some adjustments to Associate membership T&Cs

• We have consulted with the new GSW music hub and they are agreed that for academic year we will continue to ask for Associates delivering 1-1 and small group tuition to declare their income (anonymously) but it will not yet become a requirement. However, the importance of Associates doing this is outlined below.
• We will also be asking Associates to gather information about the ethnicity of their pupils at the start of the academic year when you’re recruiting and making agreements. We will shortly provide a simple template for this which is aligned to Arts Council’s reporting requirements for music education hubs.
• Following a couple of incidents this year we are also asking Associates to alert us to any disputes they may have with clients / schools and (separately) of any incidents which might lead to a conviction appearing on their DBS whether safeguarding related or not

In terms of gathering information about the economic value of Associates’ work, this is important information for GSW Music Hub and justifies the support proved for you. It reiterates the value and importance of the Associate scheme and we urge you to provide this information in AY 24-25.

Our trial gathering of info for AY 23-24 tells us this, that income declared by Associates delivering 1-1 and/or small group tuition was close to £1.5m.

• Approx. 50% of individual Associates who deliver that work responded
• Most of the smaller Associate Organisations doing that work responded
• One tutor Cooperative also responded

We’re now working on a robust scaling up exercise to show the figure it would have been if everyone had responded.