‘I had a really tough first year. I had a real bastard of a teacher. I’ve come to realise that he’s an amazing player, but he really, really broke me.’
This was how a student at a UK music college – who I interviewed while researching my book Class, Control, and Classical Music – described his first year. His experience of being bullied by a teacher – to the point where it ‘broke’ him – was one of several accounts of such behaviour that came up in my research. A younger pupil described how her teacher’s abusive behaviour led her to give up cello. She commented: ‘I sort of assumed it was my fault, but looking back on it I don’t think it was 100% my fault. Probably I was slightly to blame – maybe I just wasn’t good at cello.’
These heartbreaking accounts are not isolated incidents. An exposé in the Evening Standard (Butterworth, 2023) of toxic behaviour, ‘grooming’ and emotional abuse in classical music teaching revealed experiences of sexual harassment, bullying and humiliation in music education in the UK.
While we don’t have any data on how common abusive or harmful experiences in under-16s music education are, for students over 16, the 2023 Musicians’ Census found that 20% of respondents had been sexually harassed and 31% had experienced or witnessed sexual harassment. Almost half of student respondents had experienced or witnessed gender-based discrimination or harassment.
It is these kinds of experiences that led to the Musicians’ Union (MU) – following a motion from their membership – commissioning me to write guidance on addressing harms in music education.
Harmful experiences in music education
Music teachers sometimes complain about having to repeat safeguarding training over and over again. But in instrumental teaching, there is in fact much less infrastructure for addressing harms and abuse than in a comparative sphere – sport education.
In sports, there has been over 25 years of international policy, research and collaboration to address abuse and harmful behaviours. In the UK, the Child Protection in Sport Unit – now called NSPCC Sport – was set up 2001. Global initiatives followed, with UNICEF in 2012 leading on producing a set of international standards for safeguarding children in sport.
By contrast, in music education there is no equivalent, despite high profile scandals at some of the UK’s specialist music schools nearly 15 years ago, and research in 2018 from the MU and ISM that revealed harassment and abuse in conservatoires.
But many of the conditions that enable harms – power hierarchies, lack of external regulation or scrutiny, and lack of training, accreditation or accountability for teachers – remain in place.
Furthermore, harmful experiences may include behaviours that are difficult to spot. These include ‘grooming’ behaviour such as singling out a pupil for special treatment, or controlling behaviours such as a teacher telling their pupil what they are allowed to eat or wear, who to be friends with, or what to do in their spare time.
Whether or not these experiences amount to discriminatory or illegal acts (for example, grooming is only a criminal offence if it occurs towards a pupil under 16), they can still have a profound impact on a young person’s music education, negatively affecting their musical engagement, confidence, creativity, or career trajectory as well as mental health.
But teachers at all levels can help to create a culture in music education which supports pupils to have confidence in their own voice. This means that if they experience harmful behaviours, they will be more likely to speak out.
A ‘youth voice’ approach to safeguarding
Music education can be empowering and transformative, but it can also be harmful and abusive. Of course, most experiences fall between these two extremes. For this reason, it can be helpful to think of music education on a continuum. Some harmful behaviours that occur in music education are clearly at the abusive end of the continuum, and are easily recognisable as discriminatory or illegal. Other behaviours may be situated further along the continuum; for example, experiences that are harmful in subtle ways that students struggle to label.
Towards the opposite end of the continuum, many music education experiences are already positive but there may be ways in which they can become even more empowering. Thinking about safeguarding on a continuum helps us to see it not as a tick-box exercise, but as part of a continuing reflection on how our work can shift the dial to empower young people even further.
A youth voice approach is about shifting further towards the empowerment end of the continuum. Youth voice is described by music education charity Sound Connections as ‘consulting young people, listening to what they have to say and acting on it together’. I’ve previously written for MT on this topic, suggesting that it can be broken down into two facets: learner voice, or giving students a say in their learning process, and musical voice, that is, supporting students to make their own interpretive musical choices.
Youth voice is important not only for creating positive, empowering experiences in music education, but also as a safeguarding principle. It ensures that young people are heard when designing safer, more inclusive music education spaces, while helping to foster a culture in which they feel able to raise concerns – and know they will be listened to when they do.
Teachers can help students to become confident in their musical and learner voice so that if they encounter problems at any points in their musical journey, or indeed across their lifetime as musicians, they are more likely to be able to raise concerns, or – as bystanders – call attention to harmful behaviours. This approach can start with children of any age, by giving pupils the opportunity to make decisions about their learning.
Changing cultures and institutions
Of course, this approach assumes that any concerns that children and young people raise will be listened to and acted on. In higher education, in particular, my research has shown that this is not necessarily the case. Students may raise concerns about a teacher only to find that nothing changes. Or they may accept abusive or controlling behaviours as ‘normal’; as the examples at the start of this article show, pupils in my research thought that it was their own fault that their teachers shouted at them and told them they were rubbish. They thought this behaviour was necessary to help them become better musicians.
Indeed, if teachers themselves have experienced abusive behaviours during their education, they may also think that this is acceptable or even required. For this reason, the MU guidance also outlines steps that young people (or teachers, parents or others) can take to try and change cultures and improve accountability in their institution or learning environment.
As part of this work of changing cultures, it is important for instrumental teachers to reflect on their own experiences of music education. For those who have experienced harmful behaviours from their teachers – and perhaps accepted this as normal at the time – this can be deeply painful. But these reflections can support their development as teachers (for example, using the discussion questions in the Music Lab toolkit referenced below).
Harmful experiences in music education may be even more common or more damaging among teachers or pupils who are in a minority group. For example, sexual harassment and abuse is disproportionately targeted towards LGBTQ+ people. Students who are racially minoritised may find that abuses of power occur alongside, or are exacerbated by, racism.
Being a member of a minoritised group can also make it more difficult to get support or raise concerns. Changing cultures and institutions therefore needs to centre the voices of those who are most marginalised in a space.
Moving forward
Recognising and labelling harmful experiences in music education is important not only to prevent future abuses from occurring, but also can help anyone who has experienced harm in the past to come to terms with what has happened and how it has impacted them. To help with this, the Musicians’ Union guide (see below) contains fictional case studies that can be used to identify some of the ‘grey areas’ where harms can occur.
For music teachers, a pedagogic approach which ensures that students know that they have a right to make decisions about their learning – about what sounds good or feels good, as well as what feels uncomfortable – helps them to know they can raise concerns about harmful or uncomfortable experiences, if these occur.
Cultivating youth voice is not always seen as an integral part of safeguarding, but it should be. To make this happen, all music educators can work to create a positive culture that is empowering through an approach to safeguarding that, rather than solely focusing on harms, actively cultivates young people’s voices.
Links and references
- Bull, A. (2026) Experiences of Harm and Risk in Music Education Guide. Musicians’ Union.
- Butterworth, H. (2023, July 11) ‘Controlling behaviour, emotional abuse – is classical music teaching broken?’, Evening Standard.
- Bull, A. (2025, March). ‘Youth voice in instrumental music teaching’, Music Teacher, 104(3), pp24–25.
- Bull, A. (2024) The Music Lab: ‘Musical voice’ and ‘learner voice’ in instrumental classical music education. Sound Connections.
- Bull, A. (2019) Class, control, and classical music. Oxford University Press.