Associate Bulletin Board

February 2026

Tuition Bursaries –

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve reopened the Tuition Bursaries.  Please let your schools know that they can now apply for the remainder of there academic year.

Grant C for Community work –

A new grant C application process is now open to Associates who are looking to kickstart a community project.  You can also apply for funding if you are looking to undertake a CPD course for the betterment of your musical development relating to your teaching.  The Grant is for applications for up to £2,000, but you must match fund your application.  This means that if a course costs £800 then you ca apply for £400 grant with you paying the other £400.

October 2025

Tuition Bursaries –

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve approved a record number of Tuition Bursaries at this point in the academic year, with 390 pupils receiving funding totalling £61,000.

Due to the exceptional demand, we have now exceeded our central government grant allocation for bursaries. As a result, the application portal is temporarily closed while we seek additional funding from alternative sources.

What happens next?

We’re actively working to secure further funding and will reopen the portal as soon as possible. In the meantime, we encourage schools to utilise their Pupil Premium allocation to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds who may benefit from additional tuition.

We appreciate your understanding and will provide updates on the portal’s reopening in due course.

 

September 2025

Safeguarding Updates –

Wiltshire Council Safeguarding team has issued the following updates for you to see:

 

You should review these before completing your annual return to us.

 

Safeguarding online training information

Message from the provider:

After speaking with our specialist safeguarding expert who writes the courses. She explained that general guidance states:

  • EYFS staff and DSLs must complete safeguarding training every 2 years.
  • There is no statutory guidance requiring all staff to retake the full training once they have completed it initially (they can complete annual refreshers instead).
  • However, most local authorities stipulate that full training should be repeated every 3 years.

In our course, it states:

It is recommended that you renew safeguarding training every 3 years, with annual reminders in place for new learning.

For our own certificates, we set an expiry of 2 years. We felt that 3 years was too long given the regular changes in legislation and policy. As there is no statutory expiry requirement, we chose 2 years to reflect the evolving nature of safeguarding in education.

Our refresher education optionWhen a learner retakes the course (currently after 2 years), instead of going through the entire course again, we provide a refresher option. This allows them to review summaries of each module along with any legislative or policy updates. However, they will still need to pass the final assessment to receive an updated safeguarding training certificate.

Prevent componentI can confirm that Prevent is included in the Music Education Safeguarding course. It was recently updated with the latest Prevent referral statistics, links to the most recent guidance and referral forms, and information on recognised behaviours a child may display if they are at risk of extremism.

September 2025

Welcome back and we trust you are all well-rested and ready for the new academic year!

Some updates:

  1. Tuition subsidies – If you think the school has applied, but you, or the schools, has not had confirmation from us about receiving funding, the school may need to go back into the portal and check they have submitted for approval – this seems to have become a common fault. In addition, we have had a couple of schools thinking they have requested but haven’t done so on the Portal.
  2. First Access Subsidies – all submitted requests have been actioned with the vast majority having been approved.  If you haven’t received confirmation from us, please contact the school who can reach out to  pclark@smscio.co.uk

12th July 2025

Instrument Hire charges for Academic Year 2025-26

For Instrument Hire charges, please see new charges.  We have also introduced a small charge to all children and young people wishing to hire instruments to keep us inline with the wider hub:

Financial Support Options

Those eligible for bursaries/subsidies, the cost is as follows:

Hire Cost Reductions

  • 75% reduction for:
    • Pupils eligible for Pupil Premium
    • Pupils with Special Education Needs and/or Disability
  • 100% reduction for:
    • Looked After/In Care (LAC) pupils

Information for Schools and Associates – 13th June 2025

We have produced a booklet to help schools and Associates understand how schools can apply for First Access and tuition bursaries and how to order a set of musical instruments for the school Download  HERE

ACE Announcement Friday 23rd May

“[Hub funding]…programme will receive standstill funding for the remainder of the financial year 2025-2026 – from September 2025 to the end of March 2026.

ACE will issue the draft supporting documents soon.ACE is waiting to receive the specific allocations for each Music Hub – as soon as they have them, they will share them with us. ACE say: we hope it’s useful to also take this opportunity to confirm the improvements we’ve made to our process. These are based on Hubs’ feedback, and aim to help ease the administrative burden for this coming year’s funding:

  • ACE won’t ask the Hub to submit a full, updated Local Plan as a payment condition during 2025-26, and they don’t expect all of it to be in place for September 2025
  • ACE will make five payments instead of six. For stability, there will still be payments in September, November, January, April and June. But the March payment you received this year has been absorbed into the January payment for 2025-26, so you’ll receive 25% rather than 16.67% of your total allocation in January 2026

Funding from April 2026 onwards is subject to the ongoing Spending Review.”

For those funded organisations, we will contact you separately after the half-term once we now more details about the settlement for your funding up to March 2026.

 

New Website

Subject: New Website Now Live – Enhanced Resources for Associates

I’m pleased to announce that our new website is now live and available for your use. While we have included sufficient content to launch publicly, please note that we will continue developing and updating the site weekly, so I encourage you to visit regularly for the latest features and information.

Annual Returns Hub for Wiltshire Associates

We have established a comprehensive one-stop resource centre containing all the documentation you need when presenting your services to schools. This centralised location includes: • Annual Data Return (with guidance) • Annual Declaration (both individual and organisational) • Annual Financial Data Return • Annual Ethnicity Return

You may complete these forms at your convenience, though we will continue sending periodic reminders as usual.

Supporting Documentation

The website features a dedicated section containing documents to support your outreach efforts with schools. I particularly recommend reviewing the “What’s on Offer to Wiltshire Schools” section, which details the services and benefits schools receive through our programs.

Live Online Bulletin Board

To keep you informed of developments in real-time, we have implemented a live bulletin board on the website. While we will continue sending email communications, we aim to reduce email frequency by utilizing this dynamic online resource for timely updates.

Virtual Coffee Meetings

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s Virtual Coffee meetings. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and attendance exceeded our expectations. For those unable to attend, the PowerPoint presentation is now available on the new website.  You can access the pdf in the passworded section.

Given the success of these sessions, we will continue offering Virtual Coffee meetings as part of our ongoing communication strategy.