In a week in which the Warwick Commission and the BBC’s ‘Get Creative’ campaign have highlighted the scandalous collapse of arts education in state schools, Wiltshire Council’s move to close down its music service (‘Fears for music in schools’, February 19) appears inept, ill-informed, uncaring and philistine. The small-mindedness of this policy is highlighted by the relatively small savings involved (the music service is mainly self-funding) which equate roughly to the salaries of the two top officers at County Hall, or about 50p per year for every Wiltshire resident.

For these relatively trivial savings, about 80 staff are being made redundant and the education of thousands of Wiltshire children is to be compromised.

Councillor Laura Mayes claims that nothing much will change. I hope that this is just complacency or inadequate understanding of the situation because, as an instrumental teacher with more than 30 years of experience of the state and independent sectors, I am quite sure this is inaccurate.

Having got rid of the music service, Wiltshire will be faced with a situation in which teachers will become self-employed contractors who can charge whatever hourly rates they wish. Some may choose to charge more than before, discouraging low and middle-income children from becoming involved in music.

It will become more difficult for small, isolated rural schools to maintain instrumental music, because they generally generate insufficient work to be viable economically for freelance teachers. Some teachers who, as a result of becoming self-employed, have lost their entitlement to the teachers’ pension and many other benefits, will (quite understandably in my view) consider leaving teaching, so that it is unlikely that all pupils will remain with the same teacher. The music service’s role in the maintenance of professional standards and in the dissemination of up-to-date teaching methods will also disappear.

Coun Mayes claims that local head teachers are all ‘relaxed’ about the situation. This is an amazing comment, which implies a surprising and implausibly wide knowledge of Wiltshire heads’ opinions. It certainly conflicts with my own, admittedly limited, experience and impressions. Parents and voters should not be reassured by Nick Howdle’s statement that the so-called Music Hub will fill the gap – as far as I can see, this amounts to little more than the provision of a website for former staff to advertise their wares.

Instrumental music education was, for at least a couple of decades, a success story for this country, which still has an impact on Britain’s thriving professional and amateur music scenes.

It is a tragedy that schools are being reduced to providing a very portion-limited and narrow curriculum, even by 19th-century standards. The destruction of Wiltshire Music Service will tighten the screw further for people in our county. We cannot complain about young people wasting their time on street corners or staring at screens when, in pursuit of penny-pinching savings, we undermine or destroy the very activities which can attract them away from such things.

Dr Mike Lomas, Avebury Trusloe.