The Government has broken its promise to give every child in Britain the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, according to leading figures in the music industry.
Julian Lloyd Webber, Sting, Alison Balsom and the heads of the Royal College of Music and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are among the signatories to a letter demanding that all children have a chance to play.
They want Ofsted rules to be changed so that a school cannot be rated 'good' or 'outstanding' unless it offers good or outstanding music provision.
The Government unveiled its National Plan for Music in 2011 with great fanfare, claiming it would "enable every child to have the chance to learn to play a musical instrument for at least a term, ideally a year".
However, the funding model is a postcode lottery and access to instruments is "simply out of reach" for a great number of children, said James Rhodes, the concert pianist and lead signatory to the letter published in today's Telegraph.
He visited schools for a recent Channel 4 series, Don't Stop The Music, and found children using dustbin lids and yoghurt pots in place of real instruments.
Headteachers feel under pressure to meet targets on English and maths, and music lessons often become the lowest priority, he said.
"I don't think anyone would say music doesn't deserve to be studied. But if you are a headteacher in a school where you know you will live or die by ticking Ofsted boxes on literacy and numeracy, that is all you're going to focus on," Rhodes said.
"We have not moved on from the idea that music is a privilege and a luxury if you have the time and the budget.
"But learning to play an instrument gives you self-esteem, discipline, confidence. In what other field, in this day and age - when there's an app for everything, and everything is instant - do you have the chance for slow, incremental, messy improvement?"
While studying a musical instrument is now part of the national curriculum, "there is so much red tape that if I was a headteacher I might just end up doing a class once a week with one set of African drums shared between a class of 30 pupils", Rhodes said.
Julian Lloyd Webber initially lent his name to the National Plan for Music but said it had failed to deliver.
"It sounded great for a long time. But now it's time to see some results. There are still children who are not getting access to music and this has to stop," he said.
"The biggest frustration of all to me is the idea that it's an 'either/or' situation. It's not a case of, 'If my child learns to play the cello they are not going to learn their maths as well'. In fact, it's the reverse.
"Having access to music is a help, not a hindrance. It takes discipline to learn an instrument - it is a complex thing to do."
The Department of Education declined to supply any information on how many schools have met its 2011 target.