Introduction In this chapter we explore links between popular music, policy and education from two broad perspectives. We examine the impacts of popular music and cultural policy on music education, and links between education policy and popular music education (PME). Our use of the term ‘education’ in this chapter is deliberately broad and multifaceted. In addition to considering education by focusing on institutions and stakeholders, for example, we also focus on the way in which policy impacts or drives wider economic and ideological issues, thus functioning as a form of ‘public pedagogy’ (Giroux 2003). Our focus is as much on economic, political and social policies as de facto educational texts and discourses. Due to the inherent ambiguity of the terms ‘policy’ and ‘PME’, consideration of these areas is potentially problematic. Additionally, we are aware of almost no policy texts pertaining specifcally to popular music education or on popular music in education, with the exception of a white paper from the Association for Popular Music Education (APME). Given the small size of that organization, its minimal reach and the dearth of references to, or apparent impact of its paper, we note for now simply that ‘the mission of the Association for Popular Music Education (APME) is to promote and advance popular music at all levels of education both in the classroom and beyond’ (Association for Popular Music Education 2020a). We have found no other documents so clearly intended to address, or indeed to promote, popular music and education. Mostly, popular music has been embraced in education, or excluded from it, through various cultural, economic and education policy initiatives policies driven by ideology, cultural norms and politics on local, regional, national and international levels. To keep the content manageable, throughout this chapter we generally limit our consideration of these issues to the United Kingdom and the United States. 1 We address the issue of ambiguous terminology by defning how we use two terms germane to this chapter. PME is the simpler of the two terms to defne, and, for the purposes of this chapter, we use it to refer to the range of activities associated with teaching, learning and studying popular Popular music, policy and education Gareth Dylan Smith and Zack Moir 6 9781501345326_txt_prf.indd 91 08-10-2021 13:12:54