The Music Festival has a thoroughly integrated education programme, Music Scores, which offers schools and the wider community the chance to work with professional musicians on projects linked to festival themes. There are opportunities for those with little or no music training or experience, as well as for those who are musically knowledgeable. It is part of the education programme's ethos to ensure that skills and interests acquired by participants during the workshops should live beyond the festival so that people feel encouraged to continue and develop their music-making.

The Music Scores programme for 2003 included an opera project for primary schools, based on Lynne Plowman's new family opera Gwyneth and the Green Knight, and a chance for secondary school students to perform as part of a British premiere with the chamber group Between the Notes at the Everyman Theatre. Eight infant schools/nurseries took part in an under 5s music project, Eine Kleine Kindermusik, and there was an adult study afternoon on the life and works of Lennox Berkeley in what was to be his centenary year. The festival also allocated over five hundred free tickets to schools for festival events as part of the Free 4 Schools ticket scheme and a Festival Student Award scheme for gifted students gives six teenagers the chance to experience the festival behind the scenes.

Education work has recently been introduced as part of the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival which takes place over a bank holiday weekend in May each year. In 2003 the festival worked with secondary schools on a cross-curricular project, involving art and jazz, displaying the final pieces at the festival. School jazz bands were also given the chance to perform at the festival in an event called Jazz It Up!