If students don't want to perform English work it may not be because there's a machinery of oppression. Our islands margins have always maintained tradition more than the industrialised centres, why is that weird?
Someone liking the sound of music and working backwards to its traditions will always have a more rounded view than a force-fed social experiment backed by lottery millions no matter how well intentioned. There are only so many ways I can say there isn't an English music but rather the music of England. It's not that most young people don't know what traditional is, or sounds like but that they reject or ignore it. That doesn't arise from Big Brother sucking their brains out but from living in a different world to the one where folk was the only thing around.