Music for Youth's campaign #ThankYourMusicTeacher is a timely reminder of the impact that inspirational music teachers have on countless lives, as well as being an invaluable motivator for those of us on the ground, reconnecting us with why we do what we do. It's telling that the testimonies aren't just from current or recent pupils, but from adults of all ages – truly excellent music teaching continues to bear fruit well beyond the end of formal lessons.
Why do so many people remember a good music teacher? More often than not, it's because that teacher took time to nurture the pupil, had an insight into what makes them tick, supported them (a sense of having their back), and did so not just with kindness but also high expectations and rigour. But, I'm sure you're thinking, aren't those characteristics of good teaching of any subject? Having an understanding of what children can actually do, often beyond their own expectations, is the hallmark of a good teacher, after all. What might the characteristics of good music teaching be?
What makes a good music teacher?
This is where it gets interesting. Common to the many testimonies from the MfY campaign, among others are these highly musical characteristics:
- opening up music that is new to them, explaining and demonstrating, and doing so with enthusiasm and passion
- inspiring students through the example of the teacher's own music-making and musicianship
- leading a ‘flagship’ musical ensemble of the school, whether choir, band or orchestra, and caring deeply about their performance
- removing barriers between school music and the world ‘outside’, always on the look out for opportunities for students to develop their musicianship further
- taking their own musicianship seriously beyond the school environment.
This practical element of being a music teacher – bringing music to life every day in the here and now (true ‘re-creation’) through informed, live music-making – is what separates music and the expressive arts from other subjects. It's why the head of the music department was historically given the job title Director of Music, acknowledging the significance and status of the ensemble direction, conducting and musical leadership expected as part of the role. (Alas, increasingly more school roles seem to be called ‘Director’ these days, but that's another article.)
Fundamentally, a good music teacher inspires and enables, and does so through their own developing experience both as teacher and musician. Teacher and musician – there it is in a nutshell: both equally important and both complementing the other. The more you develop as a teacher, the more you develop as a musician, and vice versa. This is the profession of Bach, Vivaldi, Chopin, Farrenc, Boulanger, Holst, Orff, after all – teaching was central to their identity as musicians.
The good news
The ISM's report Music Education: State of the Nation, published in 2019, remains required reading for decision-makers, but many positive steps have been taken in the succeeding five years. The Model Music Curriculum (March 2021) laid out clear expectations for all pupils in Key Stages 1–3 to receive a minimum of one hour of curriculum music a week (no other subject has such a prescription) and explicitly addressed the inadequacy of ‘carousel’ teaching at KS3. A lively debate ensued about the purpose and content of curriculum music, but thrusting this issue into the spotlight for teachers, schools, hubs and arts organisations has undoubtedly led to more ambitious and meaningful classroom music in many schools. Ofsted's Subject Research Review (July 2021) emphasised this further. It highlighted the importance of flexible staffing models in schools, acknowledged the world-class quality of music education in some schools (an important point often lost in the mêlée of opinions about state school music), and articulated beautifully the essential simplicity of what happens when school music is right: ‘a central purpose of good music education is for pupils to make more music, think more musically and consequently become more musical.’
The National Plan for Music Education (June 2022) provided, for the first time, a clear articulation of what every school should be expected to provide – essentially, a guide for headteachers to develop curricular and co-curricular music in their schools – together with case studies of schools who have built their music provision, often from scratch, through the general annual grant, and encouraged all schools to develop and publish their music development plans (important recognition that music takes time to build) as a way of raising the profile of music across the schools sector.
At the time of writing, the Curriculum and Assessment Review is considering the findings of its call for evidence, while Ofsted's new inspection framework is being drafted. Music is expected to be a beneficiary of both – the mood music is encouraging – and so the list of recommendations from the 2019 ISM report is steadily being addressed.
Here we are, then, in February 2025, and, after many years, we appear to be reaching consensus: everyone, from children and parents, to headteachers, governors and government, wants better music education. Wonderful. At last. But who is going to be delivering it?
The problem
Please don't get depressed by what you're about to read. Many of you will know it already, and it's important for everyone to know the depth of the problem – but it's only by acknowledging quite how serious a situation we are in that we can attempt to solve it. It needs both short- and long-term planning. And unless we all change the narrative, things won't improve.
The issue – and I mean the issue – for the future of music education is the workforce. Put bluntly, there aren't enough good music teachers. Good music teachers. It's important to put this out there: having rehearsed the impact of good music teaching earlier, there's an even more profound impact of poor music teaching – demotivated and disenfranchised children, poor behaviour, a closing down of horizons, and a degrading of music as a school subject. Sadly, far more people have experienced bad music teaching than good.
And there's a vicious circle playing itself out. The decline in the number of GCSE and A Level Music entries over the last decade (accountability measures playing a large part in influencing this) has inevitably led to a drop in applications for university music courses, and, with it, a sharp decline in those with appropriate musical qualifications applying to become teachers. Over the last five years, only 65% of the music teacher trainee recruitment target was met; last academic year, the figure was only 27.3%. It doesn't take an experienced statistician to note that, without substantial and imaginative intervention, the figure will only get lower.
The deep irony is that, at the same time as this figure is getting lower, the demand for employing music teachers is getting higher, and the expected curriculum, accountability and Ofsted reforms will increase the desire for a greater amount of music in schools even more. To build ‘music-rich’ schools, we're going to need many, many more brilliant, knowledgeable, charismatic practitioners.
Filling these job vacancies with a substandard (or unqualified, unsupported) music teacher, simply for the sake of children needing to be occupied in a classroom with an adult for that one hour of curriculum music per week, is counterproductive and often destructive.
We need the thousands of music teachers required to be recruited over the next few years to be highly motivated, vocationally driven musicians who will not only delight in shaping the future of the next generation of young musicians, but will also see teaching as a way of developing their own musicianship.
So how do we change the narrative?
A changed landscape
It's important to recognise that schools are different places now from when those of us of a particular vintage started our careers, or from when we went to school as children.
The majority of secondary schools have one classroom music teacher – the spreadsheets of curriculum-based-budgeting often don't allow for more. Even in a supportive multi-academy trust or local authority, the responsibility placed upon the music teacher is also tinged with isolation. The need for teacher communities, therefore, to address not only developing pedagogical skills but also teacher musicianship is ever more pressing – without teachers sharing in the joy of music, it's a forlorn hope that students will.
At the same time, we should celebrate the change in status of curriculum music over the years. I don't think it's true that, 30 years ago, the KS3 curriculum was the inspirational ‘engine room’ of school music that it can be today – if anything, classroom music was often looked at as something to be endured by staff and students alike, with the real focus of celebrated music departments being lunchtime and afternoon co-curricular provision. Many of the inspirational, often eccentric, Kappellmeister-like directors of music of the past were able to work their magic in the rehearsal room because there was less focus (ergo pressure) on the curriculum. And there weren't league tables. They were very different years, but they weren't necessarily halcyon.
There are many outstanding, meaningful music curriculums in operation in schools now – and there is testimony of some carefully crafted KS3 schemes in MATs in particular inspiring music teachers to fall in love with teaching in the classroom again. We need to shine a light on this and on the thrill of outstanding classroom music teaching. If every student at school develops their musical understanding (the ultimate purpose of curriculum music) as a result of the classroom provision, then that's a pretty wonderful thing.
But what about co-curricular music? One person can't cover all of this in a school on their own. Teaching with skill and knowledge across KS3, 4 and 5, directing a choir, conducting a wind band or orchestra, leading a jazz ensemble, accompanying students on the piano, coaching pop and rock singers and instrumentalists… and administering instrumental tuition, running an enrichment programme of concerts and trips – maybe after many years' experience, one individual will have developed skills in some of these areas, but surely not all. And yet this continues to be the expectation of the music teacher in most schools. Maintaining this expectation, with no flexibility or ‘give’, is undoubtedly a contributor to the difficulty of retaining teachers in the current climate. Of all new teachers (of all subjects), 20% leave the profession within two years; 33% leave within their first five years. At the same time, many experienced teachers are leaving the profession early, citing the increased demands of the job.
We urgently need a new model of music teaching, therefore, and it's one that is already evolving in some places in front of our eyes.
A new model
Music needs to be treated differently from other subjects for it to work, and this is articulated clearly in the National Plan for Music Education. The three areas of music in schools – curriculum music, co-curricular provision and music enrichment – all need constant nurturing, and music teachers play a vital role developing the school community and representing the school.
For this to work properly, though, there needs to be an understanding that the term ‘music teacher’ doesn't just mean a classroom teacher. The vital work that vocal and instrumental teachers (VMTs) do is generally undervalued and undercelebrated in schools – so often, those one-to-one lessons are sources of focused attention and value that change lives. Raising the status of VMTs, not just in schools but across the profession, would attract so many more musicians to this incredibly powerful work.
But what about piano accompaniment, leading ensembles, coaching performances, developing young composers, connecting students with the practical world of live music-making – as that line-up of celebrated musicians from history mentioned earlier in this article did?
The vision of the National Plan for Music Education is for ‘all children and young people to have the opportunity to progress their musical interests and talents, including professionally’. This is where there needs to be some ‘out of the box’ thinking and we encourage the many thousands of professional musicians across the country to work in schools. The statistics would support such a move – there are just over 4,000 state secondary schools in the UK, 7,000 classroom music teachers in the secondary sector, and approximately 49,700 professional musicians in the UK. Engaging thousands of professional musicians to devote part of their portfolio career to making music in schools – to consider themselves to be music teachers as well – would only enrich music education and would break the vicious circle that we currently find ourselves in.
At DRET, along with other MATs, we have developed a musician-in-residence scheme in which professional musicians work in secondary schools for one or two days each week and are valued as an important members of their school communities. They don't teach the curriculum – that's the role of our brilliant classroom teachers – but they bring their professional experience as a musician to bear in the school, coaching individual students and small groups, supporting classroom teachers inside and outside the classroom through practical music-making, enabling music to be heard outside the confines of the music department, and connecting students to the wider cultural ‘mainframe’ of the country through their own professional connections. They have also become trusted colleagues and confidants of classroom teachers, often coaching them in developing further musical skills (for example, piano playing, improvising, singing).
The amount and level of music-making in schools with musicians-in-residence has increased significantly. Engaging a professional musician to devote two full days each week to co-curricular music, with no distractions, inevitably leads to more focused and engaged student musicians. It enables VMTs to focus on technique during the 20- or 30-minute lesson, knowing that the musician-in-residence will develop their performing skills. It allows the classroom music teacher space to focus on engaging every school student through well-planned curriculum music, in the knowledge that other aspects of the music department are in hand. And it engenders a mature understanding and appreciation among all practitioners of each other's musical skill-set.
It's a deeply musical thing. Just as a choir consists of different voice types and an orchestra of different instruments, each with their own quality of sound, range and techniques, so a music department should consist of different types of teacher-musician, each complementing the other and together creating a fruitful, thriving working environment.
And the concept is not actually all that new – sport has been doing this for years. It's normal for a professional sportsperson to work as a coach in a school: they love focusing on their craft; children and young people love working with experts. So, let's make it equally normal for professional musicians to do the same.
In the DRET schools with musicians-in-residence, we are already seeing curriculum, co-curriculum and enrichment working in close connection, resulting in more students taking GCSE and A Level Music and thriving. Taken together with the expected revised accountability measures and greater focus on the arts, not only will this work the curriculum-based budgeting model into allowing more curriculum music teachers to be employed, but will in turn create the next generation of future music teachers further down the road. It's a no-brainer.
The future
We're living in an ever-busier world, with increasing demands on schools and teachers alike. We need to be realistic about what an individual can do well (and schools really should be places where quality is modelled and enabled) and so staffing music education in schools needs greater clarity and also greater visibility and exposure.
People will be encouraged to join the movement to ensure excellent music education in schools across the country if the expectations are clear, strong role models encourage and demystify the craft of music teaching, and if music teaching is celebrated as the inspirational vocation that it is. As music teachers, we need to take some responsibility for this mission, showing our students by example just how worthwhile, enjoyable and fulfilling the job is. The inspirational role models need to come from within the profession.
Curriculum music lies at the heart of schools – let's allow classroom music teachers to make this their primary focus, cherishing and nurturing the craft of teaching every student in the school through a rich, purposeful curriculum. We need to celebrate excellent classroom teaching, with the three subject associations and publications such as this providing outstanding support materials and CPD.
The status of VMTs needs to be raised – not just in employment status but in the respect given by schools and the music profession at large to their profound work. To devote one's working life to instrumental teaching affects hundreds of lives, and this should be given similar status at conservatoires to those proceeding to performing careers.
Developing musician-in-residence positions in schools across the country could be the catalyst for profound change not just in schools' music provision, but in the respect given to music education at large. There are already potent examples of outstanding musicians doing this. And, rather than professional musicians talking to each other and despairing of the state of music in schools, this creates the means for them to do something practical about it themselves. Everyone will be in it together. And everyone will consider themselves music teachers.
Being realistic, if we want the state of music in schools to improve, we have to develop a mixed model such as this. The impact of the decline in the take-up of music qualifications over the last decade will continue to play out for many years – waiting for ‘normal service’ to resume will deny the current generation of children and young people the music education they deserve.
In short, let's not only celebrate the power of good music teaching, but also open up and publicise more pathways for many more musicians to make and lead music in schools. There'll then be many, many more good music teachers to thank.
