As music teachers, we long to bring the power of music to the fore in our schools, knowing that music amplifies outcomes well beyond its own curriculum borders; that it can be the glue that binds a school community; and that it enriches individual lives in a unique and powerful way. I have worked in six schools in my career, ranging from one with a barely existing music department to others with performing arts specialisms. In 2019 I opened a new school, Trinity Academy, on a very deprived estate in Bristol, with a specialism in music. Through these experiences, I have learned a number of things about making music a key part of the life of a school and motivating young people to get involved and stay involved.
My starting point is a borrowed phrase. We need to create ‘fruitcakes’ (when you cut down through your school it should be full of musicians, from starters to experts), not ‘pavlovas’ (a thin veneer of experts who are at your school but were trained outside your school). In other words, we need to grow our own.
When I think about music in school, I have three interlinked areas in mind: the curriculum, the co-curricular, and inspirational/aspirational projects or events. When these are individually strong, interleaved with clarity of purpose and driven with strong leadership, music feels vibrant, joyful and successful for the whole community.
The curriculum
When we join a school, we often inherit a curriculum with which we tinker, adding things that worked well in our previous setting or removing parts we don’t like. I’ve had the opportunity to write a whole curriculum twice. It is a huge intellectual exercise followed by the equally hard job of creating resources and sourcing examples. Six main things I’ve learned through the process are:
- Start with incredible ambition. At Trinity, our Music handbooks starts like this:We believe that music, drama and dance are all fundamental practices of expression in cultures around the world, throughout history. We believe that the arts are essential to what makes us fully human and, by developing the creative side of young people, we ensure that they can become well-rounded individuals, with the ability to create, perform, and reflect.
- Be explicit about the types of knowledge (tacit, procedural, declarative), skills and understanding your students will learn and have absolute clarity about learning endpoints for lessons, schemes and phases.
- Sequence and spiral the learning – track carefully how each facet of the curriculum (e.g. rhythm, melody, singing, technology) is exposed, developed and assessed.
- Ruthlessly eliminate ‘tasks’ that do not serve the learning.
- Think carefully about why you have chosen specific musical examples and/or genres. There is an ongoing debate about the music we expose our students to. We have an obligation both to the canon and also music that is now, and to music that is outside our own cultural borders. I have noticed in my own work that I can too often choose music that exemplifies a concept without taking other factors into account. While I demonstrate a learning point, I miss the opportunity for us all to have a sense of transcendency, cultural challenge or just ‘wow’.
- Incorporate the musicianship of students. This seems an obvious point, but too often in my practice my curriculum design has not left space for the often jaw-dropping musical skills or experience of my students. Space for students to bring their own instruments/voice or technology into a scheme is transformative and moves control and ownership of the outcomes from the teacher to the student, which is highly motivating.
Trinity Academy’s first Trailblazer group – all starting instruments for the first time
The co-curricular
In all the schools I have worked in, I have noticed that it was always the more advantaged students who took co-curricular opportunities. Therefore, at Trinity Academy the co-curricular is compulsory and forms part of staff-directed time. Ofsted said our provision was ‘exceptional’.
My strategy for music has always been one of ‘breadth and depth’. Breadth – essentially ‘bums on seats’, or inclusion; let’s get every child making music in some way. Depth – deliberately designed pathways of progression from beginner to conservatoire applicant. At Trinity, every Year 7 child is offered a free instrument and lessons at a significantly reduced price. Every child sings in a boys’ or girls’ choir once a week (timetabled). The music is set by the students, the learning is by rote, and we concentrate on how we can improve our singing; but the goal is participation above performance quality. As in my previous schools, we then design progression routes for vocalists, instrumentalists, and certain genres (jazz, pop/rock, technology): for example, Andante orchestra, Aspire orchestra, Excel orchestra, Symphony orchestra, Junior jazz, Senior jazz, Big Band, Junior Rock Academy, Senior Rock Academy, and so on. This only works if we can make our visiting peripatetic teachers feel part of the vision and part of the team, and use them extensively in the delivery of groups.
All this costs money. One big income source for us is large-scale concerts. Most of our performances are free, but we have designed the curriculum to have every child perform (sing) in the big set-piece concerts, often hiring local venues. By charging our potentially 1,500-strong audiences, we can start to finance our projects. At Trinity (and it helps that I’m the Head), we also use our lettings income to finance the co-curricular.
The final point here is the tracking of engagement. We often create things in our own image. By careful tracking of micro-population engagement and listening to the student voice, we can flex to become more and more inclusive as we grow.
Inspirational and aspirational events
Students invariably rise to a challenge. Sometimes as adults we don’t set challenges that are ambitious enough. Staff and students are energised by the big moments that need to be appropriate to your context. At one school with little music, the challenge was for the whole of Year 9 to write and perform a show. At other schools this included a joint performance of Verdi’s Requiem, taking the jazz musicians to a professional venue, going on tour, or moving the Christmas Concert to the city’s concert hall (the renamed Bristol Beacon). At the time, we caught our breath at the ambition of some of these projects, but they came off and then became the norm.
There is some truth in the statement ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. We put considerable emphasis on partnering with world-class organisations to bring a sense of aspiration to our students. Collaboration with the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama has included ensembles performing at school, conservatoire tours, college staff adjudicating competitions, college students learning about pedagogy. These events always raise the bar, bring inspiring music to students, and show other pathways.
Leadership
In many schools, the argument for the importance of music has not been won and much of the above may seem out of reach. If this is the case, take the argument to your leadership team; there is so much research outlining the impact of music on the outcomes of students and on community cohesion, and we need to make the case. As a middle leader, an often overlooked aspect of the role is to ‘manage up’. Drip-feed your senior team with research, successes in the department, with opportunities, and steer their eyes to exceptional work in other schools, showing incremental steps forward so they can see a pathway. We also need to manage across, as music can be disruptive – annoying to staff as students leave lessons to go to instrumental lessons, and having an impact on other subject curriculums. Proactively engage with colleagues: keep them in the loop, and help them see the students in different contexts producing amazing performances.
The outcome is fruitcakes – communities rich with musicians at every level, progressing, creating, performing and enjoying. When we develop a strategy that integrates curriculum, co-curricular and inspirational and aspirational projects, music can flourish in our many and varied schools.
