Secondary music teachers are increasingly finding themselves supporting non-specialist colleagues teaching music at KS3, whether due to recruitment and retention issues causing long-term timetable pressures, or through temporary cover arrangements. When facing this reality, a specialist’s job is to help ensure that students continue to experience meaningful, high-quality music education, regardless of who is standing at the front of the classroom.
The reality is that many non-specialists feel deeply anxious about teaching music. Unlike some subjects, music often requires teachers to manage practical activities, technology, performance work, and specialist vocabulary simultaneously. Without support, colleagues may default to “keeping students busy” rather than enabling genuine musical learning.
For short-term cover, it may be tempting to just have a non-specialist ‘supervise’ an open-ended project that students can ‘just get on with’ but in reality these can quickly become difficult to manage without subject expertise, as they’re likely to involve pupils at different levels of ability running into problems or wanting to make adaptations that the teacher is not equipped to support with.
As anyone who has worked with non-specialists in primary schools will tell you, well-designed teaching resources can make a huge difference. Clear lesson slides, step-by-step instructions, listening examples, and carefully scaffolded practical tasks allow non-specialists to facilitate learning successfully, even if they are not musicians themselves. This approach is particularly vital for longer-term non-specialist provision; where you might not worry about the lost progress from a one-off emergency cover scenario, you can’t run the risk of whole term’s or even entire year’s worth of musical learning being lost.
Communication matters too. A brief conversation before a lesson, or even a short written or video guide can significantly reduce anxiety for colleagues. Explain not only what students are doing, but why. Highlight common misconceptions, practical routines, and classroom expectations. Small details such as how instruments are distributed or how students normally enter the room can help non-specialists feel more secure; it also means you’ll return to an orderly and well-maintained teaching space afterwards!
It is worth considering, of course, whose responsibility it is to provide support and resources for non-specialist teachers. If you are being paid for a ‘Head of Department’ type role that’s one thing, but if you just happen to be the only ‘Teacher of Music’ in the school, can you be expected to plan on behalf of, and support your non-specalist colleagues? I think I know what your union would say at this point! Of course most of us want to be as helpful as possible, and we all put the student experience at the forefront of everything that we do, so you might feel that you ‘have’ to provide that support as it’s ‘for the kids.’ In this scenario it is worth a conversation with SLT about ways they might be able to support you with this additional workload. Clearly you can’t ask for time off teaching music while you plan someone else’s music, as that will just compound the problem! But maybe there are break duties or detention supervisions you can be relieved of, form time that can be covered by someone else, or even an INSET session you can miss, because how often are they relevant to music anyway?!
Having said all the above, secondary schools must recognise that specialist music teaching matters, especially if you are hoping for a solid progression pathway to KS4 and beyond! Entirely non-specialist provision should be a temporary, rather than a permanent, solution. Effective support should act as a bridge: maintaining curriculum quality, protecting musical learning, and helping colleagues feel more confident until specialist teaching can fully resume.
Dr Liz Stafford, May 2026. Copyright © 2026 Music Education Solutions Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Click here to read more blogs about music education
Click here for information on our Confidence in Secondary Music CPD course
Click here to join our mailing list