Latest News
-
What does an excellent primary music lesson look like?
Excellent primary music lessons are MUSICAL. Children participate in real music-making activities that would be recognisable as such outside of the classroom. They listen to, perform and compose real music from a range of genres, cultures and styles. Lessons are differentiated, not just by general ability level but musically. Pupils bring their instruments to lessons […]
-
Music in Schools: What Ofsted Must Do.
This weekend, the Telegraph published an open letter signed by music and education luminaries, suggesting that our National Plan for Music Education is not being met. Also in the Telegraph, an article appeared, which seems to be referring to the aforementioned letter, although it contains quite a lot of other details which I couldn’t find […]
-
Four ‘First Access’ Facts
Following last month’s Channel 4 documentary Don’t Stop the Music, we have noticed some myths building up around the ‘First Access’ whole class instrumental teaching programme provided throughout England by Music Education Hubs. This is a real shame as actually the First Access programme is something that England should be really proud of. We frequently […]
-
Great Composers Before 1700 & Beyond 1900
In recent weeks yet another challenge to music education was presented in the form of GCSE & A level proposals which would effectively exclude music written before 1700 and after 1900 from these courses of study. More information on this issue and the campaign to reverse it is available at the Protect Music Education website. […]
-
Don’t Stop training The Music teachers
As many others last night, I watched Channel 4’s ‘Don’t stop the Music’, phone in hand and hashtag at the ready, and was fascinated by both the programme and by the Twitter debate. Having spoken to James and his research team earlier in the year, I was pleased to see that they had concentrated their […]
-
What makes a good music education?
After a week of INSETs all over the UK, and in the light of the publicity around James Rhodes’ Don’t stop the Music series, which airs this week, I have been thinking a lot about what makes a “good” music education. As a sector we are united by our common understanding that music has the […]
-
Advice for the Non-Specialist Primary Music Coordinator
“Mrs Stafford, can I just have a quick word? We’ve decided to make you Russian coordinator for next year.” “Um, but, I don’t speak Russian!” “Oh don’t worry about that, there’s some wonderful resources in the cupboard” “But I can’t read all these Cyrillic letters!” “Don’t worry, we know you’ll rise to the challenge!” This […]
-
Ofsted, Music, Schools & Hubs: The ongoing debate
This blog is by Liz Stafford, Director of Music Education Solutions Ltd. It represents solely her views on this matter, and not the views of any of our clients or customers. I had the privilege last Wednesday 5th March of being involved in a very small way with the ‘Music Matters: Music, Hubs and Schools’ […]
-
Ofsted 2013 Music Report: A response
I had the privilege of attending the Music Mark conference last weekend, during which Robin Hammerton presented the most recent Ofsted findings from the 2013 Music in Schools: What hubs should do Report. Robin’s presentation of these findings was very different in tone from the report itself (he was much more sanguine, if not overwhelmingly […]
Teacher CPD Courses
