Every year in teaching I have had the same feeling after the summer holidays: can I remember how to do it, how to actually teach? On describing this to friends and family, they found it completely ridiculous. How on earth could I forget how to teach, when I had racked up thousands of hours in front of classes?
Of course, I hadn't forgotten. But I did have a healthy nervousness running up to the first day of term, just as I did in my other life as a performing musician heading towards an important event.
I hope that this is fairly normal. Because, on reflection, this feeling always gave the first lessons after the summer holiday a tangible excitement, a bracing energy, as well as the opportunity to reinvigorate my practice. And when I started in a new school, the feeling was even more pronounced. Compared to other professions, this is unusual. As teachers we have the chance to kickstart our work every single year and consider fresh challenges: there are different classes to get to know and plan for, new colleagues to collaborate with and learn from, and exciting experiences to plan for students.
Scaling up
Working in a multi-academy trust, a restart also applies to our work at scale as we head into a new academic year. There are, again, new colleagues, many of whom are joining us as HoDs and leading departments for the first time in their careers. There are music development plans to review and implement, in line with the NPME, with the unapologetic ambition that all of our schools grow music so that the benefits can be felt for more children and young people. And there are trust-wide projects to plan and deliver, ensuring that as a large group of schools we can support and drive school improvement in and through music. All of this is driven by the trust mission to bring out ‘the best in everyone’ – students, staff, parents and the wider community.
Check-ins, CPD and plans
The year begins with ‘check-ins’ for every teacher who is leading music in secondary school settings. The majority of this is remote, increasingly necessary as our trust has now grown to over 50 secondary academies alongside 30 primary academies and 12 independent schools.
Discussions will cover a brief review of exam performance, both to discover any CPD needs for the year and to uncover aspects that teachers can share to the benefit of others. Unsurprisingly, composition and moderation has come up in recent years as an area that teachers feel less secure in and, as a result, we've offered a central moderation service during the year as well as themed CPD during our termly webinars. For example, we've shared approaches to composition, such as how The Hurlingham Academy structures short composition tasks during the year relating to areas of study, and these composition exercises provide a guided approach for novice solo composers before they start on any NEA work itself.
The start-of-year check-ins will also reflect on the school music development plan. All of this helps to raise awareness of strengths as well as priorities for the year in each setting. Many of our schools have established music provision, following years of careful planning and considered investment. This can be found across the country, in schools that have above national numbers of students eligible for the pupil premium: North Oxfordshire Academy in Banbury has placed inclusion at the centre of their approach and now enjoy a strong KS4 cohort of 22% of the year group; similarly, performance thrives in the North West, where Manchester Academy and William Hulme Academy have built on external partnerships with the RNCM to nurture post-KS3 take-up; schools in London such as Goresbrook Free School and The Elms Academy have adapted their curriculum and timetable so that all students can learn an instrument through a Big Band curriculum; the staff at Coleridge Community College in Cambridge ensure an authentic curriculum by weaving performance opportunities into schemes of learning, from samba on the playground in the summer to playing at The Junction during Year 9 – the curriculum comes to life and, as a result, music is at the heart of the school; and in Bournemouth and Poole, our four academies are increasingly working together, recently forming a shared instrumental ensemble and chorus.
© United Learning
Students from Goresbrook Free School at the MUSICFest
Relationship building
There is more (for another article!), but as you'd expect there are also schools in the trust starting the journey of school improvement as they join us, as well as our new colleagues who are looking to have impact in their school. For these settings, school improvement includes supportive school visits throughout the year. Often staff are working alone as musicians, and their link to the music team at the centre, as well as local colleagues in the trust, builds their professional network – activities include co-planning, team teaching, advocacy with the senior team and leadership, as well as identifying links to local support such as the music hub and local cultural education partnerships. Relationship building, whether it is with schools, school leaders, practitioners or potential partner organisations, is absolutely necessary – we can't make a difference alone.
All of this builds on the universal offer to secondary schools; everyone attends networking meetings during the year, where we host two in-person meetings (both North and South locations) plus several webinars. This year, singing will be prominent, as well as the trust priorities of oracy, raising standards for Year 11 and progression routes, including careers. All of this links well to the National Plan. And every school has access to common curriculum materials across KS3 and 4, a resource that grows every year following our sequenced framework and following our agreed principles for teaching and learning. For schools there is the automony to deliver a locally-determined and relevant curriculum, making use of the tools that we provide at the centre.
Vocal focus
An area of the national plan that we are thinking about across the trust next year is vocal provision; this is less consistent in our schools than we'd want it to be. We have done a significant amount of work on this in the past, with a large-scale performance of the opera Carmen at the Olympic Park in 2019, and the online choral project Green Love in 2021. Last year our group performance project, MUSICFest, was a gala concert where schools collaborated with local schools.
This year, as part of a separate Singing Strategy, we’ll provide schools with increased resource and support for vocal work – all tailored to individual school need – leading steadily towards a collaborative performance in 2025. To complement this, we plan to deliver a vocal residential, learning from the work of other trusts. 2023/24 is the year of the voice – keeping this message simple is also important as we grow as a group of schools, with more headteachers and regional leaders to maintain and build relationships with.
The thread of vocal provision flows into our primary school improvement strategy. We have enjoyed a long relationship with the Voices Foundation, working with them since 2019. As part of the United Learning five-year strategy, they will work with every primary setting on curriculum and pedagogy – with every single member of teaching staff – by the end of 2026. Simply due to our scale and national reach, we can't deliver an ambitious project such as this in one year alone.
This year's activity takes place in the North West in seven academies. And, as with our secondary offer, webinars take place throughout the year; curriculum sits at the heart of this as we launch additional resources for KS1 in the autumn. We exemplify our enthusiasm for singing as a central tool for musicianship in our ‘Big Sings’, online singing assemblies that take place every half-term. Here we can highlight warm-ups, repertoire and pedagogy, with a regular attendance of several thousand children and their teachers.
You're not alone
In our central team, we are also thinking about how we can help more of our schools to develop from ‘Good to Great’. We have many examples of outstanding practice to draw on, and we are also fortunate in a large group of schools that collaboration is encouraged.
So, as the new school year dawns on us all, I will be harnessing the nervous energy and focussing it on reaching out to and working with the schools across the group, attempting to spread that excitement around – and reassuring teachers that they aren't alone in their work, or in feeling even a little bit nervous about the start of term. Another exciting year is ahead.
Green Love, performed by United Learning schools in 2021 and written by Alexander L’Estrange and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, with body percussion from Beat Goes On, can be accessed via this QR code.
