Headteachers and school senior leadership teams (SLTs) are likely to be personally supportive of music. However, they are caught professionally between a rock – finance – and a hard place – accountability – when it comes to music in schools.
With budgets still under pressure, and accountability measures like the EBacc and Progress 8 working against music's place in the curriculum, school leaders need music teachers' help to make the case for music.
Above all else, you need good-quality music teaching that is creative, imaginative and inclusive: make it so strong that students and parents demand that your school continues to support music.
To demonstrate the quality of your curriculum and wider work, do you conduct student interviews and share the outcomes with your SLT? Have you ever encouraged parents to send in letters about the difference music is making to their children? Feedback from your local community after musical events could be helpful too.
Encourage SLT to consider the overall value of expenditure on music and not simply the specific cost of supporting, for instance, instrumental or vocal lessons for some students.
To demonstrate the value of school expenditure on music, we have to be able to demonstrate that all pupils genuinely engage with and benefit from it. For example, do all pupils regularly hear music played by students in assemblies, formal and informal concerts? Can soloists for a concert do a practice run in front of their classmates? Do instrumental learners always bring their instruments to class lessons, so that their peers can benefit from their expertise? Do informal musical events (for example house music competitions) genuinely enable all students to participate?
And who is involved? Have you made sure you can track the involvement of children who are looked after, those entitled to pupil premium support and those with special educational needs and disabilities? Do you routinely get students to describe the impact of musical events they have attended or participated in – and share this feedback with SLT?
These are all important to consider when proving to senior school leaders the value of music within our own institutions.
Wider evidence
But there is also wider research that we can draw on: the evidence is there if you look. There are many resources out there demonstrating the positive impact of music education but two that draw a lot of evidence together are This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin; and Susan Hallam's review of evidence in The Power of Music, which is available on the MEC website (www.mec.org.uk). You can use these to find research on how music can support the specific aspects of learning or brain development that are the current focus of your school (for example ‘memory strategies’).
More focused on the impact of learning an instrument is a recent pilot study by Professor Susan Hallam and Kevin Rogers, published in the British Journal of Music Education (BJME), which found that pupils learning a musical instrument experienced ‘greater progress and better academic outcomes than those not playing, with the greatest impact for those playing the longest’.
As well as this evidence there are other organisations who can help you make the case:
- Your local music education hub or music service can be a powerful ally. For example, Wiltshire Music Connect has produced an excellent set of resources called Why music matters. This resource summarises why music and music education are important, and helps promote music along with several leaflets for schools and parents/carers.
- Ofsted's mood music is changing: Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, has warned against cutting Key Stage 3 short, saying: ‘Curtailing Key Stage 3 means prematurely cutting this off for children who may never have an opportunity to study some of these subjects again.’
- Business might be your friend too. Did you know that the creative industries are worth £92 billion a year to the UK economy? That's bigger than the oil, gas, life sciences, aerospace and automotive industries combined
- Finally, a major report by Deloitte on the growth of automation says that ‘in the future, businesses will need more skills, including … creativity, entrepreneurship and complex problem solving’.
Conclusion
This is just a brief introduction to help you make the case for music in your school. If you want to get involved nationally, we would recommend joining the ISM and signing up to support our Bacc for the Future campaign at www.baccforthefuture.com. The campaign's resources are there to be used! Ultimately the best advocate for music in your school is you, and your teaching.
