Darren Henley Review

[stoatsrevenge]

What do music specialists / peris think of it?

I am a bit puzzled that he's suggesting that Wider Ops should be offered to a KS2 class in every school, and in the next breath acknowledges that there is a dearth of specialist staff. (I guess primary teachers will be expected to add another string to their bow, so to speak. One twilight session and we'll be ready to teach violin to a bunch of thirty 8 year olds for the year!)

I was under the impression that Wider Ops virtually died a death because it was too expensive to run - we had to pay several thousand a year for our drumming tuition, and the whole class violin lessons only lasted a year.

Hi stoatsrevenge. I'm not a teacher but a freelance arts manager. My specialism is music education and outreach and I work form various industry based providers.

Wider opps is still alive and kicking in lots of areas (I know of somewhere which delivers whole class ukele!). IMO I think it represents an ok first experience for primary kids as long as there is a clear and supported progression route into one on one tuition for those with with ability/desire to continue. Having said that, there are specific skills needed to deliver WO work and let's hope that their interest in ensuring that there are more specialist staff will address this.

I really feel for music co-ordinators in primary schools and don't think it''s fair to ask them to constantly add another string to their bow and deliver music ed. Yes, there's a case for skill sharing, CPD etc, but ultimately there does need to be more specialist teaching available and there needs to be better and more extended training available to all at PGCE/BEd level.

The conservatoires / teach first angle is an interesting one. Not sure how that's going to work alongside HE cuts...

Not sure what I think of the report yet, or indeed the government's response to it. Part of me thinks we've heard it all before or are already doing what they're suggesting. Part of me thinks if they actually mean it, some of what they're suggesting will be great and is really needed. My cynical side thinks it'll all come to nothing.

Limelight, I wonder how many students any conservatoire will be able to put into Teach First if they have to raise their fees to 9k per annum. That is probably what it will cost them to continue to offer a performance degree with a considerable element of 1-1, small ensemble and orchestral work.

Yes, it's all a bit challenging isn't it? Especially when a conservatoire based BMus in most cases costs more than 9k to deliver. Challenging when the conservatoires are losing large chunks of their teaching budgets.

Where it could be interesting is in how this piece of news will influence conservatoires as they make decisions about how to reshape degree courses in light of cuts. I can imagine discussions have been focussed on streamlining degrees to focus very heavily on performance, and moving away from all the recent rhetoric about preparing students for portfolio careers (as players, teachers, practitioners, creators etc). Some of the conservatoires do this stuff really well (the northern, gsmd, and TCM in particular), and this report possibly gives them something new to think about.

But as you say, this does depend on cuts and on whether or not this is looked at holistically. You can't say that conservatoire degrees aren't significant enough to get a teaching budget on one hand, and then say that schools need conservatoire educated musicians on the other. Or possibly I'm being naive.