would you have a problem with an unqualified person teaching music in your school?

[goonIcantakeit]

question to both parents and teachers.

I shall be teaching classroom music next term. I'm very excited, but want to be prepared for any ill-feeling/doubts there may be about having an unqualified person teaching. It's during the teachers' PPA time.

I have a track recorder at the school in that I run an ensemble there, so I am not an unknown quantity and it is on merit.

I think you are generalising Jane.

We have 9 schools in this town. All three private schools sell themselves as excelling at music. One does excel - there's just no two ways about it. The benchmark of their excellence is that every single child is in their ensembles. We did a joint event with them recently: it was good fun seeing the different styles we each learn in.
The other two haven't been that great. Their websites and open days say they are great at music and they rope in the accomplished kids to play pieces on expensive instruments to impress prospective parents. But you wouldn't (if in the know) send your child there to become musical. You'd send them to private school 3 or (I hope) to us.

but most schools don't have peris of that quality. Quite a few state schools have no peris coming in at all, or only to do a couple of instruments.

I think there is a difference between saying an unqualified but passionate teacher is ideal, and saying that an unqualified but passionate teacher is better than what a lot of children in many schools get who would otherwise have next to nothing, including classroom teachers with no interest in music whatsoever. I know a number of children who wished they could learn instruments at school, but it is not offered.

It would be fantastic if all schools wanted and could fund lots of highly qualified classroom teachers and peris and people to run ensembles, and that those people were available and wanted to teach the (sometimes part time) hours that might be offered. But if the alternative is that music doesn't happen in schools, then I think there are times and places where someone without formal qualifications might be able to step in.

I'm also assuming that we are talking primary here or early secondary. I would think that someone preparing pupils for GCSE or higher exams would be a qualified teacher.

Yes, Primary.
I can imagine myself taking on KS3 at some point because what I do is very similar to Musical Futures.
But not beyond. Because you have to learn all about the requirements of a particular exam and the particular exam techniques.

I do teach at Masters level (not music) but that's almost coming out of the other end of the sausage factory that is education: the students are expected to be independent learners. So it's your ability to know your subject and disseminate your experience that matters (as with primary music, so really we are going full circle).

To teach music? I'm a qualified teacher, and wouldn't give a fig. Not to put you down or anything but it is "only music".

If you were being expected to teach, say English, or maths, then yes - I'd care then.

Zingally - I really hope you never go near any of my kids. What an appalling thing to say.

Lol Zingally, I think Yanbu. I use the expression myself

If we stopped striving for equal status with other subjects, we could better recognise music's real strengths.

I get to take risks and achieve precisely because it's "only music". I think the Arts should feel different, and give children a chance to have a different experience.

I consider the real teachers to be my "customers". Consequently, they know that I can "reach the parts other subjects don't reach". They send children to me and give the music team good conditions to work in because we are there for them.

But qualifications in teaching music are precisely what they say on the tin. They are qualifications in teaching music! Of course that's different to teaching English or Maths

I'm trying to step back from this thread, but the arrogance of the OP keeps drawing me back in.

You seem to believe that qualified music teachers teach by the book, focus on notation and the western classical tradition. Have you observed a qualified music teacher take a class? The strategies you talk about are commonplace amongst qualified music teachers - precisely because we have spent time studying, learning, researching, being trained, observing and practising techniques for engaging children in music. I'm sure you are talented and capable - but the way you post implies that you scorn the very idea of teaching qualifications for music teachers. The PGCE in Music is a very, very different course to a PGCE in English, just as it is different for PE and for Art, obviously - it is delivered by specialists.

People on the thread are also confusing peri teachers (excellent musicians who teach one-on-one or small groups on specific instruments) who have music degrees and usually a professional performing career alongside, with postgraduate qualified music teachers who dleiver class music lessons in the manner described by the OP.

The issue is not that we should have more unqualified people teaching music in our classrooms - it is funding, pure and simple. There simply isn't the funding for primary schools to have music specialists unless they choose to employ one (academies and free schools). Therefore they scrabble about doing whatever they can to provide a quality musical experience for children, which is usually the class teacher delivering music often poorly, or sometimes as in the OP situation, parents volunteer to help. Both situations are supplemented by visiting peri tutors.

What the OP is doing is admirable, but she is displaying a tremendous arrogance and lack of insight into what music teaching involves - and seems to think she is reinventing the wheel. Be humble and learn - you owe it to the children you will be teaching to become as well qualified as you can. The school can afford to employ you - they should support you in becoming properly qualified.

A qualification is much more than a piece of paper so please stop denigrating the thousands of dedicated professionals who teach music up and down the country.