Teacher 'suggesting' DD drops an instrument to learn more maths

[gastonlovescheese]

Hi All,

DD is in yr 5 of a reasonably strict all girls school. She's creative, free spirited and has had trouble fully focussing in lessons. Last year she got a little acoustic guitar for her birthday and has so far excelled, when she is playing she is hyper focussed and has blown me away with how far she's come so quickly.
The school has really great club and musical options - she has one lesson a week of each: clarinet, guitar and now piano. Her teacher approached her piano teacher recently requesting that her lesson be at lunchtime as it's encroaching on her learning time. Today I received an email suggesting DD drops either clarinet or guitar as she believes her maths is being affected. These are 20 mins lessons and as the times change each week the lessons they affect differ.

Now AITA or is this teacher signing up to the Rishi Sunak line of thinking that maths is the be all and end all of education? Why make her stop something she is excelling in to ensure she doesn't miss any maths? What would you do if you were me? Any advice welcome!
Thanks

identifying detail edited out by MNHQ, at OP's request.

There shouldn’t be a need to move all of them. Often lessons in school lead to being in the school orchestra and the fun of music making. I would move the piano lessons as they rarely fit into ensemble playing.

State primary but very high percentage of children having music lessons, school orchestra after school etc.

The rules that balanced this with learning were
a) Music lessons only after morning break, with core Maths and English always taught before break. Music teachers adjusted their hours of employment accordingly.

b) No more than 1 instrument learned in school time.

Unofficially, there was also a certain amount of negotiation between class teachers and music teachers to set the rotating weekly lesson timetables such that children who were particularly disadvantaged by missing chunks of lessons tended to have more of their lessons within break / lunch times over a term.

I would listen to the teacher if she says DD's maths is being affected. I was a maths teacher, and never minded the students who disappeared off for music lessons, but they were all students who managed to catch up very efficiently on their return. It was usually a rota, so it wasn't too often. However I can think of kids for whom missing half a maths lesson regularly would be a problem.

As your DD is in a school where lots of kids go out to lessons, I would expect that the teacher would only be raising it because it genuinely is a problem in your DD's case. As others have said, many schools restrict the number of instruments a child can learn in school time, probably partly because they don't want them missing too much teaching.

Solutions: move some of her lessons out of school, see whether she can get a fixed lesson slot that doesn't impinge on lessons (although the more children have this arrangement, the more often the rota of the remainder hits their maths lessons, so it has to be justified - in secondary, it's often the rule that KS4 lessons are not in lesson time), see whether the rotas can be organised so her lesson never hits maths (although this is a big ask for whoever does the rota).

One of mine did 2 instruments on the condition that his other work was caught up on and not affected. He choose himself to reduce it to 1 instrument in school and out as he felt himself it was causing problems in other subjects. He was year 9 when he made this decision so a year 5 is not unlikely to see the connection so it's your job to do that for her.