Music lessons in school or out when starting new senior school?

[boredorboard]

Would really appreciate some wisdom. DD is starting a new senior school Yr7 in September. At the moment she has music lessons in school and so will need a new teacher regardless.

I don't know whether to organise lessons in school or outside? The pro of in school is that she will be involved in the music dept activity and more likely to get involved in orchestras and bands. She is quite shy so may be reluctant to do this otherwise although obviously she will be allowed to.

The con is that she will miss academic lessons (although the actual lesson missed will vary each week) and I don't want her to fall behind, miss homework being set, etc. I think she will also find it hard to walk out of a lesson midway to go to the music lesson.

What has worked for your DC? I don't know what to do for the best.

We've mainly had gymnatsics and swimmimg at club level here so school terms are pretty irrelevant. Both at several sessions a week regardless of term time and sometimes additional in holidays.

But as I said I'm aware other sports can ve different!

Like a PP said, I think it can depend on the DC and what kind activities they take up. We've still have/had lessons in and out of school for different instruments. I think for value for money, out of school is better, less distractions, over-running of others eating into your lesson time etc.

However, if the out of school life is active, it's tricky to schedule music lessons on top, and in our experience, we've had difficulties moving private tuition slots when needed, so they can get missed (for drama, concerts, fixtures, training, whatever it is your DC do etc etc), reducing the 10 x average sessions to less actually taken.

The juggling of missing subject lessons early in Y7 can be tricky, but DC do get used to it and teachers understand how easy it is to miss leaving class for their music lesson...it's so easily done. But, the upside of doing lessons at school means you are at least on the radar (rightly or wrongly) and can get included in the wider music stuff more easily.

All schools are different, we've been fortunate that when there was the odd roster clash with the same subject, when flagged it didn't reoccur. And in the higher years the older DC tend to gain the before school/lunch slots more easily to accommodate the workload.

We had violin through school and piano privately. Though all teachers are self employed here it's just they arrange to use rooms at schools (changed 5 years ago)

If it's an orchestral instrument, once they have grade 1 or 2, look at the county groups which are far better than school based orchestras - junior strings was grade 1 and at least 7 years old when my dd started (she went all the way through to the symphony orchestra and even played at the schools prom once)

DS1&2 have lessons in school. DS1's violin is at lunchtime as he has 45 minutes. Piano for him and for DS2 is during lessons but they rotate so it's not always missing the same lesson.

DS2 has trumpet outside school, purely because he already had a really good teacher, but as they both have a long day, reducing the number of out of school commitments is a big factor for us.

Downside is you don't get to choose the teacher, so it can be hit and miss.