Avert a disaster for children’s access to primary music

[Tim Lund]

Someone from my allotments forwarded me the group email asking me and others to campaign against current proposals to remove music from the National Curriculum - see below.

It's certainly something I believe in, and as my fellow plot holder himself wrote:

music is one of the few subjects that usually demands that students work together, it is relational and socially cohesive, as well as providing an emotional language that reaches a deeper level that many other art forms rarely attain.

Of course it raises questions about why music should be a priority, but I'm not going to digress on this here ...

I hope you are very well and please excuse the group email. I'm fairly new to the idea of email campaigning but I feel very strongly about communicating the importance of the arts in education so I'm giving this a go!

Did you know that the government is currently consulting on which subjects should be compulsory in our schools? The deadline for making your views known is 14th April! As things stand it is highly likely that music will be one of the subjects dropped from the National Curriculum.

If you would like all children to have an entitlement to music education then please visit 38 Degrees campaign site by clicking on this link: Keep a broad national curriculum for all children inclusive of the arts http://uservoice.com/a/fvJhj

The National Association of Music Educators has drafted a response to the government consultation that you could endorse by using at as a basis for your submission to the government consultation.

NAME response: http://www.name.org.uk/sites/default/fi ... %201_1.pdf

The government consultation: h[url]ttp://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/inde ... =no&menu=1[/url]

The Times Ed on Friday reported that no Conservative MPs questioned thought that music should remain in the National Curriculum and only 1 in ten Labour MPs thought it should remain. We have very little time left to make our case. Please make sure that any music teachers or parents passionate about music education that you know are aware of the 14th April deadline for letting the government know how they feel. Anyone can submit their views by clicking on the consultation link above.

[mummycat]

op
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[Tim Lund]

Mummycat

I looked at that link, and I'm afraid my heart rather sank - for the sort of reason that I don't find a question like "to what extent should education encourage children to contribute to and improve society (more cohesive, tolerant, respectful etc.) " all that interesting. I guess there are some people who don't want all that, but they're probably not going to admit it, so asking the question doesn't get us very far. In fact, it feels like a bit of a trap, constructed to frame anyone who will not identify as being on the same side as the person as being against all these good things. I'm reminded of the Tom Lehrer song about the Folk Song Army - "We all hate poverty, war and injustice / unlike the rest of you squares".

So what are the sides in this? A bit of digging around in them material unearths an essay signed off "Professor Colin Richards is a former senior HMI and a critic of the use of testing for school accountability", and their seventh principle that a good curriculum "Contains assessment which contributes positively to learning." and you realise this may all be about testing, and how it should be done. That seventh - and last - principle feels like an admission that there has to be some kind of assessment, but the clearer message, from the tone of the criticism in other material on the site, is that the way that assessment is working out with OFSTED is all wrong.

Which is something I can sympathise with a lot, but it doesn't get to grips with whatever reasons have led to the foundation and continued expansion of OFSTED. At which point, as I wrote, my heart sinks, and in real life I need to go off to a couple of meetings this evening.

Don't you just miss Sydenham?

[mummycat]

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[Tim Lund]

We had the Perry Vale Ward assembly on Thursday night, and it was very sad to see the 'It Kickz' bid for out of school music lessons at Forest Hill School not get funded. I don't know if it was just that the arts are never easy to get people to vote funding for, or that it was a part of a larger funding effort, so didn't appeal as much.

When asked how they would show the results of getting this funding, we were told that the kids would come back and put on a show. Given something will be happening anyway, what about a fund raising concert - either in Forest Hill School, or maybe Mayow Park?