I printed out the new National Curriculum Programme of Study for Music.......
..... it covers 2 pages....
In actual fact because of my printer settings it covers one page and the other page is just blank apart from the web link and the date.
In some ways this might not be a bad thing. There's not a pages and pages of items that pupils should be taught that to many may not be accessible. In fact they are quite the opposite. Just a few statements for key stage 1 - 3 (is there any guidelines for EYFS?) which are actually quite vague. I'm going to look at each key stage in turn and pick out my "favourite" parts
Key Stage 1
Pupils should be taught to:
play tuned and untuned instruments musically
I love this statement. For the past 4 years I've taught post 16 which has involved listening to 16-18 year olds who want to crank up the volume of their guitars, use a shed load of distortion and just make a noise. Are they playing musically? Possibly but it's not my choice. What on earth does it mean by musically? Does it mean that they should be playing a specific tune or just randomly. What is it measured against?
Key Stage 2
To be honest I don't like any of the statements for Key Stage 2. I think they can be quite limited and actually put off non-music specialists.
Pupils should be taught to:
Use and understand staff and other musical notations.
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against all pupils learning any form of notation (I could read the treble clef fluently when I was 4) but the way it reads in the programme of study is as if it is the easiest thing in the world. They've tried to make it open by wording it to incorporate other notation but still it makes it a huge task to get a class of 30 kids to use and understand notation in any form. Plus allowing for different forms of notation to be taught means that pupils going into key stage 3 potentially could be coming with varying knowledge of notation. This isn't ideal for the pupils or teachers.
Personally I feel that Key Stage 2 actually reads like a GCSE programme of study and is quite a jump from that at Key stage 1. Also without the correct guidance and training it may be daunting for those who are not specialists in music.
Key Stage 3
I don't have a lot to say about key stage 3 as it is just an extension of key stage 2 which makes sense. However, I think the key issue here is that key stage 2 is probably more appropriate for key stage 3. I do like how they have mentioned technologies and this is a step forward but again it is very vague. I think it is important that notation is taught at key stage 3 because at GCSE I think it's highly relevant. I know there have been debates about how you can get through GCSE without being about to read music and I'm certain that there were many in my class all those years ago that couldn't.
Again what level that should be at I have no idea and it isn't clear from the programme of study.
Overall, I feel that they seem to be trying to formalise learning about music by moving towards more emphasis on notation and listening skills but the vagueness of the programme of study doesn't really cover elements of music. Whilst I applaud the vagueness being open to creativity it could also cause issues in terms of whether it is being taught by a music specialist or not particularly in primary schools. That's not to say that someone who's specialism isn't music couldn't teach it at all. With the creativity allowed for such a vague study programme it should encourage more teachers to be able to teach music in the class room. I just think that at key stage two it is asking for a lot more of the teacher.
Now it could be argued that this will encourage more schools to have music specialists as their staff but with limited funds within education and a shift to steer away from the arts the cynic in me feels there is another agenda in this shift.
If you have anything that you would like to add or comment on please feel free.
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