Category: Education

  • What if the exam itself gatekeeps

    Reading the entry figures in Whittaker et al. (the 42% of schools no longer entering any pupils for GCSE Music, the 43% fall in A-level entries since 2011) I find myself thinking less about the headline numbers and more about what happens inside the qualification for the pupils who do get entered, because that’s the vantage point…

  • Reconceptualising the ecosystem: a response

    I’ve just read Whittaker, Anderson, Kinsella and Fautley’s recent paper in the British Journal of Music Education, (Re)conceptualising an integrated music education ecosystem in England, and I’ve been sitting with it for a while before writing anything down. Partly because the Birmingham group’s model is good (genuinely useful, generously offered, explicitly unfinished) and partly because I read…

  • People, Place, Purpose

    I enjoyed returning to Royal Opera House Leaders for Impact programme on Friday to join a panel about leading cultural education. Marvellously this programme is now into its sixth year; I was part of Generation 4, joining the programme as I started a new role in Bexley. The timing was ideal; I welcomed the collegiality…

  • Opera in education

    I felt hugely lucky to be part of the development of Royal Opera House’s Create and Sing. I was a few years into my own singing lessons and but virtue of these lessons being with the tenor Ian Caley operatic arias were part of my vocal diet. A great deal of the developmental process, that…

  • Imagining a plan for cultural education

    With the announcement following the publication of the White paper in England that work would begin on a National Plan for Cultural Education many will have applauded the announcement, and many will see this as part of a long history of policy and approaches that sought to champion cultural education. Music education has received considerable…

  • Why arts education matters now

    ‘All schools should be art schools’ proclaimed Bob & Roberta Smith and now as schools are providing on offsite provision how that vision is realised will be one of many challenges schools face. There will undoubtedly be the need to make difficult choices about what to provide but I want to make the case that providing whatever we can…

  • Indicators of (musical) thinking together

    In a previous post I wondered if the six types of talk proposed by Robin Alexander could be six types of (creative) music-making: Collective: ‘address learning tasks together’ – ensemble music-making is the immediate equivalent of this. Supportive: free of risk expression of ‘hesitant or tentative, or that might be judged ‘wrong’ – I think…

  • A dialogic teaching companion to music

    I’m working my way through Robin Alexander’s A Dialogic Teaching Companion (2020). I’ve reached the centre of the book where Alexander introduces his revised framework.  I won’t reproduce the framework here as I think the book is worthy of reading (and purchase) but I am interested in how a dialogic framework could help structure a…

  • Walkthrus: Explanation and Modelling

    I had a great two terms of supervising coaches on the Accelerate Teaching Programme. Supporting new instructional coaches gave me insight into the experience of the participants and particularly the strength of the rubrics that underpinned the work on the various modules. The rubrics enabled participants to have purposeful conversations with their coaches about their…

  • Googling dialogic teaching

    Googling dialogic teaching

    Well before I read the EEF report on dialogic teaching I did a google search and found several news stories and opinion pieces that followed the release of the report. Fascinating! I thought I would blog on my readings of these, just to start with the end rather than the beginning. What is immediately striking…