Aspirations
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
The first edition of our brand new newsletter is now available. Your printed copy should be arriving soon, but you can also download it and read it here.
Archive for February, 2009
Joint FMS/Sing Up Collaboration Celebrates with 3500 Young Performers at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall
Friday, February 6th, 2009
A unique collaboration of 14 West Midlands Music Services, which form the National Sing up Project West Midlands Consortium, was rewarded with a successful Sing Up event held on Monday 26 January at Birmingham’s prestigious Symphony Hall.
The combined event involved over a 3500 KS1 and 2 young singers, and nearly 500 teachers and other adults as part of a huge CPD input, in two singing workshops led by vocal supremo, Lin Marsh, together with singing leaders from each of the authorities. (more…)
Making More of Music
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
The Ofsted Report (Making More of Music) has just been published. It is the latest “state of the nation” from HMI and is essential reading, drawing its evidence and conclusions from recent music Ofsted inspections. The report (PDF, Word) is 77 pages long so you may find it better to read on line!
The press report issued on the 4th February 2009 is a useful summary.
HMI Tony Knight will be speaking at the forthcoming FMS Burning Issues conference in London.
FMS is pleased to see some very positive statements about music services and well done to everyone.
Key Findings include the following
Music services in local authorities contributed significantly to broadening provision, especially through providing instrumental tuition and providing opportunities for pupils to perform in regional ensembles and at national and international musical events. No other partnerships had a similar impact across all the schools visited. The best instrumental/vocal programmes were making a real difference to pupils’ musical education, but not all the programmes were of sufficient duration or quality.
And Part A Inspection findings for music page 9 states
1. Overall, the schools selected for the survey because they were involved in instrumental/vocal programmes were more often judged to be good or outstanding than the schools that were not involved in such programmes. Around two thirds of the schools in the sample involved in instrumental programmes were judged to be good or better compared to about half of the schools in the whole sample.