Stressful exams. Mental health crises. Curricula unfit for modern life. Music relieves stress, improves wellbeing, re-balances academics.
And…thank you children.
That is time.
Pencils down please.
Your exam is now concluded.
With the final school term well underway and assessment season firmly behind, many are eager for the long holidays to come.
Pupils are encouraged to…”put down their pens and enjoy the break before results are released later this summer. Teachers, too, can take the chance to reflect upon their hard work and achievements this academic year.” EAL
But for the thousands of teachers and students who undertook SATs this year, what a truly challenging exam season it was.
This year’s SATs presented the most difficult testing environment many students had ever faced – with news of primary students exiting exams in tears widely circulating.
”Hundreds of parents and teachers have complained online that the reading exam for 10 and 11-year-olds was too difficult and a head teachers’ union said staff also struggled ‘to understand the questions’”. ECH
Designed to measure students’ English and maths skills in Year 2 and again in Year 6, SATs are administered by the Department for Education. SATs are meant to reveal progression over time, identifying pupil strengths and any potential weaknesses, particularly as they head into secondary school.
However, “[NAHT] members have told us that the choice of texts was not accessible for the wide range of experiences and backgrounds children have and the difficulty was beyond previous tests, leaving children upset, and with even staff struggling to understand the questions.” ECH
In response, the DfE acknowledged that while the exams are meant to be “challenging,” that “[s]chools should always encourage pupils to do their best but preparing for primary assessments should not be at the expense of children’s wellbeing.”
Unfortunately, many parents felt the DfE advice was out of lockstep with their children’s experiences on the day.
Educational consultant and qualified primary teacher, Beth Southern, remarked on her own son’s SATs:
“I have been told yesterday’s test was dense, packed with difficult vocabulary, idiomatic language and a huge amount of inference was needed to complete it.
“It’s awful that we assess a child’s entire primary school reading ability on a single hour-long test that was way too complex for 10 to 11-year-olds to comprehend.” ECH
Moreover, the impact of testing seems to last far beyond the exam setting – with pupil’s long-term positive mental health caught in the balance.
“Across the board, this year’s school pupils are the most ‘anxious and stressed out’ exam cohort ever seen, according to the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).” HUF
In another well-documented example:
Kerry Forrester, a head teacher at a Cheshire primary school, [wrote] to her local MP expressing concern about the “negative impact” of the exams on the “mental health and wellbeing” of her pupils.
In a letter she shared on Twitter, Ms Forrester said this year has seen “the most negative impact on our children that we have ever experienced”.
“Tears flowed from our most capable readers and stress levels rose amongst all others,” she said, adding that “this was the most challenging reading test I have seen in my 29 years as a teacher”. ECH
We are right to be concerned.
Mental health data suggests our young people are at increasingly at risk of poor mental health – despite some post-pandemic bounceback.
Government recently issued a comprehensive report entitled “State of the nation 2022: children and young people’s wellbeing.”
In that report, children’s wellbeing and mental health were looked at from a number of different perspectives, including some longitudinal metrics used to collate data points over time.
“Some measures indicate recovery to pre-pandemic levels. These include happiness, life satisfaction, feeling life is worthwhile, and participation in extra-curricular activities and physical activities.
However, some measures, such as levels of likely mental disorder for school age children, have remained elevated but stable, while other measures, including anxiousness for older young people, have worsened.” GOV
These are the global measures best in class education systems are taking to create leaders for our future.
From Estonia to the Netherlands, Singapore to Finland, children are learning differently – and according to the OECD…they’re learning better.
Here in the UK it’s a somewhat different matter.
According to the Times Education Commission – which delivered a 12-point treatise in 2022 setting out recommendations for a new approach to encourage life-long learning across Britain:
The education system is not delivering what the economy needs, what parents want or what pupils deserve. The way people shop, work, travel, bank and watch television has changed utterly over the past decade but schools have failed to keep pace. TIM
A school leader from Cornwall summed up the mood of the evidence presented to The Times Education Commission over the course of its year-long inquiry.
“We’re preparing children for a world that doesn’t exist.” TIM
Amassing evidence from more than 600 experts across fields including business, the arts and education, The Times Education Commission detailed the measures it deemed necessary to “transform education and unleash the potential of every child,” including new thinking around:
The benefits of music education are manifold.
Learning music supports young people’s wellbeing and mental health, boosts their academic performance and has a direct impact on pupils’ decisions to continue in formal education – broadening their future career opportunities, as well as overall life outcomes.
This means that music education has a fundamental role to play in solving the three key issues cited above, namely exam stress, mental health and curriculum innovation. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
Amid the stress and pressure of exam season, music can guide our minds to a place of calm and serenity, enhancing our wellbeing and transforming stress into inspiration. – BERT ROUTLEDGE, Director of Small Group & 1:1
Stress can manifest in physical, mental and emotional ways and affect behaviour. If it’s impacting your [students], they might struggle with:
At Sing Education, we fundamentally understand how important emotional wellbeing is to developing healthy minds, bodies and spirits – that’s why we build joy, fun and wellbeing directly into our music curriculum.
Sing Education lessons always contain active music making, engaging pupils throughout with the use of singing games, percussion, rhymes, rhythm activities and more.
Our lessons draw on the Kodály approach and we readily incorporate folk-based material, multisensory learning, props and flashcards. This is to develop a deep understanding and knowledge of music, of musical principles, so it’s not just games for games’ sake.
“There are many health benefits to singing. Singing releases endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, which help boost your mood; encourages a greater awareness of breathing, helping to release anxiety; and provides a platform to express yourself.” TRIN
Every child has a voice.
That’s not just a motto.
The singing voice is our primary instrument. It is one of the first ways we communicate. It has the added benefit of being free, portable and infinitely malleable. For these reasons, voice is the cornerstone of Sing Education’s approach to teaching. Through the voice pupils are able to access all areas of musicianship.
Plus we invest in extensive and ongoing training for our music specialists so they can confidently deliver our very unique brand of high-energy music education which directly supports joyful expression in the classroom.
With Sing Education’s classroom, instrumental and clubs provision, pupils receive first-class music instruction that builds skills, confidence and wellbeing.
A well-rounded, tech savvy, entrepreneurial life-long learner.
These are the aims for 21st century education.
And it starts with bringing innovation into the classroom.
Sir James Dyson, the inventor, told the [Times] commission that the economy would continue to flatline without a greater focus on creativity, originality and innovation in education.
“Children are creative. They love building and making things. But as they get closer to GCSEs and A-levels all that is squashed out of them,” he said. “It’s all about rote-learning, not using your imagination. The system doesn’t measure creativity; it measures what you can remember of other people’s facts.” TIM
Sing Education couldn’t agree more.
Our tuition model emphasises self-expression, creativity and innovation – and is always evolving as we incorporate the best new learnings from academia, career musicians and our large schools network.
While we rely on certain core principles – such as those found in the Kodály method – we’re constantly scanning the environment for new, creative ways to teach music, to develop our staff and to embed high standards for music in the schools with which we work.
For example, we have regular contact with the Department for Education professionals who are instituting the national plan for music education.
In a similar vein, we have recently been invited to speak on a panel inputting into the plan, making sure that the new plan is accessible and inclusive for SEND children.
We are active listeners as well and use our deep ties to the country’s best conservatoires and music performance programmes to build networks within academia.
Discover Sing Education’s unique approach to bringing high-quality music education to primary schools across Greater London, Kent and Yorkshire.
This is our formula. It’s simple but effective.
Currently more than 60 schools and over 16,000 children rely on us for our excellent, consistent and full-service music delivery. We not only offer whole school curricular music but also instrumental tuition, singing assemblies and termly performances, as well as extracurricular clubs and choirs.
From recruitment to resources, staff management to payroll, timetabling to PPA cover, we are your partners for the journey.
Founded in 2014 and serving more than 16,000 children each week, Sing Education is a first class provider of primary school music education. Focusing on high-quality, singing-led tuition, we deliver a complete solution for schools which includes teacher recruitment, training and management, bespoke curricular resources and educational consultancy services.
Through music lessons, singing assemblies, choirs, after school clubs and instrumental tuition, Sing Education works with students from Nursery right through to Year 6. Our core philosophy is that “Every Child Has A Voice,” and, as educators active in the classroom, our directors and teachers know firsthand how much young learners benefit from exciting, rewarding music education.
Sing Education currently partners with schools throughout Greater London and Kent, as well as Yorkshire and the Humber.
Not yet on the list? Please enquire about our expansion plans for additional areas we will serve during the upcoming academic year.
www.singeducation.co.uk/schools
#SingEducation #HubsAndSpokes #InsideMusicEd
Top marks for school progress Around Ealing EAL
