We know you have questions. It’s only natural. Becoming a teacher with Sing Education is a serious commitment. What’s the teaching day like? Which schools do you work with? What can I expect in terms of training and development? Here you’ll find answers to your most frequently asked questions.
Yes, one of the things applicants love about Sing Education is that their teaching timetable would look largely the same each week. We place teachers into a school on a long-term basis and do not chop and change teachers from week to week.
Yes, our teachers teach at the same school on the same day every week. You may be placed within a number of schools across the week, but you would always go on the same day at the same time to each school. There are exceptions from time-to-time for things such as training or one-off events.
We work in all London Boroughs, but our main boroughs are Ealing, Hounslow, Hillingdon, Brent, Wandsworth, and Kensington and Chelsea. However, we try our best to place teachers in schools that are easy for them to access via public transport and take a lot of care over ensuring that travel times are at a minimum across the team.
As per the previous question, we do try our best to place teachers in schools with a suitable location for them and teachers agree to schools before they’re placed in them. Teachers would know in advance where they were going to be working.
We like to provide consistency to a school and a reliable, long-term solution to their music needs. If your schedule is likely to change from week-to-week as many freelance musicians and performers does, then a permanent curricular position with Sing Education may not be the most suitable thing for you right now. However, if for most of the year you find your schedule is the same, but you may wish to take on a one or two week contract or maybe even a four week contract, once or twice a year, this is certainly something that we have accommodated in the past and may be willing to look at in the future for the right candidate.
Unfortunately, if you want the freedom to change your schedule from week-to-week or if you require long stretches of months away from your teaching work, then a permanent curricular position or instrumental/vocal role may not be the right one for you. However, somebody wanting increased flexibility may wish to consider applying for a cover position, to provide ad-hoc cover for a permanent curricular teacher at the last minute or in-advance.
Our curricular teaching roles are on a permanent, employed basis. Our instrumental and vocal tuition roles, as well as our cover positions, are on a self-employed basis.
We know that music teachers like to teach for a whole day, not just for 2 hours. Our teachers are all contracted to start at 8:45am and are standard and the school day usually runs until 4:30pm or may finish earlier if there is no after-school club at 3:30pm.
A typical instrumental or vocal tuition day would be similar but less likely to have an after-school club, so typically runs from around 8:45am till 3:00 or 3:30pm.
Our teachers do not typically attend parents’ evenings. However, if requested by the school this may be necessary, but that would be agreed separately and is not standard.
We perform informal observation or assessment on pupils throughout the year. However, these assessments are not routinely written as formal, longhand or marked assessments.
As above, Sing Education teachers do not routinely need to write reports for their curricular pupils. However, sometimes this may be requested by the school, and we have support in place where this is requested.
A typical assessment of music pupils is a guided sheet of statements, which our teachers use to assess whether each pupil demonstrates an ability at a certain level, such as whether they are able to do simple activities aimed at their age group and their level of learning, in relation to the National Curriculum for Music and our Progression Map for Music, but Sing Education teachers are not required to write long reports per pupil.
Sing Education instrumental or vocal teachers may be requested by the school to provide reports but also do provide weekly feedback through practice diaries and through our online portal for parents which enables teachers to communicate progress continually.
Yes, we work in conjunction with schools to ensure that children have performance opportunities throughout the academic year. For curricular teachers, this may be end-of-term shows, Christmas performances or other off-site school performances for your choirs and ensembles. We also encourage Sing Education partner schools to come together for performances.
For instrumental and vocal teachers, this may take the form of putting on a concert at the end of the year to showcase your pupils work.
When a teacher initially starts with Sing Education, naturally they find it necessary to spend some extra time learning the resources, learning the repertoire and simply getting to grips with their new job and the requirements they need to deliver. Teachers typically find that when they begin with Sing Education, this takes a lot longer than it does once they’re settled. This means that you’ll likely find there is an initial period of putting in extra time, which is only going to enable you to be more confident in the classroom and to be able to enjoy and thrive in the classroom environment because you know the material so well.
However, our teachers always reassure new teachers that this tends to lessen as the time goes on, as you become more confident, you become quicker at learning, you find that you already know some of the material because things come back around in our Schemes of Work.
For new teachers, there are pre-planned singing assembly and club resources, to help you out as you begin your role. Once you’re settled in, you will need to spend time preparing singing assemblies and clubs, using our bank of resources. Lots of the preparation is there for you, but you will need to choose your repertoire and plan your extra-curricular sessions out.
There is also a small element of administration that needs to be done outside of school hours, for instance, communication, sharing your experiences with the rest of the Sing Education team, planning for extra events or sessions and any other administrative elements.
You do not need a PGCE to be a specialist music teacher with Sing Education. However, we do ask that you have some teaching experience, on top of having a good music degree (or related degree) and strong musical knowledge. We provide full in-house training to ensure that our teachers work to the highest of teaching standards within their school.
Have you undertaken further professional development beyond your degree, such as a QTS or PGCE, Kodály or Dalcroze training? Even better! We’d love to hear about this and to explore how your skills could be developed as a member of the Sing Education teaching team.
We work in primary schools and nursery schools across London, but we do not work in secondary schools.
Sometimes there will be a class teacher or a teaching assistant in the room with you whilst you are teaching the music lesson. However, often music lessons are used for PPA cover for the class teachers and in this case, there may not be another person in the room with you. Our curricular teachers receive initial and ongoing training in classroom management to a level that would enable them to be confident to teach a class on their own in the classroom.
Yes, you will stay at one school all day for the duration of the day.
No, we don’t provide travel expenses. However, all of our schools are accessible by public transport within the London Boroughs and many have a car park and safe bike storage. As mentioned above, we do our utmost to ensure teachers work at a school that is accessible to them and that they are able to travel to. We provide competitive salaries to ensure that teachers are well remunerated for their work.
