I know it's not just me being awkward ! (English National Curriculum)

[MrGongGong]

So now the music curriculum in English schools has been "disapplied"

(http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/...00199150/music)

The new 'national curriculum programmes of study and attainment targets for music at key stages 1 to 3'.

Has THIS as it's opening statement

Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity

So is that "Universal" as in X Factor is everywhere ?

or the real meaning (in my cynical hat moment) being that if music IS a "universal language" (which is a quote from a Transglobal Underground Track ) being that if we all understand it as a "universal language" there's no point in trying to teach it ?

It would seem to me that this kind of "truism" nonsense should have no place in something as important as music education !

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-music-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-music-programmes-of-study

[Historian]

So now music in English schools is "disapplied" as a statutory subject

(http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/...00199150/music)

Not quite. As your first link points out, it's still a compulsory national curriculum subject at Key Stages 1 to 3 (primary school and the first two to three years of secondary school). However, schools which follow the National Curriculum (not including many academies) can now effectively teach it how they like until the new National Curriculum comes in from September 2014.

I fear that the rest of your post may well be valid.

[MrGongGong]

Sadly I have been to several schools (Academies) in the last couple of years which have simply stopped teaching music all together ! So when youngsters come up and say "I really love music, I wish we could do it at school" all I can tell them is to try and persuade their parents to find another school for them to go to The sad thing being that we are taking away music provision from many young people, music as a "thinking subject" is almost dead in many places.
Never mind though, as Gove points out, you don't need to have any expertise to teach anyway .........

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The sad thing being that we are taking away music provision from many young people, music as a "thinking subject" is almost dead in many places.
Never mind though, as Gove points out, you don't need to have any expertise to teach anyway .........

In many schools where they still teach it, music has long since ceased being a "thinking subject". More a form of entertainment.

[teamsaint]

Sadly I have been to several schools (Academies) in the last couple of years which have simply stopped teaching music all together ! So when youngsters come up and say "I really love music, I wish we could do it at school" all I can tell them is to try and persuade their parents to find another school for them to go to The sad thing being that we are taking away music provision from many young people, music as a "thinking subject" is almost dead in many places.
Never mind though, as Gove points out, you don't need to have any expertise to teach anyway .........

well most of our politicians don't have any experience in running things properly, (cameron for instance), so its reasonable for them to assume the same applies to teaching.

[VodkaDilc]

I wonder if Mr Gove read this letter in the Guardian. It describes exactly the ideas we were given when training to teach music in the late 60s. It seemed so obvious at the time; doesn't it still apply?

In 1960, when I was training to be a teacher at London's Institute of Education, we were told that the children we would be teaching would grow up into a world where no one worked five days a week. Those were the days, before SATs or league tables, when we assumed that the costs and benefits of increasing automation would be shared among us, not the benefits to the most privileged and the costs to the most vulnerable. In those days we really were all in this together (Osborne tells jobless to work for benefits, 30 September).

We were told that our tasks as teachers included encouraging children to make creative use of this new leisure. The most important quality in a teacher would be to be a well-rounded personality, who made good use of their own leisure.

To this end there were no lectures on Friday afternoons but a variety of creative activities including art, pottery, music, poetry. What happened to this vision of what it means to be human?

[amateur51]

well most of our politicians don't have any experience in running things properly, (cameron for instance), so its reasonable for them to assume the same applies to teaching.

Gove was previously a hack working for Murdoch, who has been a great strength ever since, we're told.

Nuff said.

[teamsaint]

I wonder if Mr Gove read this letter in the Guardian. It describes exactly the ideas we were given when training to teach music in the late 60s. It seemed so obvious at the time; doesn't it still apply?

In 1960, when I was training to be a teacher at London's Institute of Education, we were told that the children we would be teaching would grow up into a world where no one worked five days a week. Those were the days, before SATs or league tables, when we assumed that the costs and benefits of increasing automation would be shared among us, not the benefits to the most privileged and the costs to the most vulnerable. In those days we really were all in this together (Osborne tells jobless to work for benefits, 30 September).

We were told that our tasks as teachers included encouraging children to make creative use of this new leisure. The most important quality in a teacher would be to be a well-rounded personality, who made good use of their own leisure.

To this end there were no lectures on Friday afternoons but a variety of creative activities including art, pottery, music, poetry. What happened to this vision of what it means to be human?

That is the kind of stuff we learned in A level economics, in the late 70's.

The ideas were stolen by the bankers and their whitehall poodles who fear us having any freedom.


With apologies to real poodles, obviously.


Creativity is another thing that they fear. They want us to think that it is in short supply.

I wonder how the Musical Education experts on the board would set about improving things.

[Dave2002]

.
Never mind though, as Gove points out, you don't need to have any expertise to teach anyway .........

Has he really done this?

I don't subscribe to the "all teachers are great" view, which the unions might have us believe. In subjects such as maths and physics there are teachers whom I would call incompetent, because they don't know the subject they are trying to teach. It's not fashionable to say this.

There are some excellent teachers. To be a really good teacher requires a lot of skill, knowledge, enthusiasm, patience and I fear in some environments an ability to keep discipline and survive.

Someone who is very knowledgeable about their subject may still not be a good teacher, because of a lack in other areas, but someone who really doesn't know the subject being taught can never be good, IMO, no matter how personable, enthusiastic etc. they are.

Some head teachers turn a blind eye to poor teaching. "He/she is well liked" "He/she keeps good discipline" The fact that such a teacher may present incorrect formulae in Physics, for example VR=I or doesn't know how to draw diagrams to illustrate image formation using lenses or mirrors is not of concern to the head teacher!

Unfortunately there may also be a perception that subject knowledge skills to a high level are not needed at primary stages. I believe that this is often where most damage is done. Well meaning teachers who make "comforting" comments to young children like "Never mind, I wasn't very good at maths and it's not done me any harm" do a great deal to undermine young children. All the more so when the teacher has failed to realise that much of a child's work was in fact correct, but some of thte questions were copied down incorectly, and the teacher was unable to explain where the errors occurred and why.

[MrGongGong]

Has he really done this?

Yes

Who can teach at a Free School?
Innovation, diversity and flexibility are at the heart of the Free Schools policy. In that spirit we will not be setting overly prescriptive requirements in relation to qualifications.

Which means that all you need is a DBS (What the CRB has become) and the school to believe that you are competent. Given the nature of some of the folks who are setting up these it's more than a little worrying.....

There are good and bad teachers indeed, BUT to let someone with no knowledge of pedagogy loose as a teacher (as opposed to someone who is visiting to work with classes of students) is simply foolish.

(source http://www.education.gov.uk/a0075663...ools-workforce)

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/feb/06/michael-rosen-gove-curriculum-schools