Music

Music - our intent

We want all pupils to benefit from a music education which engages and inspires them to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians. Our curriculum provision will increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, we want them to develop a growing musical vocabulary that allows them to critically engage with music. Teaching and learning of music will be a reflective process for the children as they are given the opportunities to assess themselves and their peers. We intend that children will be confident in celebrating their musical success and skills with their peers and wider audiences through performances and recordings.

Music - our implementation

Checkendon School is a small primary school with big musical ambitions. Following the publication of the Model Music Curriculum in 2021 and the National Plan for Music Education in 2022 we have overhauled our music curriculum and provision and are constantly seeking ways to encourage all children to experience the joy of making music. We are committed to providing high quality, weekly whole class music lessons for all age groups from reception to year 6 to enable children to excel in individual and small group instrumental lessons and ensembles. We believe that the opportunity to participate in whole class recorder lessons would enrich the music making in our school and would provide every child with a valuable opportunity to learn an instrument and experience the many benefits of playing together. Small schools have very small budgets and do not receive any money for music provision. Many schools are being forced to remove music from the curriculum due to the lack of funding and there is a lot of media attention around this at the moment. Considering the context of the community we serve, by offering music lessons we are realising cultural capital through enhanced music provision. We will be exposing our children to a variety of subject areas, promoting character building qualities that lead to creating well-rounded, global citizens, and of course the more typical expectations of education – which are to provide children with recognised and meaningful opportunities to succeed. We believe that music enriches the lives of our pupils both individually and our wider school community. We were able to benefit from a grant from the SRP Walter Bergmann Fund that helped us to keep music alive in our community by enabling us to purchase a class set of recorders. That followed a successful grant application with NAPE (Oxford) for Djembe Drums.

Music - our impact

Music and singing are integral to the life of Checkendon. The children relish opportunities to create, play, perform and enjoy music, develop skills, appreciate a wide variety of musical forms, and begin to judge the quality of music. Through our music curriculum pupils gain enjoyment, self-confidence and a sense of achievement through musical activities. They acquire musical skills, knowledge and understanding of musical concepts through primarily active listening then performing and composing.