Teaching hours aren't an excuse, because the schools which do teach it successfully (and there are many) have no more hours in the day than those which don't.  It depends on the quality of teaching, not only at GCSE level but prior to that, i.e. the notion of teaching notation from scratch to 14-year-olds in a classroom setting in any meaningful way just doesn't make sense.  Those introduced to fundamental concepts at a more appropriate stage (i.e. primary school) will be able to build up the skills necessary.  It's something that can be done by non-specialists at that earlier stage, with methods such as described earlier in this thread, except that they're so scared of teaching music at all that they resort to what they see as 'safer' options.

In short: there's a problem, but it lies anywhere but in the GCSE curriculum.  It's in primary schools, with a root cause being in teacher training courses.

I'm sure you're right.

Time to step in and give my thoughts if I may. The problem is very much with the current primary curriculum and, even more so, the problems in teacher training. When I started teaching, I could not read a note. I had never learnt an instrument at school beyond basic recorder playing in the infants (London's Burning was the peak of my achievements) and so began teaching with the benefit(?) of a very short course in music education at teacher training college; I have a B.Ed (Hons), so a four year course in which we had the grand total of 4 one hour sessions on teaching music. Bear in mind PGCE students who study teacher-training for just one year - they get even less.

At the interview for my first post, I was asked about my interests and talked about music and going to concerts, the opera etc, but admitted that I couldn't play a note, adding that I would like to learn. My lack of musical ability was not perceived as a problem as we had a teacher who came in one day a week to teach each of the four classes in the school for music. Members must understand that this is a common practice in primary education. On the one hand, it ensures the children receive a decent standard of music teaching, but on the other, it does nothing to improve the skills (and confidence) of the class teachers.

I've bored members before about how I taught myself to read music, play the recorder(s) and then went on to learn the clarinet, so I'll spare you the details here. When I arrived at my current school, I found myself in the position where I had to teach music to my class. Almost all the other teachers have no musical training - only one other teacher can read music, but even he lacks the confidence to play the piano in assemblies, so we use CD backing tracks. I used to have a very good recorder group which accompanied  the hymns, but we've had no decent players coming through the system since staff have either left or have been too busy at lunchtimes to continue with recorder clubs. Most staff do not feel confident teaching music; a colleague who is just moving into a Year 6 class is terrified about next term. I would say that the Year 5/6 curriculum is pretty daunting to an adult who is not able to read or play music and teachers, in my experience, do not share this fear about any other subject in the primary curriculum*. I've watched their mystified faces as I've tried to explain lessons on schemes of work I've planned for their classes.

* A new exception to this would be Modern Foreign Languages which comes into force as compulsory in primary schools very soon and is already happening in most.

As to notation, the curriculum requires that children are introduced to established and invented notations. We will clap rhythms and look at how we can record them: x xx xx x (crotchet, quavers, quavers, crotchet) and they will make up/ record their own rhythmic patterns. I sometimes share the standard notation of a short melody/ pattern I'm asking children to play on tuned percussion but always backed up with letter notation (B A G). Most of the time, it's about children developing a method of recording which enables them to remember how their composition goes, which is surely what notation is for at this age. By the time they get to Year 6, some children who have been learning an instrument with peripatetic teachers (we offer woodwind, brass, keyboard and guitar - violin proved unpopular after a change of teacher, numbers dwindled and we had to take the decision not to offer it any longer) can read notation quite well. Indeed, my top recorder group a few years ago played pieces like the Pastorale from Corelli's Christmas Concerto (I could post a clip?), but pupils with that ability are few and far between.

Until more time is given to music during initial teacher training, and the subject has a higher priority in schools, I cannot see the situation improving. I should add that Hampshire Music Service is one of the better ones in the country - they have a small but dedicated team going in to help teachers...but they cost money that schools just don't have, or are unwilling to spend it on further training for teachers when it could be spent on training them up on Writing, Science, Maths which are subjects which are tested and arranged in neat league tables...  

I encouraged my Head to take up this option and our Year 4/5 class had class guitar lessons but I'm sorry to say that they were very unsuccessful. The class was fully supported by staff, the children's behaviour was good, but unfortunately the teacher seemed unable to inspire the slightest enthusiasm from the children who, initially, were very excited about the prospect of learning to play guitar. He had them playing just a couple of notes week after week, learning the first stages of classical guitar, and they became extremely bored and disappointed. In such a short space of time (I think it was just for one rather short term) it would have been far more appropriate for him to have taught the children just 3 chords which would have been sufficient to accompany quite a few songs. Instead of encouraging them to explore the guitar further he put them all off. I'm not saying music should be "dumbed down" and I'm afraid this may read as though I am, but in this situation, when planning guitar lessons to children from deprived homes, many of whom have low academic ability, some thought should have been given to what would motivate the children. We were hoping that they would have at least learned a simple tune by the end of it but they hadn't. Perhaps a more experienced and charismatic peripatetic teacher would have had more success giving the same lessons - teaching music is of course as much about skilled communication and inspiring enthusiasm as it is being able to play the instrument well yourself.

I'd love to hear of Wider Ops success stories, owain. I hope our experience is the exception to the norm. When a class of children has had a term of learning an instrument, do they then have the opportunity to continue learning, with subsidised lessons? And if so, how many do this?

I have to say I am confused here. I remember a Suzuki violinist of excellent standard of playing ( approx grade 7 I would say) who came to the Grammar school where I was teaching and was put immediately in the first orchestra as her playing was considered good enough. She couldn't sight read at all, not even as well as a grade one violinist, so could not play with the orchestra at all. She was advised to swot up on the basics of 'music' and come back in then! She did and was eventually a very well rounded musician but it was a great shock to her in fact. This can't be right, in my opinion. Shouldn't an instrument be taught as a whole experience, the reading, the theory as well as the practical?

A

What I should have added to my earlier post about the nature of the GCSE syllabus that a music-teacher friend of mine tells me that he gets frequent complaints from parents that this syllabus is too theoretical and demanding and too focussed on classical music.   There is clearly a large constituency (for want of a better word) out there for whom the idea that music can be more than playing three chords on a guitar or hit a few skins is anathema, and the suggestion that it is a field for serious academic study plain bonkers.  I think part of it is the lure of filthy lucre, and the fact that, here in middle-class suburbia at least, school seems to be entirely about laying the grounding for getting a well-paid job; pop stars make more money and are more famous than professors of music, enough said.

Mabeljane, could you just explain the Y2 SATS for me?  Mine attends a private school and they don't need to do SATS, but they do them anyway so you can compare how they're doing.  Unfortunately I don't understand how they work and haven't had time to ask.  He's 7 and he scored 3, 2A, 2A and 3.  What does that mean exactly?    No explanation was given......