Music

Detail

Information

Academic year that this summary covers

2024-2025

Date this summary was published

26/06/2024

Date this summary will be reviewed

31/07/2025

Name of the school music lead

Rob Taylor

Name of school leadership team member with responsibility for music (if different)

Jaslyn Panesar

Name of local music hub

Hillingdon Music Service

Name of other music education organisation(s) (if partnership in place)

N/A

The Barnhill music department is incredibly proud to be the first lead school for music in the London Borough of Hillingdon, a position that we currently hold for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Barnhill publishes a music curriculum for each year group online, accessible via its website. Students access 1 hour of music per week across Key Stage 3, and 2.5 hours of music at KS4. The whole curriculum is guided by a mission statement and a set of core principles.

Our mission statement is: “To be musically literate and to have your own musical identity is core to the curriculum of music at Barnhill. When students can hold a conversation with another musician when talking about their own and others music, they will be musically literate. When students can write their own music which evidences their musical fingerprints, and is distinctly their own music, they will have a musical identity.”

Our core principles:

1. GCSE music is accessible to all, achieved by designing our KS3 and KS4 offer to be in line with other subjects, where students can expect to show up to lessons, complete homework and achieve a grade in line with their targets.
2. Music is a knowledge driven subject, because without adequate knowledge students cannot access a musical instrument at any real depth or be able to compose with confidence.
3. Depth is crucial to musical learning, and sacrificing breadth is a necessary compromise. When we engage with musical instruments, we do so as experts and aspire for our students to also become experts.
4. The teacher is the best musician in the room and should be allowed to share their best selves with the students they teach.

Our curriculum in brief is built on a set of key learning aims as students’ progress through their music education with assessment and general practice drawing on advice and guidance from the model music curriculum as well as wider music education research. Some examples of progression of skills:

• Students engage with treble clef only in year 7, allowing full mastery of the reading and engagement with treble clef before being introduced to bass clef in year 8. To achieve this, all music is edited and produced to only feature treble clef notation.
• Students are introduced to rhythmic values in year 7 and their rests, and given time to rehearse and perform simpler rhythms, before complicated rhythmic ideas are introduced later in their journey (such as syncopation or dotted rhythms)

The core teaching is carried out on piano and through singing. Some learning is also carried out through sequenced realised performance using a computer DAW.

SEND students are well supported in music lessons through quality first teaching and several support methods that are applied to the whole class, such as use of technology to aid modelling and understanding, or minimising lengthy periods of instruction. Where a need is greater than this can cater for, bespoke measures have been put in place, such as utilising screen magnifiers for students with poor vision or making use of chord trigger tools for students with reduced motor function to allow them to play in ensembles. This is well supported by the SEND department within the school, such as with the use of learner profiles to ensure teaching caters fully for the needs of students.

For students continuing music post-KS3, Barnhill offers the Eduqas GCSE Music qualification. All peripatetic teachers give the option for students to study towards graded music examinations at all ages, delivering their own preferred qualifications that suit the needs of the students they teach.

Our department is well supported by 3 peripatetic teachers delivering tuition in 4 instruments (drums, guitar, piano and voice). These teachers are employed directly by the school and lessons are offered for free to children and families thanks to a subsidised music programme in the school. Lessons are 30 minutes and one-to-one.

Classroom music teachers also offer extensive extra-curricular opportunities for students, including a choir, two rock bands, two keyboard clubs and a music theory support group. This offer changes and adapts each year to students’ interests and wishes. Our 8 practice rooms and recording studio are open to student bookings, with informal music making opportunities utilised by students to work in ensembles without teacher guidance. All of this is offered free of charge to students and families, with most clubs being open to all students across all year groups.

After recently replacing all pianos in the department, we offered the old pianos to family homes free of charge allowing our low income families to benefit from access to an instrument at home.

We hold 3 school concerts across the school year. To properly serve the demographic of our local area, tickets are offered for free to parents and the wider community, with the opportunity for them to donate to the department if able. We regularly see 100 or more attendees at the events, making it the largest public-facing extra-curricular event in the school each term.

We seek out opportunities for students to perform outside of school, which further supports the school concerts that we hold each year. These other performance opportunities have included a cross-school event organised by Hillingdon Music Service at the local Beck Theatre, the annual Mayors Picnic in the Park, as well as an annual Summer Fair hosted at St Edmunds (a local church close to the school).

We have had professional musicians visit the school to perform to students, as well as to offer workshops to students in classrooms.

We take a group of year 7 students to the Royal Albert Hall each year to experience live music. Our year 10s attend the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall each year to see a live orchestra. We also seek out other live music opportunities as often as possible. For a large number of students on these trips, this is the first time they have been to see live music.

Whilst Barnhill currently meets or even exceeds the 7 main features of high-quality music provision outlined in the National Plan for Music Education, we do wish to continue to push beyond this and improve our offer year-on-year.

Some areas for development have been highlighted. The following are the current aims and priorities for us as a music department and school moving forwards:

• A-Level is planned to be introduced in 2025-2026, which will be the first cohort to come through the school having experienced at least 2 years of KS3 education under our current curriculum as well as our KS4 curriculum
• We wish to widen our reach into the local community and build links with parents and local business to further the co-curricular opportunities and musical experiences that we can offer our students
• Our singing programme is in a state of development, and we are looking to grow our school choir and strengthen our classroom-based singing activities for all students
• We are keen to grow our peripatetic music lesson offer where budgets can allow this to happen
• We want to offer an Arts Award qualification in future years, offering students a qualification that can be delivered in a co-curricular setting. The aim is to award and reward students for the incredible work they are doing outside of lessons
• We are building a music leader programme for students in the school. There is ongoing work around how we are awarding students this honour and how these students will then go on to lead and develop the department

Barnhill is a part of the Middlesex Learning Partnership, a multi-academy trust comprised of 3 schools.

The music department has strong links with the local music hub (Hillingdon Music Service), and the Curriculum Leader for Music is also a member of the Music Teachers Association, drawing on the wealth of CPD and support that this professional association offers through their annual conference and through regular CPD opportunities.