Jonathan Savage

Reading through the Transforming Transitions document (available within the briefing paper from the Music Manifesto website (http://tinyurl.com/ycuo98o) was at times an exciting, and and other dispiriting, experience. This initiative will build on the work of Musical Futures and is also funded by at grant of over £0.5m from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. In the words of the briefing paper:

This new initiative is intended to achieve a step change in the co-ordination, continuity and progression of young people’s music learning as they transfer from primary to secondary school, tackling the widely acknowledged lack of consistent and effective mechanisms to support young people at this difficult point of transition.[my emphasis]

Who could disagree that this is a potentially worthy venture? It picks up on some of the language from the Government’s New Opportunities initiative (http://tinyurl.com/y9y4mep) and translates this into a context which many music educators are familiar with (i.e the potential gap between Key Stages 2 and 3). It is only when one looks a bit more closely at some of the language within the briefing paper itself that some of the age-old Musical Futures-type prejudices begin to emerge. I’ve only got time to consider one example, but there are several others that could have been mentioned:

Many of the issues are not particular to music but there is a strong case for focusing on music learning given the significant government support (‘Sing-Up’, ‘Wider Opportunities’, ‘The Instrument Fund’, etc.) for music in school that has gone to the primary sector in recent years and that has raised young people’s motivation and desire to be musically active – and the clear risk that these gains will be lost in the intervening years before they might benefit from participation with MusicalFutures approaches towards the end of KS3.[my emphasis]

I’m not sure who composed this final sentence, but it is a damming inditement of the cavalier attitudes of this kind of initiative and, unfortunately, not untypical of the language of this organisation. Read the rest of this entry »

It was interesting to read around the Transforming Transitions ideas that were advertised on the Music Manifesto site. It appears that some educational consultants are already claiming it as part of their portfolio of work, whilst another famous, UK association for music educators seems not to have heard about it. That’s disappointing for all sorts of reasons.

A new piece of work being funded and managed by The Paul Hamlyn Foundation will focus on transition. The following text outlines the project and its key aims. This comes from the briefing paper available from the Music Manifesto website:

Building on the success of Musical Futures, and following a careful scoping and consultation exercise, the Foundation has developed, a proposal for a new music education initiative – one that would require active commitment and shared ownership from a range of other key partners.

This new initiative is intended to achieve a step change in the co-ordination, continuity and progression of young people’s music learning as they transfer from primary to secondary school, tackling the widely acknowledged lack of consistent and effective mechanisms to support young people at this difficult point of transition. Read the rest of this entry »