Illustrative details of proposals for Paul Hamlyn Foundation

The first recommendation for PHF is to establish a Music Education Innovation Fund.

The fund’s purpose would be to stimulate and disseminate practitioner-led innovation in music education. Given the excellent practice located in patches all across the country, and the likelihood that improvements in quality and outcomes will be more securely embedded when led and advocated by practitioners, this Fund could play a profound role in galvanising a renaissance of teacher confidence and
empowerment. This would in turn transform quality, reach and range of children and young people’s experiences, demonstrate on the ground the value and significance of music in pupil and school life and help considerably with building a strong, consistent sense of shared purpose, collaboration and peer learning across the sector.

MEIF would be a competitive fund open for five years in the first instance. Applicants would be invited to propose specific, time limited enquiries in music education practice to be carried out in their own schools/settings.

They would need to demonstrate:

• Partnership across at least 3 schools
• At least one non-school partner
• Explicit commitment from all 3 Head Teachers
• An simple evaluation strategy
• An initial sense of recent research and / or relevant new practice

They would need to describe:

• A need leading to a research question – e.g. How can we get more boys participating in singing at KS3? How can we improve the quality of children’s composition at KS2? How can we improve transition
• between KS2 and KS3 across our partnership? How can we inspire more students at KS3 to explore classical music? How can we embed improvisation practice at KS1?
• A pedagogical and curriculum strategy – or strategies – they want to test in order to answer to their question
• A simple action research methodology, time frame, roles and responsibilities
• A dissemination strategy for their findings

Funds would be allocated to support:

• Teacher buy-out for planning and development
• Teachers working in each other’s schools on the project
• Costs for non-school partners
• Resources and materials
  Mentor – to share relevant research and evidence at the design stage as well as provide ongoing support

There would be three levels, and everyone would start at level 1, but they could bid in again to further advance and disseminate their work, e.g.

• £5,000 – £10,000 for projects lasting 1 or 2 terms
• £10,000 – £20,000 for projects lasting 12 to 18 months
• £20,000 – £40,000 for projects lasting 2 years

An appropriate mentor would be attached to their award, in line with their content, either drawn from list from which they could choose and/or they could propose their own. The mentor would guide and advise throughout the life of the award. The fund would be adjudicated annually by an advisory panel, which would include a Head Teacher, a music education practitioner, a music education academic, a Hub lead, a cultural organisation. As as time went on it would make sense to bring on former MEIF recipients both as adjudicators and mentors.

The dissemination strategy would be both national and local – so there would be a PHF designed strategy to encompass all the outputs, but each local project would propose a local strategy for other schools/practitioners in their area, and PHF would work with academic partners on publication, conferences etc. A major national PHF Music Education Innovation conference each year would form a key part of that dissemination strategy.

For example you could award, say, 40 Level 1s for each of the first four years, 30 Level 2s in years 2-4, 20 Level 3s in years 3-4. The cost of the scheme would include an adjudication panel, central dissemination and evaluation – in the region of £80,000 to £100,000.

The second recommendation is to establish a time-limited Expert Commission.

The Commission’s purpose would be to create a set of clear, usable guidelines and tools for schools, teachers, music organisations, Hubs and others to use as common references for delivering the National Curriculum and NPME with consistency, integrated working practices and high quality standards. The need for this arises throughout the areas of focus in this report, and the esteem and respect in which PHF is held would ensure that the products of the Expert Commission would be welcomed as coming from a neutral broker without any vested interest in any particular pedagogy, curriculum, structure or funding model. The production and mass distribution of materials of this kind could have a swift and significant impact on quality of children and young people’s musical experiences.

The Commission should be composed of around 20 leading experts in music education drawn from across the sector, ensuring representation from researchers, exemplary teachers and music leaders from formal and non-formal contexts, and emeritus figures in the profession. The Chair should be a wellrespected figure in music education, with a track record of open-mindedness, rigour and consensus building, and the Commission should be supported by an administrator.

The work plan would be to:

• Produce clear, comprehensive guidance to assist teachers and music leaders in making choices about curriculum and pedagogy within both the National Curriculum and the wider NPME, linked to an overarching guide to the purposes and benefits of sustained, high quality music education;
• Produce a clear, comprehensive guidance document for schools on how to engage with and draw benefit from the NPME for their students, including how the new National Curriculum and the NPME can be threaded together into a whole via an outcomes-based framework, integrating within- and beyond-the-classroom opportunities;
• Produce clear, comprehensive guidance on effective approaches for understanding and supporting music retention and progression, to be disseminated widely to all schools via teacher education providers and schools, and reinforced by Hubs and the Department for Education;
• Take forward existing work on best practice in music leadership CPD and produce a curriculum and delivery proposition for an accredited postgraduate level CPD module in Facilitating Music Learning;
• Develop and test sustainable peer networking models for music teachers/leaders for dissemination of best practice, peer challenge and support for innovation.
• Bring together examples of best practice and innovation in use of digital and mobile technologies and disseminate widely with suggestions for local adoption
• Produce an online information/ supported training programme for Senior Leadership Teams and Governing Bodies, underpinned by the NPME and the National Curriculum, to help them to realise the untapped potential of music to improve the life chances of their pupils, raise standards and improve culture in their schools, and understand what good music teaching and learning look like.

In order for the Commission to achieve traction for its work, it should be launched and concluded with a high-profile public event – say, A People’s Enquiry into Music Education. This could be a lively half-day public event, chaired by a significant public figure, and conducted in a serious but engaging style to capture media and public attention. The ‘witnesses’ would include children and young people, teachers, parents as well as researchers and policy makers. Testimony would come via film and audio as well as live presentation.

Following this launch, the Commission  would work for 12 to 18 months to produce its materials. Each work package would led by two Commissioners with a working group of five or six others who would be drawn both from the Commission and from  across the sector. The Commissioners would form the steering group for the work. Each Commissioner would be paid a daily rate for their work. There would need to be a part time administrator, a budget for production and distribution of materials (online and/or print) and an events budget for launch and conclusion of work. The Commission would hold its meetings around the country and use those occasions to invite contributions from colleagues in local areas. It is hard to estimate the time needed without looking at the work packages in more detail, but is likely to require 15 days from each of 20 Commissioners over two years, with the Chair needing more time. It might be interesting to explore whether there might be other funders who would like to invest in this alongside PHF.

The third recommendation is to support Musical Futures to make the transition to becoming an independent enterprise.

It is clear from the evidence underpinning this review that Musical Futures has had a positive impact on KS3 pupils in around a third of secondary schools to date. In order to secure and build on this impact, Musical Futures needs to move into a more plural relationship with the sector, forming new and different partnerships and evolving to meet changed conditions. The Musical Futures team has made a separate report to PHF detailing ambitions for an independent Musical Futures, and the proposals in that report align well with the findings of this review.

There is a useful example to learn from in the success of Sing Up’s transition. After four years of DfE investment totalling £40,000,000, the Sing Up Consortium (Youth Music, Faber Music, Sage Gateshead) was awarded a further £4,000,000 transition funding for a fifth year to establish an independent company. Sing Up Ltd. was launched
in April 2012 and after two full years of trading has nearly 5,000 (25%) of English primary schools signed up through a modestly priced membership scheme and is making a small surplus which will be re-invested in creating new training resources and song materials.