Yamaha Education News

Yamaha supports the Trinity/OU 'Perform!' event at Nottingham Arena

Trinity Guildhall's Francesca Matthews, leading more than 500 primary school children in a rousing performance at the 'Perform!' event on 30 June 2010. (Photo: Bill C Martin)

Trinity Guildhall and the Open University brought together more than 500 primary school children to Nottingham's Trent Arena from across the UK on 30 June 2010 for 'Perform!', a celebration of the innovative whole-class instrumental teaching programme which has been taking place in primary schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The children, aged 8-11 years old, performed in their whole-class groups and alongside a band comprising professional musicians, including Yamaha artists Simon Bates (sax and clarinet) and Harry Harris (piano).

'Perform!' is a national project Perform! which celebrates Wider Opportunities (WO), the whole-class instrumental and vocal teaching programme which enables every primary school child in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to receive a year of free instrumental lessons, learning alongside their peers in a fun, relaxed and inspiring way. When WO began, almost two years ago, it was apparent that effective instrumental teaching of around 30 children in a class could not be delivered via traditional teaching methods, which have been based on an individual teaching approach and had arguably been stretched to destruction by trying to use these methods to teach even small groups. In response Trinity and the OU took on the task of researching, developing and then training those delivering WO, to improve the effectiveness of the lessons and to help ensure the experience for the participating children would be a wholly positive one.

The 'Perform!' event in Nottingham on 30 June provided audible and visible evidence that, with the right kind of teaching, children who have been learning for less than a year can enjoy performing to a very high standard with their friends, in an event that they'll remember for the rest of their lives. The organisation of this event - which is the first of its kind - must have been on the scale of a military campaign! Trinity and OU are to be congratulated, not only for the mechanics of pulling this off so well, but for making it a musically inspiring event too.

But the demands of WO whole-class teaching are particularly great for teachers. Considering that the majority of instrumental teachers teaching in schools (and privately) have not received initial training in effective group teaching, this new approach can be a real challenge to them. The best of them teach effectively in small groups or individually, though even in smaller groups they may feel the need to work with an individual for some of the time, while the rest of the group aren't then fully engaged. But this is where the Trinity OU training programme comes into its own, helping instrumental teachers, class teachers and teaching assistants to augment their skills so that each can carry out his or her WO teaching role with confidence and ensure that all the children complete their free year with new self-confidence and wanting to continue their music learning.

For those instrumental teachers who continue to resist the WO approach, I would remind them that this is intended to be a first encounter with music making for these children, which can provide such a powerfully collaborative and rewarding experience which even the best individual teaching cannot match for so many children. WO is not intended to replace other kinds of teaching. But by creating an exciting and successful first experience in music making it is certainly providing new musicians who have a greater skills and expectations than before, by the time they transition into secondary schools, and who are less likely to give up. This is where instrumental and classroom music teachers are already noticing the difference and the best of them are re-thinking their teaching programmes to provide better trainsition and progression for these highly motivated young musicians.

You can read the Federation of Music Services' January 2010 impact assessment of WO called 'Wow, it's music next' here.

by Bill C Martin

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(Posted: July 2010)