Yamaha Education Projects

Yamaha Music Education Partnerships

...Stronger Together

Sandwell keyboard specialist, Wendy Callagham (centre) and other staff working with a Year 3 Yamaha Wider Opportunities keyboard class in a Sandwell primary school

Changes in educational policy and cuts in funding in the UK mean that music education is going through challenging times. Yamaha is working to help music educators respond positively to the demands of delivering a music curriculum that fully motivates, inspires and engages children and young people and helps keep the finances in the black.

Yamaha group teaching - the first six decades

The Yamaha music education system began in 1954, with the development of a teaching method which sought to gain the musical and social benefits, for very young children, of learning with friends in a group. The method, drawing heavily on the ears-before-eyes pedagogies of Orff, Kodaly, et al, arrived in the UK in 1976 and in the last half-century has expanded around the world.

Yamaha's Junior Music Course is our flagship course for four-year-old beginners, where this highly effective group-teaching pedagogy can be found at its most concentrated, and is offered by privately-owned, licensed Yamaha Music Schools. All the courses we offer in the UK are built on this successful approach and were delivered originally by Yamaha dealers or highly effective independent teacher-entrepreneurs. But by the end of the nineties Yamaha UK had launched partnerships directly with secondary schools.

Yamaha's training and quality assessment systems mesh very comfortably with school and music service teacher assessment needs, with very positive and encouraging Ofsted inspections reports filed over the years. And our long experience of large-group teaching means that we have a wealth of expertise to share.

Partnership models

Our first secondary school partnerships began in 1999 and our first partner, Bishops Stortford High School in Hertfordshire, is still part of our network. This was the first partnership agreement that we set up and many of the basic principles of this operation are still in place today, although minor variations can be implemented where it is necessary to respond to a school's local conditions. See the '50:50 Model'.

Our most popular projects are run with keyboards, guitars or drums. They work particularly well for a secondary school with a good number of feeder primaries, because the Yamaha portfolio can provide for tuition in primary schools. Many of our existing partner schools have reported how beneficial this can be in attracting students and parents, long before they join the host secondary school. In some cases it has also been possible to use the Yamaha courses to ease transition to KS3 and provide a ready-made classroom solution for their Year 7 students. The most ambitious schools use the project to extend this to provide impressive lifelong learning programmes for their local communities.

Some manufacturers seem happy to provide so-called educational activities, which offer little more than keen prices and financing for one-off gear purchases. Though this is usually welcomed by cash-starved schools it is essentially unsustainable and does little to extend the quality of teaching or learning. In contrast our 50:50 state school model provides the instruments at no cost, along with a proven heritage of group teaching and teacher training.

An alternative to the 50:50 model is the 'School Profit Model', where the school buys the stock but retains most of the income, which can then be used to raise funds for the music department.

Widening Opportunities

In 2007-08 Yamaha brokered an exciting new Wider Opportunities (WO) project with Sandwell Youth Music. It provided the Yamaha teaching approach, instruments, materials and CPD for whole-class keyboard lessons in three primary schools and around 100 KS2 students.

After just one year this project had expanded to a further four schools and currently teaches nearly 800 students across 14 local primaries. This expansion happened because primary school heads had noticed both an amazing turnaround in their students' musical development and much improved social skills, which had led to a noticeable improvement in behaviour and learning attitudes. Many Sandwell heads have now expanded the tuition for a second or even third year, with the music service further strengthening its offer to schools by now adding Yamaha drum tuition.

Just two years ago we launched a partnership with Warwickshire Music Service, training its staff to deliver the Yamaha drum programme to primary schools, this time via the traditional peripatetic service, rather than as a WO project. In addition a standalone Yamaha drum school was also established at one of the county secondary schools, to provide the music service with a community music school that attracts paying students and provides a much-needed source of income for the service.

Your Organisation & Yamaha - Partners in Music Education

Yamaha UK has a flexible approach to finding solutions and setting up new models of excellence for music teaching. We have the experience and expertise to help music services and schools deliver creative, effective and sustainable instrumental group-teaching solutions which can help keep finances in the black.

At a time when the future of instrumental and classroom music are both going through major changes in the UK, this is the time to consider joining other schools and music services who have benefitted from a partnership with Yamaha. It will be a sustainable partnership- with shared responsibility and benefits - which will help engage more young people and help transform their lives through music.

If you'd like to find out more about setting up a partnership with Yamaha UK please contact Nigel Burrows, operations manager, music education department, Yamaha UK.

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Yamaha UK's main school partnership models

The 50:50 model

• Yamaha provides equipment at no capital cost
• Host school insures instruments and administers an out-of-hours community music teaching facility, using combination of Yamaha's keyboard, guitar, drums and vocal courses
• Teaching income shared 50:50. School: pays teacher(s) and covers administration from its 50 per cent. Yamaha: provides the equipment, initial teacher training, annual CPD, marketing advice and consultancy from its share.
• Project becomes sustainable indefinitely once a breakeven number of students (for each course) is exceeded. Yamaha then updates the instruments every four years, at no cost
• Schools with stronger community focus can retain 80 per cent of the income, beyond a certain benchmark
• All equipment (currently worth £16,000+ for typical keyboard project) is used to enhance classroom music during the school day

The School Profit Model

• Based on the 50:50 model but the school buys the stock and runs the project as a commercial operation
• Lesson fees collected and retained by the school
• School pays a nominal royalty per lesson
• School contributes towards Yamaha's teacher training and CPD costs
• Main advantage: schools use profits to raise funds for their music departments

Information about other Yamaha UK education projects, partnerships and initiatives can be found here.

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(posted: May 2011)