How to be a GREAT music subject leader

Dr Liz Stafford shares her advice

If you’re reading this magazine, then there’s a good chance that you have been given the responsibility for music in your school, whether willingly or otherwise! With great power comes great responsibility, and we know that music leaders always want to do their absolute best to develop and support their pupils’ musical ambitions. However, it can be difficult to know where to start, so here are some ideas for making the best of your role.

What is the role?

The music subject leader role varies in scope depending on where you are in the world. However, broadly speaking it will confer on you the responsibility for ensuring that the music curriculum is planned, delivered and assessed effectively. You may also be required to organise maintain and promote an extracurricular programme, and / or represent your subject when your school is inspected. In England, the entire role is carried out mostly on goodwill, as there is no additional payment for subject leader responsibilities, which makes it tricky to definitively state what the requirements of the role are. You would get a very different answer to that question from a teaching union than you would from most Senior Leadership Teams, for example!

Preparing for the role

You can prepare for the role by developing your own musical knowledge, reading all the statutory and advisory government documents, developing your own pedagogical understanding, and building a support network.

In terms of your own musical knowledge, it would be useful to develop some basic skills in singing, playing the instruments that you use as part of your curriculum, analytical listening, and composing and improvising. It is also essential to develop your theoretical understanding of any terminology you will be using in your curriculum; for example, in England, the interrelated dimensions of music. If your curriculum requires you to teach a certain type of notation, then a basic understanding of note values and pitch placement will be really useful. And finally, a working understanding of key information on the styles, genres, traditions and periods of music that appear in your curriculum will be handy too. Although you may not be teaching the entire curriculum yourself, developing this level of musical knowledge will enable you to understand the curriculum fully, and confidently support other teachers to do the same. Not to mention be able to explain it to any unwelcome visitors who come to inspect you!

Each country has its own statutory and advisory guidance as regards the music curriculum. As music lead it is your job to find out what these are and make sure you have read and understand them. For example, in Wales this would include the Expressive Arts strand of the Curriculum for Wales, and the National Plan for Music Education in Wales. While you only have to worry about implementing statutory guidance, it’s always a good idea to have at least read any advisory documents so you can decide if there is anything useful within them that you can use to enhance your own school’s music provision.

There’s often an assumption that if you come from a musical background that’s all you need to be able to teach music. However there is a huge gulf between subject understanding and pedagogical understanding in any subject, and as music lead it’s really important to understand best practice in the teaching of music. So whether you are a music ‘specialist’ or not, there is work to be done. If you’re a bookish sort of person, then reading texts by Keith Swanwick, John Paynter, Martin Fautley, and Ally Daubney would be a great starting point. And *cough-cough* you may have heard that I myself have written a book myself just for music leads; the Primary Music Leader’s Handbook!

If you’re looking for a more participatory style of learning then attending conferences and webinars or taking an online course would be good options. Just be careful that the opportunities that you pick are not sales pitches disguised as training; a lot of music CPD is methodology-driven and designed to convince you that the ‘only’ way to teach music is to purchase a particular resource. Look for opportunities which are research-informed, led by expert teachers, and discursive with plenty of opportunities to ask questions; be wary of anything that says you will leave the session with a resource that will be the answer to all of your problems! (Another *cough-cough* moment here allows me to point out that I run a Primary Music Leadership Certificate programme which you might be interested in finding out more about!)

Music Leads are often the only person in their school who have knowledge of or interest in music, so it’s vital to build a support network beyond your school community to share ideas. If your school is part of a chain, multi-academy trust, or cluster, then you will have easy access to other music leads to share ideas. In England, your local Music Hub will most likely have a music lead network you can join, and may also offer other forms of CPD and support. Looking wider than this, there are many social media communities for music teachers, the most active of which are on Facebook. There is a Primary Music Subject Leads group which is well worth joining if you are not already a member.

Delivering the role

The first step for delivering your role successfully is to establish your strategic vision and create some kind of subject development plan. Start by thinking about what music in your school is ‘for’ and what you want your pupils to be able to do with music when they leave you. Then consider how you will make this happen and turn that into a step-by-step plan for developing your music provision.

This process will probably lead you to review your current curriculum, which in turn may result in you to having to source or design a curriculum & teaching resources. The key considerations for this process are to ensure compliance with the statutory guidelines in your country, ensure clear progression within and between year groups, and make sure that your assessment methods are embedded within the curriculum activities so teachers don’t have to work out how they’re going to carry out assessment on top.

If you have colleagues teaching their own music lessons, then you’ll need to support them to promote effective teaching and assessment. The ideal way to start is ask lots of questions, maybe in the form of a survey, about how teachers feel about music, and which areas they need support on, so that you can come up with a programme of targeted support. This might include booking music content for INSET sessions, including minitraining sessions in staff meetings, offering demonstration lessons or team-teaching opportunities, providing reading recommendations, or accessing training and support through the provider of the scheme of work you’re using in school. The main thing is to ensure that teachers feel supported and confident, otherwise music will gradually slip off the timetable altogether.

Most schools will want to offer at least one regular music extra-curricular activity, plus the occasional performance or concert involving music. Many schools go much further than this with weekly singing assemblies, choirs, instrumental tuition, workshops, and internal and external performances. This is without doubt the most time-consuming part of the job, and you should ask for help if you need it. For example, there’s no reason why instrumental and vocal tutors can’t organise their own timetables and be responsible for fetching and returning pupils to and from lessons. If you have the budget, extra hours can be timetabled for these tutors so that they can also deliver an extra-curricular club or ensemble, broadening your range of opportunities without adding extra workload for yourself. When it comes to performances, concerts and shows, you need to be very clear from the outset that these cannot be run effectively or safely by one person, and that you expect other colleagues, SLT, governors, and/or your Parent Teacher Association to be involved with these. With the right support, you can create a vibrant and varied programme of activities, across a range of musical styles and skills, without giving yourself a nervous breakdown in the process!

The role of a music subject leader is possibly the most challenging of all the subject leader roles in a primary school, but it is also the most rewarding. By preparing for and delivering the role effectively you can ensure that all your pupils are fulfilling their musical ambitions –what could be more satisfying than that?

Dr Liz Stafford is Director of Music Education Solutions®, Editor of Primary Music Magazine, and author of The Primary Music Leader’s Handbook.