Thank you to everyone for attending one of the meetings this week. Understanding the new Ofsted music report is essential to ensuring that we are an outstanding music department.
To reflect, here are the things that I believe we need to do to be an outstanding music department.
We need to
- Ensure that all our lessons are musical (teach through music, not about music)
- Improve our exam results through better co-ordination, planning and teaching at GCSE
- Ensure our curriculum is joined up from KS3 - 5, including instrumental teaching
- Make better use of keywords and musical vocabulary across the whole department
- Improve the quality of our documentation - student records and evidence. What we have is too disjointed
I also need to be more direct with people, to ensure we have a consistent approach to teaching, work, timetabling and the quality of what we provide.
This involves everyone pulling together, so the teaching offered by different members of staff is much more consistent than it currently is.
So far, the curriculum team have been reviewing all schemes of work from KS3 and 4. We have new overview sheets to produce, and we have been looking at what an outstanding lesson in music should be. Teach through music, not about it. We have had the instrumental meetings, and have discussed at length the new Ofsted criteria for music, and how instrumental lessons are part of this. My concern here is that things will get forgotten, the report will be filed, some staff will not take this on board. Everyone has to take this on board. I have asked Debbie to monitor the quality of our instrumental teaching - she may pop into a lesson. Her judgements are based on the details printed at the back of the report handed out this week - what should be included in every lesson. If our monitoring of teaching across the department is not rigorous, we are not supporting you in the way Ofsted expect.
As part of the reflection process, I would like all instrumental teachers to complete the following questionnaire please. All teachers at Simon Balle have done this, and it relates to the teachers standards recently revised. I have adapted it for instrumental teaching.
Please complete this week - it will only take 10 minutes or so. It is essential that everyone does this.
Elsewhere, we have been fortunate to secure funding for some primary work to help develop and increase the amount of woodwind and brass teaching. It is a partnership between the Music Service, Simon Balle and Playsomething. We hope to roll out to other instruments in due course, but the nature of a 6 week free trial means that we have to work carefully at it and learn to get things right. Clare is leading on this, supported by Cynthia and we will be working with other Music Service staff. Primary work is a huge priority for us next year, to ensure we have a department in the future.
Linked above is a 'disruption' document. I have asked Sue to update this (will be in red) so that we have a much easier way of dealing with PE and other events. I have reminded parents about the 1 week's notice rule and the need for communication.
The Broxbourne Concert is on 4th July. An American theme. Details of this are being put together this week. Rock School exams on Friday. We are nearly in July..... Help!! This coming week we have a music NQT with us on Monday from Onslow school, and a Dreamtek Mac engineer working on the network on Weds and Thursday.
Thank you to everyone for the consistent hard work. We have a fantastic team and a fantastic department. Most importantly, amazing musicians. If you are unsure of the vision, you must ask. We must have the shared goal to get the very best academic (including instrumental) and personal outcomes for all our students. We know what we have to do to be outstanding. We just have to do it. Consistently.
Have a great week.
Mark
