Is music taught enough at school?

[Matt]

Firstly, should it have more emphasis at primary level? And secondly, should it be compulsory at secondary level? If not, should at least one of 'the arts' be compulsory (drama, music, art, dance)?

[monkey laydee]

In my school you have to do Music in year 7 and year 8, then in year 9 it becomes optional because we do our Music GSCE's a year earlier.

[Matt]

We had to do music in years 7, 8 and 9, though it was only three hours per fortnight. I don't think that's enough to be honest.

[~*~Ruth~*~]

Matt said:

We had to do music in years 7, 8 and 9, though it was only three hours per fortnight. I don't think that's enough to be honest.

That was the same with me and I think it's enough because not many people in my school are musical so there wasn't really much they could do in music. Now I'm doing GCSE i get 5 hours a fortnight which I don't think is enough.

[Matt]

We get that long, and I agree that it's not enough...

[Chimpyang]

I did my music GCSE with 45 mins a week within a year (we had a useless teacher in y10)......if you think if you lot didnt get enough.......beat that!

[nickiflute]

Between years 7-9, we had Music lessons but as they were compulsory, some people didn't really care. We only did stuff on the keyboard and guitars, so they weren't that inspirational, but I don't know what could have been done to change them.

[tremolo]

well I have 2 periods of music a week which is 1 hour 20 minutes.

[izzy]

We had 1 hour a week for year 7-9

Then it became optional 2 hours in year 10, 3 hours in year 11

L6 4 hours a week (every other subject gets 5)
U6 3 hours a week (every other subject still gets 5!)

I didn't learn anything in Year 7-9 except what a capella meant! I think that was down to the teacher though.

[fluteofhearts]

I'm in year 3.
I have music for half an hour every Friday but it normally more like a singing lesson.We have a singing assembly once a week.
I'm in the choir so we have two after school practices. I have a Flute lesson once a week.
I think we should have more musical instruments in our music lessons.

[musicfan]

It doesn't sound like much has changed since I was at school 20+ years ago
We had compulsory music lessons in years 7 and 8, I think it was probably only one lesson a fortnight. I seem to remember they depended very much on the music teacher (and at our school we got througha few in those 2 years!). Mostly it seemed to be a struggle to teach the basics of music to a generally disinterested class of 30 pupils.
The emphasis on the orchestra and classical music seemed to me to be a big mistake, most 12-13 year-olds dismiss anything other than the latest chart music. When we had teachers who dared to venture into 20th century popular music the lessons were more successful I think.

Is this still generally the case? I don't see why popular music cannot be used to teach music initially, surely it makes the lessons more relevent to the majority of the pupils?

[nickiflute]

I think they should have done stuff like film scores to get people at least remotely interested. Didn't help that our year 7-9 music teacher was very much into classical music.
For GCSE we had 3 x 50 minute lessons per week.
For A Level, it is a twilight class, which could be quite annoying coming into school, after school!

[izzy]

Hardly anyone in my class could read music from year 7-9. So we spent ages going over that. I couldn't understand, why didn't they just say the rhyhmes in their head?!

With a new head of music (who's now stepping down) a couple of years ago, things got better. Instead of "hmmm what shall I give them today?" the lessons were actually planned! So now first year you spend learning about the orchestra, reading music and banging on instruments and keyboards, year 8 you start composing your own stuff and are taught sibelius, and do a project in adverts, year 9 you write a songs and I dunno what else coz I haven't helped in it before!

Year 11 this year is dire. you could tell them "Have you meant to write in G major?" Oh yes they'll say.
"Well it;s not actually in G it's in C!" They've just decided that they want that key signature! And They've just done a GCSE in it!

[musicbabe]

in my school

year 7-9- compulsory

then its gcse obviously for year 10-11- i think they get 3/4 hrs a week

we get 4 hrs a week at alevel

[fluteandbassoon]

Matt said:

We had to do music in years 7, 8 and 9, though it was only three hours per fortnight. I don't think that's enough to be honest.

Primary (+4-year 5): 50 Minustes a week
Year 6: 1 hour a week
Year7-9: 1 hour a week of tapping rythms and getting shouted out by many "music teachers"(a.who wasnt actually a music teacher. She was a GP doing on the spot training, b.one couldn't control the class and C. someone who looked lik a hamster.)
Year 10: Two hours a week
Year 11: 3 hours a week