Don't Underestimate the Arts

Students who study the arts end up being more successful in other academic subjects, according to one of Britain’s most successful head teachers.

Speaking after the independent Warwick Commission into the UK culture warned of the arts being “systematically removed from the school curriculum,” Kevin McCallion head of Brooksbank school, in Elland, West Yorkshire, stressed his team was resisting the trend.

He told a BBC Radio 4 Front Row Debate entitled “are artists owed a living?” that his academy school had kept subjects such as music, painting and drama in the timetable - because they helped pupils excel in other areas.

Mr McCallion told the studio that many other head teachers felt forced to sideline the arts because the Government’s standards watchdog insisted a school could only be deemed effective if it focused on English, maths and science. They dropped the arts for fear of falling down the all-important school league tables.

But, he said: “I think we need to look at this in a different way actually. People are constantly telling us that we have to do that which is academically correct."

"Well, we find actually that the students who opt to do any of those arts - and the students I have with me are testament to that - actually end up being more successful in other academic areas.”

Front Row host John Wilson pointed out that the Warwick Commission had reported a huge 50% decline in the number of pupils doing arts subjects at GCSE. Was this a problem?

Mr McCallion said: “It’s not a problem at Brooksbank because we value the arts incredibly highly for a wide range of reasons but I do understand why there has been such a fall in the arts.

"Schools are very accountable beasts now. We are ranked in league tables and Ofsted come in and hold us to the new accountability measures that Governments come up with. They define how effective we apparently are.

"At the moment the arts aren’t one of the ebacc subjects for example - that will then be a big factor when Ofsted visits and measures how effective you are. They don’t include the arts in the same light as, for example, English, maths and science which are double weighted.”

So, he said, “pragmatic” head teachers see that their schools are only going to get an “outstanding” grading from Ofsted or be at the top of the league tables if they do what Government says.

"They say English, maths and science are the most effective therefore we will allocate more time and more resource to that. The arts aren’t an ebacc subject, they are not double weighted, therefore they will be the first to go.”

His school is visited by the respected Halifax-based Northern Broadsides theatre company which does Shakespeare and a mix of other productions, with music composed specially for each occasion.

The up market London private art gallery, Messums, which specializes in British art from the 19^th Century and the Impressionists, also displays there. The head said his pupils: “work with excellence in the arts and aspire to be the very best they can be.”

The Warwick commission has recommended a change to Ofsted’s rules -so that in future any school was not studying enough arts could not be deemed to worthy of the top inspection grade, “outstanding”.

In case you missed Front Row on BBC R4, it's well worth a listen - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0536jp5

A powerful educational tool

Music – an enjoyable extra curricular activity or a key strategy for schools to improve their attainment?

Music education has once again been proven to impact greatly on all aspects of children’s development, not just on their musical ability. There is a growing awareness of the positive impact that good music tuition has and many people are realising that music is a powerful way of helping children achieve their potential.

A recent publication by Professor Susan Hallam, The Power of Music, states that “High quality musical activities seem to affect aspirations which enhance motivation and subsequently attainment. Research with a range of disadvantaged groups supports this.”

These positive findings are echoed in many of our own projects, particularly ‘A Sound Start’. This project involved the delivery of music workshops in 4 Nursery and 5 Reception classes every week at Altmore Infant School in East Ham, London Borough of Newham. The sessions were 45 minutes long and included a mixture of singing, storytelling, instrumental activities and movement. The school has 96% of pupils with English as an Additional Language and high levels of pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties as well as learning delay.

At the end of the Early Years stage in the summer of 2014, compared to the same time the previous year, the school saw a 16% rise in pupils achieving an overall Good Level of Development. In addition to Creative Futures’ own monitoring, the project was evaluated by Dr Jo Saunders from the Institute of Education. Dr Saunders' evaluation found that our project had many benefits, and that they largely fell into 4 broad categories - musical skills, physical skills & coordination, curriculum learning, and social and emotional learning.

The children involved benefitted in numerous ways, with a marked improvements recorded throughout their subjects. The Power of Music asserts that “Children with musical training have significantly better verbal learning and retention abilities”. This further supports our findings in ‘A Sound Start’ and is something that we have observed widely in many of our projects. Verbal learning and retention abilities are skills that will positively impact subjects across the board and could explain the improvements seen at Altmore Infant School in so many areas of the children’s development, especially in speech, language and communication.

It’s time that everyone started listening up to the myriad of educational benefits that a sustained and well taught music programme can provide; and to how we can use this valuable knowledge to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children.

Music helps beat depression in young people.

People who work with young people have always known that music has the power to transform lives.

But now fresh scientific evidence has emerged indicating that a beautiful melody can reduce depression in children and adolescents with behavioural and emotional problems.

It comes in a study conducted at Queen’s University Belfast that was reported in the authoritative psychotherapists’ journal, Therapy Today.

In what is believed to be the biggest investigation of this kind, 251 children between eight and 16 years took part. All were being treated for emotional, developmental or behavioural problems.

The children were chosen at random either to receive their usual care from their Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service or music therapy in addition to usual care.

The study, conducted with the Northern Ireland Music Therapy Trust, involved 12 weekly individual sessions where the children and young people were able to choose from a range of activities, including improvisation, song writing, drumming and storytelling to music.

Early findings from the study suggest that the children and young people enjoyed significantly improved levels of self-esteem and reduced depression compared with those who received treatment as usual. Their communication and interactive skills also benefitted and, best of all, the gains appear to be sustained in the long term.

The activity that the young people enjoyed most was writing their own songs and composing their own lyrics to music, which researchers believed boosted their ability to communicate their feelings more generally.

Nearly all of the young people, 97 per cent, chose to write autobiographically about how they were feeling.

Julian Knight, Creative Director of Creative Futures, a charity dedicated to raising aspiration and quality of life for underprivileged young people through taking part in music and arts projects, said the Queen’s University study accorded well with his own organization’s research.

Among a range of activities, Creative Futures specialises in programmes for Looked After Children and Young People which use music (song-writing, singing, instrumental playing and music production) to raise aspiration, build confidence, and self-esteem, trust and responsibility, enhance social interaction and communication skills, and above all inspire participants.

Adriana Thomas, Participation Officer from Hounslow Children and Young People’s Service said:

“A young boy who is normally extremely quiet came to me and told me about something that was troubling him. I was then able to feed this back to his social worker and the issue is now being explored in the sessions this young boy has with our Clinical Psychologist … over the course of the three days I was able to have lots of conversations with the children about their feelings, worries, behaviour and issues about their care.  I know this was possible because the children were in an environment that made them feel relaxed, confident and empowered.” 

The young people themselves who have taken prat in the project also expressed the impact it has had on them:

“I can express my feeling and sing. It just expresses me.”

“We got our own CD and when I heard it I was like “that is not me!” but it was…this is so great”

“It would be really great if we can perform and show everyone what we’ve learnt and how we all started not knowing a lot about the instruments and how we can create music with anything. Even if you’ve never experienced music before, even though you’ve never touched an instrument before you can still try this and still create music.  It would be really great if all the band could just…knock ourselves out!”

Creative Futures’ work is aimed at those aged 7 to 18 years, and usually takes the form of out-of-school programmes either after school or as intensive holiday courses.

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Therapy Today

Guest blogger #3.....Julian!

Great to see Alison and Zoë doing fabulous work with the Nursery and Reception classes at Altmore Infant School yesterday, and to see the progress that has been made since the first week of term. The children have really developed vocally, and are obviously deriving much pleasure from learning new songs and actions as well as becoming more confident. They were also composing short songs themselves which was great to see. 

The day concluded with an Inset session for staff through which Alison and Zoe shared aspects of their approach to Early Years learning through music, movement and story-telling, and which we hope will help teachers embed the activities into everyday practice. This is an important part of building a legacy into the project from the start – something which Creative Futures strongly believes in!

Alison's update

Tuesday afternoon at Altmore Junior School (East Ham) with Nursey and Reception grups was also a real pleasure – particularly sessions with the 2 nursery...amazing guest facilitator and double bassist David Leahy was with us and the children adored having turned to play the bass, dance to bass music, play and sing with the bass and conduct the bass sounds. 

One very quiet, wide-eyed Urdu speaking boy in the Nursery turned to me during the session and exclaimed “Fantastic!”.  One of his teachers told me later that she’d asked him if he’d enjoyed the music sessions with David and he’d replied “wonderful!”.  Such eloquence, what a pleasure :D

Altmore Early Years - the insider's view!

Our practitioners have been working at Altmore Primary School on our Early Years Project for a few weeks now.  Having had a chance to settle in, here are Zoe's impressions of how the project has gone so far:

"The atmosphere at Altmore is great to work in - the school is well-resourced and it seems as though staff really value music and are committed to integrating it into all aspects of school life.  

The first few weeks working with children in the Nursery has been eye-opening. These children are leaving their parents for the first time, some seem excited and full of wide-eyed wonder whilst others are bewildered and brimming with tears.  Our initial sessions have been very simple, I usually find a space and invite children to join me making music, singing and moving.  We sing some familiar songs and play with our voices, making sounds up along with the hand chimes which have become very popular.  Some children in the group are really creative with how they play and improvise, picking up objects from the classroom and using them to copy back simple rhythmic patterns, they seem to take delight in their innovation!"

Photos and video to follow soon!

Hello!

Hello and welcome to the brand new Creative Futures UK blog!

The blog will be written mainly by Vanessa, with some exciting 'special-guest' posts by our practitioners from time to time, giving their insider opinion on our projects. 

Please do leave comments, we'd love to know what you think.

Enjoy!