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.