Half of school music lessons are not good enough, with many schools abandoning the subject when pupils start revising for exams, according to a review of music education by Ofsted.
A pledge to give every primary pupil the chance to learn an instrument has backfired in some schools, which have dropped individual tuition in favour of whole-class violin or recorder lessons to try to meet it. Nervous teachers struggle to identify pupils with real talent, Ofsted says.
The report says that where lessons are going wrong, teachers often “talked too much”, leaving little time for children to make music. They are also failing to teach pupils to listen to music properly.
But in the best schools music is a crucial way of helping pupils build self-confidence and self-esteem, the inspectors say. The report is based on inspectors’ visits to 84 primary and 95 secondary schools in England between 2005 and 2008.
