London Education

I don't know that this post will be of much interest to anyone but music education majors, but oh well. Yesterday Omar, Andrew, and I had a meeting with Brendon, our work-study coordinator. He explained the British education system to us, and it is just so different from the United States. I know thats a little stupid to say, Britain being a different country from us and all, but I still can't get over it. For those who don't know, in Britain, students graduate from secondary school at the age of 16, and they can then opt to go to college for 2 years, and then onto university when they are 18/19. What this means is that we've been seeing a lot of people our age in business suits that have been working professionals for years, since they went directly into the work force when they were 16.

In terms of how the primary/secondary school system works here, each class of our equivalent of K, first, second, etc. grades is taught by one teacher. Each teacher teaches all the core subjects for the grade level (like in the US), but they also teach art and music, and the other "non-core" subjects. These teachers are trained to teach, but not necessarily in music, art, etc. So basically what you have are teachers teaching subjects that they know practically nothing about. The British government has recognized the problem with this system and has funded what they call musical services.

Andrew, Omar, and I will be working for one of these musical services. There is one service per district, and basically what they do is sell their services to the schools. So teachers from the Lambeth musical service will go to several schools in a day and team-teach classroom music. A specialist each in brass, woodwinds, and percussion will each go to a school together and do classroom general music (singing with solfege, an Orff-like mallets program, and recorders) in addition to a small band. If students wish to pursue an instrument they must take lessons after school and there are also ensembles on Saturdays, and Thursday nights. Students must however pay for these options themselves (there are scholarships).

The thing with this system, however, is that you still have the normal classroom teacher there, who in most cases has never played an instrument or sung, or participated in music at all. So the musical services also run even classes to teach music to the classroom teachers. The teachers all learn recorder or djembe and have to learn to read music just like their students.
The Lambeth service aims to teach rhythm and pitch through singing with solfege in the general music portion and through ensemble playing right from the start. Students are given instruments from the music service and are allowed to take them home after 8 weeks, or in some of the rougher neighborhoods, not at all, since they would just get sold. We'll be working in a very rough district- students coming from homes with no financial providers, abuse, and very low socio-economic status overall. Additionally, the British public school system has no allowances for specials classes for gifted or special needs students so you have 30 first graders of all different abilities and needs in the same classroom, which is great for inclusion purposes, but not great for standardizing the curriculum.

The other problem with the system is that the British university program does not have degrees in Music Education. All the musicians who go to uni are training to become orchestral musicians. So what you are left with in these programs are teachers who know very little about music, and musicians who know very little about teaching. Apparently the three of us are some kind of blessing for the program in a way, because we are both performers on our instrument (and able to teach all the others) in addition to have a very strong music education background. It sounds like we'll be doing a whole lot of teaching right off the bat, which is awesome. Brendon has already offered us all jobs (once we graduate in December) in a very serious way. England is badly in need of music teachers for all their schools.

I haven't actually been out to teach yet- we have a meeting at the program's office next Wednesday, and then my first day of teaching is the Monday after that. From what Brendon told us, we will be teaching in an inner city kind of environment, which will be great experience. The Lambeth Music Service has all kinds of ensembles, and the three of us will be learning to beatbox in preparation for their beatboxing ensemble, so watch out for some new skills when we get home haha.