Let's Keep the Ukeleles and the Recorders

Guest Blog

This week's guest blog comes from Nick Stringfellow, talented Southern Sinfonia cellist and member of our Quartet in Association, the Villiers Quartet. 

My thoughts have been occupied this week by the impact of systematic cuts to the Arts, and its effect on music in schools. I have recently experienced this first hand after visiting a handful of primary schools in different parts of the country.

The first thing that hit me was just how little instrumental teaching was happening in some schools. It is not unusual for a school musical evening to now consist primarily of children performing to backing tracks. Don't get me wrong, the performances themselves are often very creative and sometimes in the case of the dance ensembles, choreographed by the children themselves. The small instrumental element is represented by those children who learn their instruments outside school, privately or with a parent. I don't mean to generalise about this and I should point out that there is another side to the coin.

I also visited a school where instrumental teaching still appeared to be thriving. This school was obviously managing to cling on to its peripatetic music service. The class teachers (who probably remember how instrumental music in schools used to be) seem desperate to keep the home fires burning. But what becomes evident in this situation is the difficulty to maintain standards as the instrumental lessons get squeezed. Most of the time, we're talking about a 30 minute group lesson with 3 children. That's 10 minutes each! In real terms, after spending 2 minutes getting the instrument out of its case (and putting it away), a broken string would mean the end of the lesson!

Another model for instrumental music in schools is the huge sticking plaster known as "wider opportunities." This, I imagine, started life as a box ticking exercise, and on paper it looks pretty good. Alerted to the fact that instrumental music in schools was becoming extinct, the solution was to get everybody in a classroom playing the same instrument for a year. As a result, it's not unusual to walk into schools and find an arsenal of trumpets ready to “lock and load”. Unfortunately, there are some schools which acquired the instruments for wider ops, but now don't have the resources to properly support it. Then you’re left with a Performing Arts space which now houses a tenor horn graveyard...

Allow me to transport you back to the early eighties and to my primary school in Rotherham. I started learning the recorder using tablature like a lot of kids my age did. I can't remember a time when I wasn't playing chamber music in some shape or form, even if it was sharing a music stand with a flautist as we battled through "Cherokee Chief"! I was asked on the strength of those experiences (even with my "goldfish" recorder technique) whether I'd like to play the cello...and the rest (as they say) is history.

Rotherham music service was a crack team of enthusiastic and exciting professional teachers. They would come into school en masse and give ensemble performances displaying an infectious camaraderie and communication. This rapport existed because the teachers spent a lot of time working together. There were at least two youth orchestra rehearsals every week, which the majority of instrumental teachers would attend and coach their particular sections. I remember my very first experience of string quartet playing, after I had only been studying the cello a couple of years. It was a weekend chamber music course and the initiative of one of the string teachers who was passionate about quartet playing and wanted to share his burning enthusiasm.

I know from talking to many of my colleagues that this situation was not unusual and there were other notable music services in Leicester and Bedfordshire for example, who are now sadly struggling against cuts in funding.

I have to say at this point that there is an abundance of great teachers out there right now. They still have all that burning enthusiasm that they're desperate to share. I've seen amazing things happen in response to these cuts.... individual instrumental teachers holding 60 children spellbound with their charisma and instrumental virtuosity. In some ways these teachers have had to evolve with the environment and now need a comprehensive "tool kit" to deal with anything that might get thrown at them.

The problem is, morale is low in many areas of the teaching profession. These amazing people are now under so much pressure to get results that their passion and enthusiasm is waning. Many teachers are under much scrutiny from regulating bodies and effectively encouraged not to teach in a creative way. There is no longer space to nurture individual talent. This system of box ticking is eroding the rapport that existed between the teachers and making our schools soulless. My only hope is that somehow we find a way to increase the resources and inject life back into our music services and schools again.

Let's keep the ukuleles and the recorders. They are an entry point for children to quickly find a musical voice, and can be introduced in the classroom by every teacher. There comes a point, though, when some of those children need a leg up to the next rung of the musical ladder--the watchful eye of that teacher who recognises their talent and can say “How about trying the cello now? There’s one in the music cupboard with your name on it.”

Thank you to Nick for his very insightful words! We will be back in a few weeks' time with our next article. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about Southern Sinfonia, you can visit our website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.