The National Curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music
• be taught to sing, create and compose music
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated.

At Mount Charles School the intention is that pupils gain a firm understanding of what music is through listening, singing, playing, evaluating, analysing, and composing across a wide variety of historical periods, styles, traditions, and musical genres. Our objective at Mount Charles School is to develop a curiosity for the subject, as well as an understanding and acceptance of the validity and importance of all types of music. We are committed to ensuring pupils understand the value and importance of music in the wider community, and are able to use their musical skills, knowledge, and experiences to involve themselves in music, in a variety of different contexts in and out of school.

At Mount Charles School, we have chosen Charanga Music School as our main program of learning and to deliver our music curriculum from EYFS to Year 6. We also supplement Charanga with other resources from Sing Up, BBC Bring the Noise and BBC Ten Pieces. This helps bring a fresh and dynamic approach to teaching and learning music.

“The Charanga Musical School Scheme provides teachers with week-by-week lesson support for each year group in the school. It provides lesson plans, assessment, clear progression, and engaging and exciting whiteboard resources to support every lesson. The Scheme supports all the requirements of the national curriculum.”

We at Mount Charles know that music as a subject is not learnt or taught in a linear way, instead it is experienced holistically over time. It is for this reason that Charanga take a repetitive approach to teaching music. The Charanga music curriculum ensures pupils regularly sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate music on a weekly basis. This is embedded in weekly lessons as well as our weekly singing assemblies, regular performances (including concerts for parents and end of year and Christmas productions) and the learning of instruments.

Through the use of Charanga, pupils learn how to play an instrument, sing, compose and improvise on a variety of instruments, from tuned and untuned percussion to keyboards. In doing so they understand the different principle of each method of creating notes, as well as how to read basic music notation. The elements of music are embedded in the Charanga scheme and are therefore taught in the classroom lessons so that pupils are able to use the language of music to dissect the different elements, understand how it is made, played, appreciated and analysed. This in turn, feeds their understanding when listening, playing, or analysing music. In the Early Years, pupils compose and perform using body percussion and vocal sounds, which develops the understanding of musical elements without the added complexity of an instrument.

During their time at Mount Charles School, every child will have the opportunity to learn a variety of instruments including: the ukulele, recorder, chime bars, djembe drums, cornet and trumpet with the school's music specialist teacher and through the First Access programme, which is free of charge. The First Access program consists of 12 music lessons and the pupils each have access to their own instrument for those sessions. By then end of the 12 sessions, pupils will perform to the school and/or parents in a small concert. After the initial 12 sessions, pupils have the opportunity to carry on learning that instrument either in school through a peripatetic teacher or an afterschool music club run by a member of school staff.

In 2022, 84% of pupils at the end of KS2 achieved the expected standard in music.

Throughout each year at Mount Charles School, children become more confident as musicians because they have had multiple opportunities to develop their musical skills and knowledge. Owing to the repetitive teaching and learning approach, children are able to see and work on the areas they might like to improve upon.

“Charanga Music School enables children to understand musical concepts through a repetition-based approach to learning. Learning about the same musical concept through different musical activities enables a more secure, deeper learning and mastery of musical skills.”

Due to the strong links between music and the learner, children experience and develop other fundamental life skills such as: success, self-confidence, interaction with and awareness of others, and self-reflection.

Feedback from an expert adjudicator at St Austell Music Festival 2022:

‘The choir were very disciplined and focussed throughout the performance which allowed them to sing and follow the conductor well...’

‘The ukulele band were focussed and disciplined and they gave a convincing performance both technically and artistically – strumming carefully and rhythmically.’

Children at Mount Charles also develop an understanding of culture and history, both in relation to students individually, as well as ethnicities from across the world through music. Children enjoy music, in as many ways as they choose- either as listener, creator or performer. They can dissect music and comprehend its parts. They can sing, feel a pulse and have had opportunities to play various instruments in performance settings. They have an understanding of how to further develop skills less known to them, should they ever develop an interest in their lives.

Impact of Music at Mount Charles School is carefully tracked and measured by…

• Discussion with pupils to ascertain engagement in music.
• Monitoring of short-term planning to ensure all areas of the national curriculum are covered and matched with the focus unit being taught.
• Formative assessment during lessons and summative assessment on INSIGHT