Music

An inclusive, community driven music department featuring ground-breaking performances and boundless creativity. Our students will develop the skills and confidence to listen and appraise a broad repertoire, perform to their peers and others and create compositions to express themselves.

Firstly, we will ensure we instil the values of belong, challenge, and inspire in all work we undertake, and exceed the requirements of the National Curriculum for Music and the Model Music Curriculum. Our curriculum will be ambitious for all students; it will be coherently planned and sequenced to enable the continual development of powerful knowledge and skills whilst revisiting and embedding prior learning. The music curriculum will be successfully adapted, designed, and developed to cater for all students irrespective of their prior learning, socio-economic status, educational need, or disability.

The music curriculum at The Skipton Academy will not solely be confined to learning within the classroom. We are committed to providing students with a holistic musical education that celebrates ground-breaking performances and boundless creativity. Therefore, to complement our class-based curriculum, we will offer an extensive extra-curricular timetable that caters for all students; compliments and further develops the powerful knowledge and skills covered in our class-based curriculum; and fosters a genuine love of music whether that is through listening and appraising, performing, or composing. We are committed to all students being able to access one-to-one and small group instrumental provision by instrumental experts as part of our peripatetic instrumental programme by working in partnership with North Yorkshire Music Service.

Our holistic and integrated curriculum will celebrate the incredibly talented students we have at The Skipton Academy through showcases and performances in school and the wider community. Our curriculum will provide students with transferable skills to excel not only in music but across different subject areas and will give them opportunities which perhaps they would not be able to access outside of school.

The National Curriculum for Music along with the Model Music Curriculum, launched in 2013 and 2021, respectively, was our starting point for designing the music curriculum at The Skipton Academy. The aims of the National Curriculum for music and the Model Music Curriculum are to ensure all students:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of great composers and musicians
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions of pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations. (DfE 2013).

The music curriculum at The Skipton Academy intends to go further than the aims of the National Curriculum for Music and the Model Music Curriculum by:

• foster powerful knowledge, understanding and an interest in how music works; our intention is to help create fully rounded, self-aware individuals who are ambitious, resilient, creative, and expressive
• enable students to acquire practical skills and the ability to perform with accuracy, fluency, and expression giving our students ambition to perform to a high standard, and to support others who also aim for high standards
• teach powerful knowledge and skills to achieve depth of learning and make links between different elements of the curriculum exploring genre, historical periods, styles, and traditions
• foster creativity to compose and improvise with skill, building on prior experiences
• develop a rich vocabulary though which students can describe and evaluate the technical and contextual features of music
• encourage students to be confident and creative and embed skills such as leadership, teamwork, practice, and mastery
• enable all students to develop their performance potential through engaging experiences, recognising that music as an art form is an important part of cultural identity, and that the subject is of proven benefit to both cognitive and character development
• help students to feel that they belong by promoting and highlighting musicians and practitioners with diverse characteristics participating in a wide range of genres to instil respect and kindness for each other in performance, and for the artistry of musicians from all backgrounds
• encourage and prepare students for lifelong learning in music, both in and out of school, teaching students not only how to participate in the arts but be able to engage with and appreciate them as an audience
• foster a positive working atmosphere where courtesy, kindness, and mutual respect help everybody to develop their knowledge and skills, whatever their ability, previous experience, or background
• develop knowledge of, and pride in, Skipton, the wider community and the United Kingdom, as well as developing ambition and awareness of the possibilities outside the local environment by exploring musicians and practitioners from Yorkshire and their influence on different styles and genres
• instil resilience to perform in both small and large settings, participating in memorable occasions that contribute to the school life and the community

 

What is the intended impact of the music curriculum?

• give our students ambition to perform to a high standard, and to support others to also aim for high standards
• instil resilience to perform in both small and large settings, participating in memorable occasions that contribute to the school life and community
• foster creativity to compose and improvise with skill, building on prior experiences
• instil respect and kindness for each other in performance, and for the artistry of musicians from all backgrounds
• drive enthusiasm to pursue musical talents and interests through an engaging curriculum
• encourage determination to persevere and strive when refining and improving performance and composition