NPME: building a musical culture in a primary school

On Saturday morning, like a number of colleagues, my eyes were glued to the long-awaited new National Plan for Music Education (NPME). More than 10 years on from the last plan, and following the trauma caused by the pandemic for the music education community, it was a much-anticipated publication.

When reading the pages, it took me back to 2014. I’m sat in a headteacher’s office at Osbaldwick Primary (a state school that was ‘Good with Outstanding features’ that had just merged with a failing school). She was setting out her vision for her new, enlarged school, and she wanted music at the heart of it. This headteacher (a non-musician) passionately explained how she believed she needed specialist music provision. She wanted a choir, an orchestra, all children to have lessons with a specialist and regular concerts with the best peripatetics (peris) in the city – and if I could make it happen, she would back me all the way. She left the school in 2019 (but thankfully is still in education working as a consultant for the trust). To my great relief, her equally visionary deputy head was appointed as the new headteacher.