Secondary singing inspected

The oft-lamented decline of singing in school, like many other reported declines in education (Mills 1996), is probably more imaginary than real. Ask adults to reminisce about singing when they were at school, and their stories of off-task antics during massed renditions of ‘Greensleeves’, ‘The British Grenadiers’ or ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’, of grunters, groaners and pupils asked by their teachers just to mouth the words, do not speak of a golden age of singing in schools. Certainly, any golden age had passed when I started teaching in 1976, and I needed to work as hard as any teacher must now to persuade pupils to sing with effort, concentration and sensitivity, to vary the mood of their singing, when appropriate, from that suited to ‘Football Crazy’, and to cease to use their imagination to produce what they thought were amusing alternatives to printed lyrics. Yes, there was sometimes singing, of a sort, in assembly. And yes, many music teachers ran choirs and other activities for pupils who were particularly interested in singing. But then, as now, it was difficult to draw in boys, and girls whose time was sought also by PE teachers. But the fact that no decline in singing at school is proven does not excuse any complacence about the quality of singing in schools now. To judge from the high standards that may be observed in some schools, they could be much higher generally. This article considers some of the background to singing in secondary school, and describes some of the more successful approaches to singing by pupils aged eleven to fourteen that have been observed by HM Inspectors (HMI).