1. .
Progression in singing – singing strategies that plan for change to happen

2. Supporting schools to become singing schools
An exploration of what makes a singing strategy a tool for making change happen
Supporting schools to become singing schools
Building in vocal and musical progression over time
Hello, welcome and thank you for choosing to come to Sing Up’s session.
I’m Michelle James. I’m Chief Executive of Sing Up.
In this session we’re going to discuss
What makes a singing strategy a tool for making change happen
What we mean when we talk about supporting schools to become singing schools
How vocal and musical progression over time are part of the job of a singing strategy

3. Short history: Sing Up as an agent for change
What we set out to achieve
How we set about achieving it
Short history – how we set about creating a National Singing Strategy – then we’ll think about how that relates to creating local singing strategies.
The landscape at the time – 10 years ago:
Music Manifesto working group around Singing. Major advocacy campaign, Howard Goodall among others. Anxiety about a perceived decline in singing in primary schools. A belief that singing had been under-invested in for a long period of time, and that unless something was done to arrest the decline, singing might be lost from all but a handful of primary schools. Whereas singing had traditionally been an everyday activity – often as part of collective worship in assembly – it had declined over time and although there were still some primary schools with choirs – there was no longer a culture of singing being a part of the school day for every child, and it tended to be the case that it was down to an individual teacher who happened to be confident and passionate about singing whether singing was happening in schools or not.
The Department for Education wanted every school to be a singing school and announced that there would be funding for a National Singing Programme for primary schools to make this happen.
Develop and deliver a national song resource for primary schools, teachers, pupils and parents – comprising a large number of songs for group singing from a wide range of genre and suiting a range of voices
Co-ordinate existing work on training and development for singing leaders and develop additional strands as necessary
Run a schools campaign to promote singing to teachers, headteachers, parents and children
In essence the process was one of
A) looking at the current landscape and understanding what was already going on, where the deficits were, what the barriers to change were and what kind of change was needed
B) working out what infrastructure, people, skills, tools and resources were needed to make those changes happen, over what timeframe
C) bringing those people, skills, tools and resources together and setting a collaborative, clear but flexible plan in place ready to start work.
I say clear but flexible because the plan had to be iterative and reflective – seeing what was working well, seeing what new and previously unidentified barriers or needs might pop up along the way, and being ready to adapt as necessary and absorb additional strands of work or even changing direction on occasion to achieve the end goal.

4. Barriers to overcome Why singing? Insufficient time
Fear – linked to lack of skills/experience
And now…
Insufficient funding
We needed to identify what barriers we’d be likely to face in trying to implement our strategy.
This involved a lot of detailed research in order to give us solid data and evidence – there was no point us making a plan based on inadequate or partial information about the nature of the problem.
We found that there were three main barriers we’d need to overcome:
Why singing – why should schools be singing regularly? What were the benefits other than it just being a nice thing to do?
There’s not enough time – teachers and schools are too busy
I’m scared of singing
Now we would probably add a 4th barrier of insufficent funding

5. Singing Strategies for Hubs
National vs local
The reason for recapping this is because there are many similarities between that approach I’ve just described to creating a National Singing Strategy and a helpful approach to creating local singing strategies.
Sing Up’s National Singing Strategy was actually based on lots of local strategies – made possible because of our partnership working with Music Services and other organisations. What we were able to do as a centrally funded programme was to bring all of that together and understand the national picture, and also to spread skills, knowledge and practice more widely.
It seems to us there’s still plenty of opportunity to do that through our partnership working with Music Education Hubs.
So, we’ve been developing some tools to help us and Hubs think about how to create strategies for change and we want to share some of those with you today a) because they might be useful to you and b) to get your feedback and thoughts.
We know that Hubs around the country are all different and have different challenges to overcome, different strengths and demographics to work with, so whatever we develop to support with this process needs to be flexible and adapt fluidly to suit an individual Hubs particular set of requirements.

6. School & Partner feedback
Review
of plans and outcomes
School & Partner feedback
Intention 1
Intention 2
Intention 3
Intention 4
Intention 5
Explain
Structure – why like a house?
Start at the bottom with Audit and Vision
Yellow boxes – are the things you will need in place in order to achieve your vision
Blue boxes – Aims, goals – could get into a long discussion about difference between Aims and Objectives but I’ve decided to bypass that and call them Intentions instead. So these are your way of expressing what you intend will be the result of the planned activity in your strategy.
If you’ve got (in your yellow and green boxes beneath):
a solid understanding of the current picture
a fairly clear vision of what you want to change and improve about that picture
You’ve got the right people with the right skills, you’re able to engage with your client group (schools, children and young people, parents etc)
You’ve got the right resources, partners and frameworks
And you’ve got an actionable activity and investment schedule
These Intentions are the things you would want to make happen.
This is the place to build in vocal and musical progression – in the blue boxes
Then the roof is a combination of Schools and Partners feedback, and your own review of how the plans are fulfilling the objectives. You’ll want to do that at least annually, but it doesn’t have to be a major undertaking. Much of it can be done by talking regularly to stakeholders, those people delivering the work on the ground, and going and hearing some singing happening – being in the room with it. Plus, when you do your annual data collection, you could be asking some questions about the extent to which your singing strategy is helping to fulfil your intentions, aside from those of your funders, what really matters is that your strategy is fulfilling your intentions.
Activity and investment schedule – notice that this is just one of the yellow boxes – this isn’t the whole plan. Very often organisations jump straight to this box and miss out the other bits of the thinking. If you just jump straight to this box and have a rolling annual schedule of activity that is repeated, you are unlikely to be making significant change happen. There might be some great activity happening, but any change or improvement that is made will be, at best, an accidental by-product of the activity.
People and skills
Engaging the client group
Resources, partners and Frameworks
Activity and investment schedule
Audit – understanding the current picture
Vison of what you want to change/improve

7. School & Partner feedback
Review
of plans and outcomes
School & Partner feedback
Intention 1
Intention 2
Intention 3
Intention 4
Intention 5
Breakout
We’re going to work in small groups to focus on the blue boxes. What your intentions are – in a big picture sense.
What is it that you want to achieve in relation to singing in your area. Try not to get this mixed up with what you need to do in order to achieve that big picture aim – those things are for the yellow boxes. Focus instead on:
the type of singing,
who it is for,
to what end
and, what improvement or change you would want to see as a result of it.
Think about the contexts and settings in which you want singing to happen, when, where, with who.
Remember: These Intentions are the end results you would want to make happen.
This is the place to build in vocal and musical progression. If you build it in here, then the rest of the strategy will work towards making that happen.
So you might want to think about:
how each young singer will improve over time,
you might also want to think about the areas in which you’d like to raise the bar in terms of the quality of the singing happening in your area overall, and the vocal and musical outcomes that are being achieved.
Bear in mind that you’ll want to be inclusive which will mean thinking about:
Ensuring that every child sings
And for SEND pupils and those with challenging circumstances, starting where they are, and being able to improve outcomes for those ch & yp too as well as your most able and talented youngsters.
Finally: Think about how your blue boxes help you to achieve your green box in the bottom right – your overall vision of what you want to change or improve.
15 mins
Bring back and discuss. 10 mins
People and skills
Engaging the client group
Resources, partners and Frameworks
Activity and investment schedule
Audit – understanding the current picture
Vison of what you want to change/improve

8. Singing schools Pupils are supported to lead singing and vocal work
Pupils practise ways to improve their singing
Staff identify strategies to extend creative vocal work and improve the quality of singing
Staff model and share good vocal practice with colleagues
SMT and governors demonstrate continued whole-school support and encourage further development
Singing energises a range of everyday school activities and routines
Michelle: one of your intentions might well have been around helping schools to become singing schools. That aspiration sits at the core of Sing Up’s work and Shelly’s going to tell you about some work we’re currently doing in relation to that.
Shelly: 5 mins
The Sing Up Awards have been running since the early days of our government funded period. The original idea for the Awards was that they would provide a way of endorsing schools who had really taken on the notion of becoming singing schools.
The framework for the Awards was built around a journey – beginning where you are and pledging and working towards planned improvement through 3 levels of Award, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
All Awards involve a significant commitment by the school to becoming a singing school. This involves singing across the school day, with every child and every member of staff and, collecting evidence to demonstrate ways in which the key stakeholders: pupils, staff, SMT and governors and the wider school community have been impacted through the development of participation, quality singing and vocal leadership.
For example: here are some of the criteria from our Gold Award Framework – our ‘singing school’ standard:
Pupils are supported to lead singing and vocal work
Pupils practise ways to improve their singing
Staff identify strategies to extend creative vocal work and improve the quality of singing
Staff model and share good vocal practice with colleagues
SMT and governors demonstrate continued whole-school support and encourage further development
Singing energises a range of everyday school activities and routines
In 2008 this perhaps felt more ‘doable’ than it does in Consequently, we have paused the Awards while we review them and consider how we can create something accessible for all schools.
Our plan initially is to talk to schools - we want to understand what schools like about the Awards, what they find useful.
We’ll be surveying a wide range of schools who have engaged with the Awards in some way over the years, including those who have gone from silver all the way through to platinum and to those who pledged, made a start and didn’t continue.
We also want to understand that from a Hub viewpoint – originally all Music Services provided support in their regions and endorsed Sing Up Awards.

9. Singing schools
Why singing in schools, and why become a singing school?
A vision for your school ……………………………………………………………………….
Vocal health…….…………………………………………………………………………………..
Vocal leadership ………………………………………………………………………………….
Singing across the school day …………….………………………………………………
Singing to develop musical learning ………………………………………………………
Starting and developing choirs ……………………………………………………………..
Making progress and improving singing …………………………………………………
The singing school journey – creating a plan, and reviewing it ………………..
What next…? Keeping the plan on track ………………………………………………..
Then we want to see how we can make something like the Awards Framework more accessible to all schools.
One of the possible solutions is to publish a methodology, with chapters covering things like:
Why singing in schools, and why become a singing school?
A vision for your school ……………………………………………………………………….
Vocal health…….…………………………………………………………………………………..
Vocal leadership ………………………………………………………………………………….
Singing across the school day …………….………………………………………………
Singing to develop musical learning ………………………………………………………
Starting and developing choirs ……………………………………………………………..
Making progress and improving singing …………………………………………………
The singing school journey – creating a plan, and reviewing it ………………..
What next…? Keeping the plan on track ………………………………………………..
[BONUS - KS2/3 & transition] * ONLINE ONLY ……………………………………….
Notice the inclusion of singing to develop musical learning, Making progress and improving singing and Starting and developing choirs – all important aspects in ensuring there are progression routes for young singers.
We’d be keen to talk to you about your thoughts on ways the Awards could be developed.

10. Sing Up now offering a Singing Strategy service to Hubs on a consultancy basis.
We can help you to review and reframe your existing singing strategy, or start a process from scratch if you prefer.
Then we can work as your partner to help you implement your strategy either through a Partner Membership or a bulk purchase of Membership for your schools.
However, working with us on your singing strategy isn’t about us selling Sing Up Membership to you – we will work with you to understand your needs, the needs of your schools and wider client groups, and help to shape a strategy and plans that will do what you need to do. Obviously where we can see a solution that we can offer to help you with that – whether it is some resources, some training, help with a Big Sing, or other ongoing support – we will offer that, but we will also suggest other providers who might be a good fit for you too.
Maybe Peter would like to explain how working with us has been helpful for Kent Music recently.
Peter – speak here.
Hope you’ve found the session helpful. Do chat to me or my colleagues today or tomorrow, or get in touch after the conference to find out more about how we can help you to turbo-charge your singing strategies.
Time for questions
Thanks
Progression in singing – singing strategies that plan for change to happen