ATL

Everybody sing

Winner of special needs music teacher of the year, ATL member Kirstie Byrne talks to Report about inclusion, opera, school trips and Abba. Words by Alex Tomlin

Nine children sit poised with their chosen instruments, mostly percussion; drums, cymbals, even a gogo bell, an instrument I had never heard of before. I brace myself for a cacophony of noise, but am pleasantly surprised when their enthusiastic efforts produce a very decent sound, backed by the teacher at the piano.

The teacher is Kirstie Byrne, an ATL member and winner of the Classic FM Special Education Needs Music Teacher of the Year award and the players are her Year 3 class at Marjorie McClure Specialist School in Chislehurst, Kent, a school for three- to 19-year-olds with physical disability and medical needs. Kirstie won the award for making sure that every one of the almost 100 pupils can get involved with music in some way, a challenge when some have very severe medical impairments.

"It can be difficult because you've got such a range of ability in one age group. You've got some working at a very low level and others who are at their normal cognitive age level and beyond," she explains. "With music there are always ways of including everybody, you've just got to find them. They might be able to play with an elbow or a foot!"

The school also makes use of computer technology to help those with more severe difficulties. "Pupils know how they want the music to sound but their physical disabilities stop them, which is so frustrating for them. The technology takes some of that away."

The prize money for the award has helped provide the latest software, as well as an electric drum kit, electric guitars and a bass guitar. What I originally thought was a piano is actually one of two Clavinovas, a lower electric piano that enables Kirstie to both see and be seen by the class.

Although clearly pleased, Kirstie is modest about the award. "I was quite shocked to win and obviously delighted, but I think lots of other people will be doing as good a job as I do. It was interesting to have that spotlight on you - you're not used to that as a teacher. We like to celebrate the achievements of the children."

She didn't give a speech at the ceremony, she just "had to kiss Ed Balls and take my certificate," resisting any urge to give the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families any advice about government policy.

One issue she might have raised is the lack of music in teacher training and the knock-on effects for those in schools. "Music in primary schools can be difficult for teachers if they don't feel they have the ability," she says. "A fundamental problem is the limited amount of time given to it during their degrees, particularly for those doing PGCEs - it doesn't give you confidence.

"There are teachers out there who've been told not to sing in choirs, just to stand silently." I can relate and confess that I was left out of the school choir for poor singing. "A lot of people don't want to sing because of that," she sympathises. "I would have everyone in it and enjoying it."

Enjoyment is certainly evident in the broad smiles of the children as they play their instruments and sing along, and also in the teaching assistants, who seem to enjoy the lesson almost as much as their charges.

"Our teaching assistants are fantastic and I couldn't possibly do the job I do without them," Kirstie declares. "They are the often unsung heroes and heroines of the education system."

They certainly seem invaluable in this class as they help the children find the high and low C on their keyboards, assist them in choosing instruments, join in the singing and, importantly, prompt the children to start and stop playing at the right moment.

Given the enthusiasm with which the pupils play, learning control is important, Kirstie explains, as she praises them for excellent stopping. They also play quietly and then loudly to demonstrate control, although it's clear they enjoy the louder playing more.

"They don't hold anything back," Kirstie explains. "Sometimes in mainstream schools there's that sort of 'is it cool?' attitude that restricts pupils. There's none of that here - they just dive on in with great enthusiasm for everything, which is brilliant."

After 12 years at Marjorie McClure it is clear that Kirstie still gets a lot out of her job. "There's a huge variety of things I can do with the students, and opportunities and experiences for them, and I can see how they grow and become more confident.

"We also tap into their creativity," she continues. "Last year we did an opera production. They were given the starting point of a ring and they came up with the storyline, wrote the music and made the costumes. We have a good relationship with the Royal Opera House [in Covent Garden] and go up there fairly often." Opera? Surely not the most accessible of musical genres even for adults? "Our children respond to music so naturally that they really enjoy the drama of it rather than trying to work out the detail of what's going on. I try to take all our students to listen to live music."

It's not just opera - students have sampled the delights of West End musicals Joseph and Zorro, as well as visiting the Barbican to listen to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Festival Hall for the London Philharmonic. School trips are a major part of musical education, Kirstie believes, but only with the right grounding.

"We learn the pieces and the pupils do projects composing their own music based on what they hear. When they go to the concert there's that connection, seeing the people playing the music they've heard on CD. You can't expect people to just sit down and listen to a massive symphony, neither would you send someone round a huge art gallery with no preparation."

More popular tunes are appreciated too; while filing out at the end of the lesson, the children launch into an impromptu rendition of Abba's Mamma Mia, apparently a favourite at Friday afternoon's music club. "They all love dance and disco," says Kirstie, "and they love to sing and drum. There's some who love loud noises and others who really don't."

This can particularly be the case with autistic children who can be touch aversive, and so need help and encouragement to try the instruments. They can also become fixated on one particular instrument, which presents the challenge of trying to widen their repertoire.

Assessing achievement for some can be an issue too. "With children who don't make much progress it's not always easy to see where they've improved," she explains, "so you have to pinpoint exactly what progress they have made."

Although a lot of what they do in the lessons just seems like fun, and it obviously is, Kirstie believes learning music brings significant benefits to the rest of the curriculum. At its simplest level she relates the end-of-lesson song to science, where water is the subject, so they sing about going to sea on a pirate ship. More fundamentally, they develop skills such as listening, paying attention and working as a group, while maths is obviously a major part of music, all of which play into the rest of the curriculum.

Ultimately, enjoyment is the key, Kirstie says. "When you see children enjoying music and playing instruments... our pupils are so enthusiastic, that's what makes my job so good."

Image (c) Nick Dawe