Early career challenges in secondary school music teaching

Abstract

The article reports an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded study of the early career experiences of secondary school music teachers in England, set within a wider national picture of decreasing age‐related pupil engagement with school music, career perceptions of music teaching, variable patterns of teacher recruitment and possible mismatches between the musical biographies of young people and intending music teachers. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from a short‐term longitudinal survey (first questionnaire: n = 74, second questionnaire: n = 29), supplemented by case studies (n = 6) and open‐ended, written questions (n = 20). Analyses suggest that only a half of the newly qualified participants chose to teach full‐time in a mainstream, state‐funded school music classroom. Of these, the majority were faced with a range of early career challenges stemming from curricular, extra‐curricular and non‐curricular school expectations. These included the need to balance their existing musical performer identity with that of being a new teacher.

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article, Effective teaching in secondary school music: teacher and pupil identities, was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under award R000223751. We are indebted to the participants in this research (questionnaire respondents and case studies) for their support across the project. We are also grateful for detailed access to official reports and statistics concerning teacher supply from colleagues within the Bedfordshire Libraries service and Luton Council.

Notes

1. Average figures and rankings were calculated from data contained in Table 6 of DfES (2006).

2. The Teacher Training Agency (TTA) became the Training and Development Agency (TDA) on 1st September 2005.

3. Vacancy data from annual ‘School Workforce in England’ reports (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/), ITE allocation data from annual TTA/TDA Allocation Letters to ITE Providers, ITE recruitment data from annual Graduate Teacher Training Registry reports (http://www.gttr.ac.uk/reports.html), ITE commencement and completion data from TDA Performance Profiles (http://dataprovision.tda.gov.uk/public).

4. Eastern Region school vacancy figures were based on termly data obtained via personal telephone and email correspondence with the Teacher Recruitment Officer for Luton Borough Council on 22 December 2006. The 11 local authorities included were Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, Norfolk, Peterborough, Southend‐on‐Sea, Suffolk and Thurrock.

5. Figures for Scotland are excluded in order to be able to compare the data with the other figures relating to KS3, GCSE and ‘A’‐level completion. These particular courses and qualifications are not available in Scotland.

6. This figure was derived by summing the numbers of full‐ and part‐time UK domiciled students given in HESA (2005c) and then subtracting the total number of Scotland domiciled students from Table 6 of Scottish Executive (2006).

7. The study by Purves et al. was a separate and distinct strand of the same Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)‐funded research project as described later in this paper.

8. Although the original project design embraced both teacher and pupil identities, the focus shifted during the research more towards a ‘teacher perspective’ compared to undergraduate music students as the comparative group.

9. A comparison group of final‐year undergraduate music students (n = 66) was drawn from four specialist music colleges and two university music departments. This sample, which represented 1.28% of the total number of graduates (5155) from music‐related courses in 2003 (HESA, 2005b), was used to provide a comparison between graduate musicians who had already opted to undergo initial teacher education with those nearing the end of their undergraduate degrees and for whom a career in secondary music was still one of many options. A detailed analysis of these undergraduate participants, including views on teaching secondary school music as a career, can be found in Purves et al. (2005).

10. The official targets for recruitment (as set by the Ministry) employ a statistical model that is expected to take into account a variety of different parameters, including changes in school rolls, known vacancies and expected retirements, as well as patterns of recruitment in previous years. A key source of data is the periodic ‘Secondary Schools Curriculum and Staffing Survey’ (TDA, 2007). The TDA targets for initial teacher education are a subset of these, as evidenced by slight differences in the target numbers reported in documents from the two official sources (e.g. Moon, 2007).