How music can transform school life

Singing is at the heart of learning at one south London school. It feeds into every aspect of children's education - even science and maths lessons - and is especially important at Christmas. Hilary Wilce reports

Mary's robe is blue, the angel has a fluffy white halo and the shepherds wear tea-towel headdresses. At St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School in Clapham, south London, they celebrate the traditional story of the Nativity three times over, once for each year grouping. And they do it with joy, faith and some very fine singing.

The older juniors, practising "Go Tell It On the Mountain", sway and sing like a professional gospel choir, while the five- and six-year-olds, at their separate rehearsal, belt out a bluesy Christmas song with gusto, then switch to the kind of sweet and simple "Silent Night" that's guaranteed to have parents reaching for their hankies.

It is clear that all these children love to sing, know how to do it, and enjoy every minute. Schools for whom the Christmas concert is just an annual musical blip on their overstuffed calendar could learn a lot.

"Music is central to everything we do," explains the head teacher, Karen Pluckrose. "There is music in science lessons and maths lessons, there is singing in the playground, and at every assembly. It's how we learn, and how we celebrate things."

It feeds into every aspect of her pupils' education, and the results are astonishing. The school serves a mixed inner-city population, and pupils make up a rainbow of nationalities. Some arrive with little English and 20 per cent have special needs, but 98 per cent of them reach the required standard in English, 95 per cent in science, and 80 per cent in maths. Last week, school inspectors pronounced the school "outstanding".

"Music gives children confidence, and brings the whole school together," says Key Stage 1 coordinator Sarah Ashdown. "It brings the less academic ones forward, and you can see that they love everything about it. I've got six-year-olds who are already learning the ukelele and the trumpet."

The school has two choirs and an orchestra, and many children learn instruments with the eight peripatetic teachers who come in to give individual lessons. Its pupils have sung at the Royal Albert Hall and the Festival Hall on London's South Bank, as well as at numerous local events. "We get asked all the time to go out and sing," says Pluckrose. "People see us as a resource they can draw on. But it's good. It makes people want to come and see where we are, and we are proud of what we do and happy to share it."

Music coordinator Julie McCann stresses that music is inclusive. "We have no auditions for anything. At the beginning of the year I go out into the playground and say: 'If anyone wants to join the choir they should step this side of the line,' then we go in and start."

In all, McCann says, just over two-thirds of pupils sign up, although sometimes she has to cajole some of the older boys. "Once they are in, we have two warnings for bad behaviour, and after that a pupil will be asked to leave. But only for that term. Then they can start again the next term. And they're also allowed one term out, for flexibility.

"If someone can't sing, I have them stand between two others who can for a term, and just mouth the words and listen. I also get them to do a whole range of things with their voice - shout, whisper, scream. Often they just don't realise that you use a different part of your throat for singing."

The school's infant music teacher, Tamara Vasylenko, keeps a close watch on how the youngest children's musical skills are developing, and has learnt that all children can make progress. One girl, who seemed to have problems keeping a beat, turned out to be a whizz on the tambourine. Vasylenko is also a skilled jazz pianist who accompanies both choirs. "I work in other schools, and what is so different here is the team work," she says.

St Mary's teachers have their own choir. A dozen of them meet once a week after school, to practice a song that they perform at the end of the term. "It's the support you get," says Pluckrose, about the pleasure of belonging to the choir. "The feeling that you're part of something, the good feeling that you get from singing that you can't get from anything else."

McCann points out that singing encourages good breathing and floods the brain with healthy chemicals. "You can see it in the pupils. And you can feel it in yourself. In drug education I tell them it's a way of naturally feeling good. And you can't ever harm yourself with singing."

Staff at the school have had training in the many benefits of singing by the music educator Stephen Fischbacher, whose Fischy Songs are designed to help children deal with their emotions. Last summer the school's choir won a highly commended certificate at the Music for Youth National Festival, in Birmingham, with a presentation about how singing is good for the mind, body and spirit. One of their songs had been written by the school's science teacher, to explain life and living processes in class.

This Christmas, pupils will be singing a Welsh song that another teacher remembers her mother singing. "We learn so many different songs all the time," says 10-year-old Anita Boakye. "It's really good." Singing's great, agrees Hawa Bangura, also 10. "It would be so boring in school if you didn't sing."

"Our songs just emerge," says McCann. "We never go looking for them. At Christmas we tell the Nativity story because we are a faith school, and we believe the stories are there to tell us a truth. But we are always singing songs from other cultures as well. And we let the children dress up in their own clothes for the Christmas celebrations, because that makes them feel special, and they can feel how wearing different clothes makes their body move differently. Some of our children wear wonderful West African costumes, and you can see how they dance so much more freely.

"And I tell them all that this wouldn't be anything without their singing. Even if they are squashed behind a pillar or something, they are still part of it."

education@independent.co.uk