Support for Music and Performing Arts

I offer schools a rich range of coaching and other support that includes:

Mentoring/advice/action planning for struggling departments
Departmental Reviews help for even the most successful departments become better still
Advice on recruiting/appointing new members of staff and involvement in the selection process
Curriculum development, including writing schemes of work and assessment materials
Training on how to teach for success in the listening/written exams at GCSE and A-Level
Producing resources
Original compositions and arrangements specially tailored to your students' strengths and your school's resources

Recent work with schools includes:

Supporting an experienced Head of Music review and refresh the KS3 curriculum (in person)
Supporting a non-specialist plan and deliver engaging and purposeful lessons at KS3 (online)
Supporting an ECT leading the music departments in two schools plan and deliver a new curriculum, plus other mentoring and support (online)
Supporting a school's selection process for a lead teacher of music by undertaking observations of trial lessons, feeding back to the candidates and advising the headteacher (in person)
Supporting a school's selection process for a Director of Music by advising on the JD and person specification (online)

I have delivered many GCSE and A-level student masterclasses and offer them in:

composition (both original compositions and 'technical' A-level compositions such as 'Bach' chorale harmonization)
performance
the listening/written examination

The work that I do is bespoke to the needs and context of each school

Please email me to discuss your requirements/book a telephone call

I would like to thank you for two brilliant workshop days on Monday and Wednesday. All the Composition material was well-conceived, appropriate to our curriculum and extremely useful. I am positive our teaching staff left the sessions with valuable new skills and tools that they can use straight away in the classroom environment, either face-to-face or on-line.

We would like also to acknowledge the excellent AQA GCSE focused sessions -- the lack of published materials in this area is notorious and we were very impressed with the amount of resources presented during the workshops. This will certainly make our life easier when teaching the updated syllabus and new set-pieces.

Dr Zezo Olimpio -- Head of Music, The British School, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

One of the most useful pieces of CPD in 10 years of teaching! Thank you

Head of Music who attended a training day on leading an outstanding music department

My experience...

I began my teaching career in higher education, lecturing and tutoring at Cardiff University and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (in the Junior Department as well as in the main college); I also tutored on Open University Summer Schools over many years
Having completed a PGCE at the IoE (University of London), I taught music (KS3, GCSE and A-level) in London schools for 20 years, including when I was a headteacher
As Head of Music I rapidly transformed the music departments in two inner-London schools and led a large and highly successful performing arts faculty
I continue to be a practising teacher, working for Junior Trinity where I mainly teach A-level (but also GCSE when required), and I also teach music privately
I am an ABRSM examiner and a diploma examiner for the Guild of Church Musicians
I have given many teacher webinars and face-to-face training days on topics that include teaching GCSE listening pieces (set works), teaching composition at GCSE, and leading an outstanding music department
I have given international conference presentations on primary school music, GCSE listening pieces, and teaching composition at GCSE
In 2021-2022 I was a Teach First Subject Tutor in Music and thus have recent experience of supporting teachers in training across a number of schools and tutoring at Master's level