Insights into inspirational arts practice in schools: Investing in Key Stage 3 music at Roundwood Park School

Roundwood Park School is an academy with 1300 pupils on roll and 7 pre cent pupil premium. The music department consists of four members of staff; a full-time head of department, a part-time assistant head, a part-time head of sixth form and one part-time teacher of music. Additionally, there are 15 visiting peripatetic teachers. At Roundwood Park School, music is compulsory for one hour per week until the end of year nine. My predecessor had placed a greater weighting on practical music making and performance, which meant that students enjoyed music greatly and our class sizes were about in line with the national average for GCSE and A level. One difficulty we encountered regularly though, was that students seemed unprepared for the theory and composition aspects of the GCSE course, and so we were doing a lot more teaching in year 10 to get students to the right standard, rather than focussing on the content of the course, which was difficult to manage. At this time we knew that