Last year, Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) was awarded enhanced funding of £4.5m over the next five years to establish a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), the only UK conservatoire to achieve such status.
As a result, the RNCM is developing its work in three key areas: the training of specialist instrumental teachers, chamber music and vocational training. Underpinning each are pedagogical research and continuing professional development. Central to CETL’s ethos is the development of specialist pathways for ‘teacher-performers’, inspiring the best of our young performers to consider teaching as a fulfilling part of a career. The establishment within CETL of the RNCM Centre for Young Musicians (embracing the Junior RNCM, award-winning Junior Strings Project and innovative two-year PGCE in music with specialist strings teaching) has created a unique environment for teaching practice and observation. Students are introduced to holistic approaches to teaching, have opportunities to participate in mentoring schemes with regional music services, can participate in a wide range of community outreach projects and engage with pedagogical research. Students are encouraged to share their skills and experience with the next generation of young musicians and recognise that teaching can complement and enhance their performing careers.
Despite this, the need to achieve qualified teacher status (QTS) remains a barrier to many conservatoire students who might otherwise establish and sustain a career involving teaching. Although they can work as unqualified teachers in the independent or state sectors, career progression and access to enhanced pay scales are often reserved for those with QTS. The incentive for ‘unqualified’ conservatoire students to enter the state sector as teachers – where their talents are badly needed but the pay and conditions can be unattractive – is minimal. Only a tiny percentage decide to pursue initial teacher training routes leading to QTS following graduation, hardly surprising in relation to the levels of debt that students accumulate over a four-year undergraduate programme and the fact that the majority of PGCE programmes are primarily designed for those wishing to work as classroom, not specialist instrumental, teachers.
Recognising the need to develop customised routes to QTS, the RNCM has developed (in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University) a one-year PGCE in music with specialist instrumental teaching.
This programme builds upon the success of the existing PGCE in music with specialist strings teaching, which has sustained an enviable track record in terms of student employment. The new PGCE launched in September 2006, providing 15 places for aspiring specialist wind and percussion teachers. In future it will expand to include string, keyboard, vocal and music technology students, although places will inevitably be limited and competition high.
The new programme is already oversubscribed in its first year, denying many students with potential to become inspiring teachers the chance of attaining QTS through this means.
Addressing this problem, CETL – on behalf of Conservatoires UK (CUK) – devised a working group exploring the possibility of embedding QTS for aspiring teacher-performers within the four-year undergraduate curriculum from years three and four of study. This would enable students to develop performing and teaching skills in parallel, exploring synergies and encouraging continuity.
Negotiations with the Training and Development Agency are ongoing but it is hoped that a pilot scheme might be in place in a number of conservatoires from next September.
If successful, this initiative could provide a further 30 specialist training places, which would go some way to fulfilling the pledge made by CUK to the Music Manifesto, in which conservatoires recognise their responsibilities to create a 21st-century music teaching workforce that is fit for purpose.
In the longer term, it is conceivable that specialist routes of this nature could be made available for aspiring music leaders/animateurs, providing accreditation in the growth area of community outreach.
CETL recognises also the need to provide meaningful continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities for practising teachers, enabling them to upgrade and refresh their skills. To this end, CETL’s professional development team has been developing a wide-ranging portfolio of short courses and consultancy work, covering areas such as conducting, animateur skills (with professional partner Artis), Dalcroze/Kodály, discipline-specific teaching and learning activities linked to RNCM festivals and apprenticeship schemes (with Artis and Access to Music). Demand for these initiatives is proving to be high and anticipated to grow.
Whether it will be feasible to develop part-time, flexible programmes for practising ‘unqualified’ teachers that enable them to achieve QTS remains to be seen; the challenge of releasing valuable teachers from their day-to-day jobs – and of managing what in practice would be individual programmes of study – are significant.
Irrespective of this, it is hoped that engagement with CPD activities will allow a sharing of good practice, encouraging teachers to develop their skills and stay abreast of the latest developments.
Only by developing inspirational, highly skilled teacher-performers – and providing meaningful opportunities for those who are currently teaching to engage in life-long learning – will conservatoires be able to play their part in ensuring the survival of the next generation of young performers.