The Smile Project

Funded by Sempre 50th Anniversary Award

Title: The Smile Project: Empowering non-music specialist teachers in special schools to teach music

Recipients: Caroline Waddington-Jones (University of York), Karen Irwin (Live Music Now), Adam Ockelford (University of Roehampton), Hannah Gibbs (University of York)

Date: January 2021

Despite research highlighting multiple benefits of musical engagement for learning-disabled children and young people, access to high-quality music education remains inconsistent across special schools in England. The Covid-19 pandemic further disadvantaged these pupils both in terms of adaptations to the way that music learning took place and with visiting music leaders being less likely to be able to come into schools. In the current post-pandemic context, school finances are under increasing pressure, and leadership teams are facing difficult decisions on cuts to provision. Meanwhile, special school educators, who tend to know their pupils best, have the potential to be able to support their pupils in accessing meaningful music learning opportunities, but often lack the necessary music facilitation skills or confidence to take advantage of these opportunities. The Smile project (Strategies for Music In Learning-difficulties Education) seeks to improve access to high-quality music learning opportunities for special school pupils through empowering and upskilling their non-music specialist teachers.

Smile Project Aims:

To begin to improve learning-disabled pupils’ access to high quality music provision, the Smile project had four aims:

1. To identify the current challenges and barriers that non-music specialist teachers in special schools in England experience around facilitating music activities with their pupils;

2. To understand what a resource to support non-music specialist teachers in special schools in facilitating music would need to do, include, and look like in order to be relevant and accessible for these staff;

3. To develop and produce a prototype of the resource;

4. To conduct some preliminary testing and evaluation of the prototype resource with non-music specialist staff and their pupils to be able to refine and extend the resource.

Outcomes:

Interviews with 22 special school staff and visiting musicians about the current challenges around music provision in special schools in England revealed that:

• music provision in special schools is under pressure from decreased funding;
• school senior leadership teams who value music tend to allocate more resources (e.g. money, space, time, staffing and training) to supporting music provision;
• class teachers are most often non-music specialists who may have a narrow conceptualisation of music, may feel embarrassed about ‘performing’ in front of colleagues and pupils, and may lack confidence in their own musical skills.     

In these interviews and an additional online survey of 100 non-music specialist teachers we asked participants about what they would want from a resource to support them in planning, delivering, and assessing music lessons with their classes. We developed the Smile resource in response to their requests.

Smile is a free, online resource designed for non-music specialist teachers to be able to plan, deliver, and assess high quality music activities with their pupils: https://smile.livemusicnow.org.uk/ . There are currently lessons on two topics: weather and space. For each topic there are three different lesson plans, each aimed at a different level of ability based on the Sounds of Intent framework. The activities in each plan were devised and delivered by Live Music Now musicians working with staff and pupils at two special schools in England and with support from the Smile team.

The Smile resource has been tested and evaluated by three non-music specialist class teachers who used the resource to plan, deliver, and assess music lessons with their pupils over the course of a half-term. Teacher interviews and lesson videos at the beginning and end of the half-term allowed us to track and evaluate teachers’ and pupils’ development across the half-term. This approach allowed us to collect meaningful feedback from the people the Smile resource is intended for and will shape the next stages of the Smile resource, as well as the wider research project.

The Smile resource is being refined and expanded still but is available for anyone to use – you just need to create a free account on the website. There is also a feedback form on the website if you would like to tell us about your own experience of the resource and make suggestions for improvements, curriculum topics, or other developments.