Music lead: Mary Croker

INTENT

At St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School, we aim to engage, motivate, and inspire all our pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as a musician, and so increase their self confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. Music permeates all aspects of our school life as we grow together. Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon. (The National Curriculum) Music teaching at St Augustine’s aims to follow the requirements of the National Curriculum for Music. We provide high quality, fun, inspiring and creative lessons, engaging our pupils with singing, composing and listening to music from different times and places. Special Educational Needs Disability (SEND)/Pupil Premium Any children with identified SEND or in receipt of pupil premium funding may have work additional to and different from their peers to access the curriculum dependent upon their needs.

IMPLEMENTATION

We use Charanga’s Creative Music Scheme. The Charanga scheme provides us with quality and engaging music lessons with careful progression built in. Lessons are taught weekly by class teachers, many of whom play instruments or sing themselves and ukulele lessons for all year 4 children are taught by a visiting specialist peripatetic teacher each week for the whole year. This is funded by Arts Council England via Kent Music Education hub. Singing is also often used in other subjects to aid learning particularly in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage One. CPD for staff is given when needed. All children are actively encouraged and given the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument, from standard classroom instruments to individual instrumental lessons with the visiting peripatetic staff. Children can choose to pay for additional lessons on guitar, ukulele, piano or harp. There are many musical opportunities in school for all pupils including weekly class music lessons, group ukulele lessons for every year four pupil, recorder club, choir, and whole school singing sessions as well as annual nativities, ukulele concert and the year 6 musical play. We perform outside of our school environment with other children and take part in the Tunbridge Wells Beginner’s Recorder festival, Tunbridge Wells Singing Festival and Young Voices where our pupils sing with a choir of 5000 – 8000 children at the O2 Arena in London.

IMPACT

As music is a practical subject, assessment may be done by focussing on a small group at a time on certain tasks or skills, observing the children, discussing their work or self/group/teacher evaluation against end of key stage expectations. Our music curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression and build on and embed current skills. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills in the different musical components and like in other subjects, discreet teaching of vocabulary also forms part of the units of work. If children are achieving the knowledge and skills in lessons, then they are deemed to be making good or better progress.

The impact of our music curriculum is also measured in the uptake of our music clubs and uptake of additional music from our peripatetic teachers and those who continue to take up music after year 4 ukulele lessons and who use it to illustrate learning across the curriculum by choice e.g. wanting to represent their learning through another subject. August 2025

We use Charanga's  Creative Music Scheme to inspire our pupils. The Charanga scheme provides us with quality and engaging music lessons with careful progression built in.   Lessons are taught weekly by class teachers, many of whom play instruments or sing themselves and ukulele lessons for all year 4 children are taught by a visiting specialist peripatetic teacher each week for the whole year. This is funded by Arts Council England via Kent Music Education hub.  Singing is also often used in other subjects to aid learning particularly in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage One.

Music Lessons

All children are actively encouraged and given the opportunity to learn to play a musical instrument, from standard classroom instruments to individual instrumental lessons with our visiting peripatetic staff; Make Time for Music and Mrs Martin. 

Parents can choose to pay for additional lessons for their children through Make Time For Music. Children can have individual or small group lessons on:

• guitar
• ukulele
• piano
• violin

Harp with Mrs Martin: plinkplonkharp@hotmail.co.uk

There are also many musical opportunities in school for all pupils:

• weekly class music lessons for one hour a week
• group ukulele lessons for every year four pupil for a year on Friday afternoons (funded)
• recorder club (Years 3-6)
• KS2 choir (Years 3-6)
• whole school singing sessions
• Year 6 Musical
• Nativities for EYFS and KS1

Children can also take part in music outside of school through Kent Music Kent-Music Centre

• West-Kent-Junior-Voices
• West-Kent-Music-Lab
• West Kent Summer School

The Kent Music Financial Assistance Scheme is available for children and young people aged 5 – 18 years, living in Kent and attending a school in Kent.

Kent Music believe music is for everyone, and that cost shouldn’t be a barrier. As such they can provide financial assistance to support learning for young people.

Kent-Music Financial-Assistance

We perform outside of our school environment with other children and take part in the Tunbridge Wells Beginner’s Recorder Festival, Tunbridge Wells Singing Festival and Young Voices at the O2 Arena in London.