When it comes to class sizes for Key Stage 4, our subject is normally one of the smaller ones. With a national average of 7% of the cohort taking GCSE Music, small classes shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. The recent change to the National Curriculum means that schools don’t have to offer music as a KS4 subject, they can get away with offering any art subject rather than the broader range that I’m sure we’d all prefer.
It seems important to me, therefore, that we start to gain an understanding of how this is impacting on the number of pupils taking music in our schools. The survey below seeks to identify how many pupils took our subject this year and compare this to the number of pupils signed up to start studying music in September.
Since the 2011 data referenced above only looked at GCSE, I’ve broken the Year 11 questions down into the various qualifications on offer. For the incoming Year 10, I’ve avoided breaking this down since I know some schools will allow pupils to move between the courses they offer in the earlier stages of the course.
A live version of the results can be found here and I’ll post an overview of the data next week.