DfE publishes curriculum guidance for schools – Charanga has you covered!

The publication of the Model Music Curriculum (MMC) guidance is a positive step in raising the profile of music education in this country. But some of the media coverage around its release has been confusing.

We’d like to reassure our valued users, and those interested in exploring our platform, of the following:

• It’s important not to mix up the statutory National Curriculum for Music with the non-statutory MMC guidance. The National Curriculum for Music remains in place and hasn’t changed.

• Charanga is totally aligned to the National Curriculum for Music. When using our Scheme and its progressive week-by-week lessons, you are guaranteed to be meeting all the statutory requirements of it in full – both now and in the future.

• The MMC guidance is particularly aimed at schools that don’t have a curriculum to follow. Like ours, it champions Listening, Understanding, Composing, Improvising and Singing/Instrumental Performance, and the two align substantially. With Charanga, you follow an award-winning approach that is widely considered to be the best.

• You’ll also be aware that we go so much further than simply providing a curriculum. The wealth of additional materials available in our Freestyle, Instruments, Sing and SEND sections provides everything a good music education and the new guidance suggests and more.

• We’d already planned to add a significant amount of exciting new resources to our platform – the results of an 18-month project designed to give teachers more variety and choice, and to keep children’s music learning current and relevant. If you did want to explore some of the suggestions in the new guidance, Charanga’s new and existing material will cover it in its entirety.

• Our CPD & Training programme – free, as part of your full licence or trial – builds on these foundations, ensuring every teacher, regardless of their musical skill level or experience, can feel supported and confident in their music teaching.

‘If the DfE’s intervention and MMC’s release leads to people thinking more deeply about the crucial position of children and young people’s music learning in their wider education, that’s brilliant,’ said Mark Burke, Founder and Director at Charanga. ‘We’re here to help.’

‘We’re passionate about children’s music learning and its potential to help all children grow up as kind, curious, and open-minded young people, sensitive and knowledgeable about music and the arts.’

‘We’re equally committed to supporting you with everything you need to teach music confidently, professionally and with enjoyment and enthusiasm.’