Children as inspectors? Evaluating school music provision for children aged 10–11 years

Abstract

What do the views of children, teachers and inspectors about the quality of a school's music provision have in common, or are they all different? A trained expert visited ten primary schools, and her judgements about the music provision for children aged 10–11 were compared with those of the teachers, the children's views about music at the school, and the judgements reported in the school's most recent published inspection report. It was the children, particularly the boys, who agreed most closely with the expert. The judgements of the expert and the inspectors were broadly consonant, but the generalisation in the inspection writing led to its requiring a careful read if weaknesses in some schools' provision for Year 6 were to be detected. While there was general agreement between the expert and the teachers over children's attainment in the more effective schools, the judgements of the teachers were seriously awry in schools that neglected an aspect of the National Curriculum, typically composing. At present, inspectors routinely survey the views of parents and carers, but not those of pupils. The Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), the government department responsible for the inspection of schools in England, is currently considering some limited use of older secondary pupils' views as inspection evidence. The evidence of the research described in this paper is that younger children, in Year 6, could usefully be involved in providing inspection evidence. Indeed, it is possible that they may prove to be rather better ‘inspectors’ than older children, and also than some of their teachers.