Many music teachers in Secondary Schools, when designing schemes of work, use music elements, concepts and musical devices as a focus for choosing holistic practical activities. The idea behind such a practice appears to be to enable pupils to understand more clearly these concepts through reinforcement in listening and performing activities and through the application of the device to their composing tasks. While still retaining an important place in the curriculum for concepts/music elements, it is suggested that curriculum schemes might be built around the mastery of a wide range of skills. A new way of thinking about curriculum design in music is sought, to enable a more effective musical experience for pupils.

The chief, but by no means the only, means of communication in the classroom is language. Simply because the range of activities in the music lesson are so varied, it follows that teachers and pupils will use language and communication skills in a multiplicity of different ways. This article is an attempt to highlight some of the ways in which language is used in music teaching at different ages and stages, and in different educational settings.

With colleagues in Japan, the author, a composer and improvising musician, developed novel techniques of collaborative composition. Subsequently – in Japan and in Britain – he explored ways of developing those techniques with school pupils. In this article he writes about the background to that experiment, the professionalism of composers and performing musicians, and the relative importance of boundaries of all kinds (e.g. different frames for the reception of music). In particular, he reflects upon compositional ideas and processes generated by his work with children.

Music graduates choosing secondary school teaching as a career and training through one-year post-graduate courses are drawn from an increasingly wide range of degree studies in music and embark on their training year with diverse specialisms and music skills. Yet these students will need to operate as generalists in schools with an ever-widening music curriculum. In this account of procedure in one institution, a view is given of the applied musicianship needed by new teachers and discussion of this invited from all providers of post-school music education and training. Data collected from students who may soon be responsible for music in a school indicate a trend towards improvement in only some areas of musicianship.

The article looks firstly at research into early human communication and secondly at the learning experiences of successful musicians in a range of fields. It underlines the idea that music learning and language learning have much in common. Musical improvisation is seen as having a central role, similar to that of talking in relation to verbal language. Recognition of this role forms the basis of an approach which builds on children's early musical development and can enable them all to fulfil their potential as musical communicators. Directions for further research are suggested.

In this study, the authors set out to investigate the assessment of musical composition in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), according to the criteria and marking system of a ‘typical’ examining board. In this article they describe how they conducted their investigations, what they found, what they suggest may be reasons for those findings, and how it might be possible to make improvements in the assessment procedures.

Originally, the creative music workshop involving professional players was intended to give direct support to school teachers and to enhance music in the classroom, but today's large-scale, high-profile projects mounted by orchestras and opera companies appear to be developing into a full-scale industry on their own. Their role in partnership with schools and colleges now requires clarification: a survey of education policies has revealed some confusion of aims with few bodies looking closely at objectives, outcomes and effects. Music companies could profit from the experience of museums and art galleries.