The National Singing Programme for primary schools in England: an initial baseline study

The ‘Sing Up’ National Singing Programme for Primary schools in England was launched in November 2007 under the UK Government’s ‘Music Manifesto’. ‘Sing Up’ is a four-year programme whose overall aim is to raise the status of singing and increase opportunities for children throughout the country to enjoy singing as part of their everyday lives, in and out of school. As part of the Programme’s research evaluation, a key focus has been to build an initial picture of singing in Primary schools across England. This information could then be used as a ‘baseline’ by which the programme’s subsequent impact could be judged, including ‘before’ and ‘after’ measures of schools that receive particular ‘Sing Up’ input. This paper reports an overview of key outcomes of first five months of baseline profiling (October, 2007 to February 2008), embracing analyses of the singing behaviours of 3,472 children in 76 Primary schools. These findings are complimented by additional analyses of children’s views on singing in and out of school; and the self-efficacy of their class teachers’ (n=90), both as singers and as teachers of singing