Singing helps children outside mainstream education to develop, become more confident and integrate with their peers, says a new study from the national singing program for England and Wales called Sing Up. The report, “Beyond the Mainstream,” is a comprehensive assessment of the success of their 14 pilot programs across the two countries that were designed to reach more than 800 children with different needs who are schooled outside of mainstream primaries.
These children included those with special educational needs, children who attend short stay schools, looked- after children, refugees and asylum seekers, young carers, children with physical disabilities and children with emotional and behavioral difficulties and mental health problems. The projects ranged from the Sound Minds “Songs from the South” project, which worked with children with mental health problems, to the Plymouth Music Zone project for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities in the southwest of England, which used vocal looping technology to help engage with children who were unable to use their voices.
The feedback was very positive and researchers found the various projects helped children with their self-confidence and self-esteem, sense of achievement and also their social interactions. Singing also acted as a leveler, helping the children to mix with their peers in mainstream schools.
“It was good to work with the mainstream primary as our children were given a huge confidence boost by discovering they were just as capable as their mainstream peers,” one project leader who worked with children about to enter the education system for the first time said.
Some children said they now felt “confident to stand up and sing a solo” and “proud of their final performance,” while their teachers noticed that the children were growing more confident as a whole and that this was helping them to integrate with other children, as well as be clearer and more confident in stating their own needs.
Singing in groups also helped children who found it difficult to socialize or make new friends, by giving them a focus and encouraging them to work together in a non-threatening environment. As part of the “Songs from the South” project, they found that one child who had not had any previous significant peer relationships developed a “joking relationship” with two other young people. This was a considerable achievement for this child and the project had other similar success stories.
There was also an improved attitude to learning — 13 out of 14 projects, for example, said children’s concentration had become “better” or “much better.”
Many projects saw children showing a marked improvement in musical and vocal language and technique. This was not only useful for children as a skill and a link into the mainstream curriculum, but it also helped to foster a sense of pride and achievement, a sense that they had become “good at something” and were recognized for that.
In almost all of the projects, the partnerships were key to their success.
“The pilots have shown us that solid partnerships that focus on the different organizations and individuals involved in a child’s life are the lifeblood of successful outcomes for children outside mainstream education,” Baz Chapman, Sing Up program director, said.
Good training is essential to make these partnerships work.
“From social workers to foster carers to teachers in short stay schools, training and development has played an essential role in helping them to transform the lives of the children in their care, and Sing Up’s strong workforce development program will continue this work beyond the pilots,” Chapman said.
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
The Hong Kong government on Monday gazetted sweeping amendments to the implementation rules of Article 43 of its National Security Law. There was no legislative debate, no public consultation and no transition period. By the time the ink dried on the gazette, the new powers were already in force. This move effectively bypassed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The rules were enacted by the Hong Kong chief executive, in conjunction with the Committee for Safeguarding National Security — a body shielded from judicial review and accountable only to Beijing. What is presented as “procedural refinement” is, in substance, a shift away from
Taiwan no longer wants to merely manufacture the chips that power artificial intelligence (AI). It aims to build the software, platforms and services that run on them. Ten major AI infrastructure projects, a national cloud computing center in Tainan, the sovereign language model Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine, five targeted industry verticals — from precision medicine to smart agriculture — and the goal of ranking among the world’s top five in computing power by 2040: The roadmap from “Silicon Island” to “Smart Island” is drawn. The question is whether the western plains, where population, industry and farmland are concentrated, have the water and
The shifting geopolitical tectonic plates of this year have placed Beijing in a profound strategic dilemma. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) prepares for a high-stakes summit with US President Donald Trump, the traditional power dynamics of the China-Japan-US triangle have been destabilized by the diplomatic success of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington. For the Chinese leadership, the anxiety is two-fold: There is a visceral fear of being encircled by a hardened security alliance, and a secondary risk of being left in a vulnerable position by a transactional deal between Washington and Tokyo that might inadvertently empower Japan
RSS