June 2006

ARTIST PPA COVER IN SCHOOLS

Artists are being employed by schools to cover classroom teachers’ PPA time, giving children the opportunity to work with and learn from professionals. In some cases, UK Music & Performing Arts Services are providing a ‘PPA Cover’ service supplying artists and arts teachers to schools.

One music service commented that they have had some trouble with their arts PPA cover provision due to the attitudes of different schools and their reasons for buying into the scheme. It seems that if a school is employing artists to cover PPA time because they are enthusiastic about the arts and they want their pupils to have a higher standard of arts education, the results are very positive.

However, if a school’s main concern is covering teachers’ PPA time, visiting artists are not always supported by teaching staff and projects are generally less successful. Hence, contracts for next year’s PPA cover scheme will require schools to provide more support for visiting artists and teachers.

Barnsley Music Service
‘Since 1990 Barnsley has offered little financial support for instrumental and vocal music services. Therefore when the DfES came to our rescue in 1999 we were at last in a position to improve the conditions of service for our teachers and put them onto teachers’ conditions or unqualified teachers’ conditions of service. This has resulted in a happy contented team that has become very stable. However, staff were still working a FTE 32 ½ hour contact week.

When workforce remodelling was introduced we talked to the LA about PPA time and directed time – including time for travelling between schools. If the LA did not pay the costs of this we would either have had to close down, or return staff to poor conditions of service. Fortunately as the LA recognised that the extra costs were being imposed on us by the DfES they agreed to funding the PPA and directed time, reducing the contact week to FTE 24 ¾ hours per week at a full year cost of approximately £90,000. We much appreciate this support as for ten years we have had little or no input into the budget of our instrumental/vocal music service. We recognise that as a music service we are probably unique in this support and having experienced real traumas (including 24 redundancies) since 1990 we are most grateful!’

John Grinnel ~ Deputy Head of Barnsley Performing Arts Development Service (responsible for instrumental/vocal music)

Knowsley Performing Arts
‘The aim of the PPA Workforce Remodelling Initiative was:

• To provide a creative solution to the problem of covering the Statutory 10% planning preparation and assessment time which each teacher has been entitled to since September 2005.
• To ensure that this time is used to deliver high quality curriculum requirements and to address the shortage of specialist arts skills within primary schools.
• To give each pupil the entitlement to a specialist high quality creative experience in all the Arts subjects.

This initiative offers a creative solution for schools that will guarantee a high quality creative learning experience for all pupils involved. Due to changes in Initial Teacher Training a number of school have a shortage of primary teachers with any specialist skills in the arts. This was highlighted by the NFER report ‘Saving a Place for the Arts’ which was published in 2003.

This initiative using specialist arts practitioners will in some way fill the gap of skills within the primary schools and allow the pupils a range of exciting creative experiences. A number of schools within the scheme are using it as ongoing CPD, with teachers remaining in the class working alongside the artists Each school will receive Peripatetic Creative Practitioners over an academic year to deliver a range of planned curriculum modules in each of the following Art forms dance, drama and visual art.

The initiative also fulfils a number of other agendas including Arts and Cultural Entitlement which is an area of focus of both the DFES and DCMS. Having a sustained relationship with a range of creative practitioners will also support schools wishing to obtain or improve their Artsmark quality award.

The feedback from schools has been extremely positive throughout this pilot year and we plan to extend the initiative to more Primary and special schools in the next academic year.’

Emma Bush ~ Schools and Communities Arts Service Manager

Rochdale Music Service
‘We operate a very simple system whereby we meet the needs of each individual school which “buys in" the music service on an hourly basis. All the activities are delivered in the classroom reflecting National Curriculum criteria. The two main areas we cover are Classroom music activities or Whole Class singing.’

Fred Bowker ~ Head of Rochdale Music Service