Liz Walker: The teachers inspiring our musical youth

Bows moving in unison as the tune flows from section to section, like a ribbon weaving its way around the hall. Violins, cellos and guitars, blending with a clear young voice. All without a conductor in sight.

“I think we won because with some of the other groups if you took the conductor away there wouldn’t have been much left,” said Aimee Robbins, 11-years-old.

“But if Mrs Smith stopped playing the piano we’d still go on. We know what we’re doing.”

Kathryn Smith has dedicated her life to teaching music. She has a class, Year 7 at Silkstone Common Primary, near Barnsley, but teaches music every morning before school, every playtime and most lunchtimes. “Little and often,” she says. Which means that the playtime rehearsals are about 10 minutes long, by the time everyone’s tuned up and got settled.

Yet no-one complains. “I’m a terrible nag, aren’t I?” says Kathryn. “Yes,” the kids agree. “But you’re funny too. And when we win it’s worth it.”

These children are amazing. Disciplined and independent, they seem to have absorbed time management along with those scales.

Kathryn is a perfectionist, but rather than turning the children off, she seems to have switched them on. Their desire for self-improvement rubs off on all other aspects of life, too. They vie to look up words in the dictionary, squabble over who can answer maths questions first, and say: “We may work hard but Mrs Smith works harder.”

Not every teacher can be a Mrs Smith. Not every school could cope with a Mrs Smith, letting her fulfil her vision without compromise.

But many schools could learn from her. Harassed heads of struggling schools all over the country will tear at their hair and mutter: “What about the National Curriculum?”

They should talk to Sally Leeming, of Foxhill Primary, in Bradford. “I teach the Kodály method,” she explains. “Once you have taught a child Kodály, everything else is easy. Music is the key to every mind.”

To explain; Kodály (pronounced Cod Eye), was a nutty Hungarian composer who was into tones and folk songs. He discovered that however disadvantaged the child, if you taught them rhythm, then singing, you could follow it up with anything else you chose. The child would have learned to listen and to concentrate.

According to Sally, who is a professional singer as well as an exponent of Kodály, says it can help children with learning difficulties to progress.

“They don’t wander around the room,” she says. “They’re too busy tapping out the rhythm and singing. They learn, through music, to focus. It can lead on to instruments and grades and everything, but at its most basic it’s a superb teaching aid.”

If you want instruments and grades, as well as choirs and orchestras and brass bands, the man to talk to is Alex Francis, of the Barnsley Music Service. He dishes out everything from euphoniums to cellos to clarinets, starting choirs and recorder groups, uniting top class Yorkshire brass bands with young players who can learn from the masters.

Quietly, unobtrusively, through people like these, music is coming back into children’s lives in a way not seen since the invention of the record player, when all of us amateurs thought we’d better leave it to the people who did it best. Because years ago, everyone learned something.

I played the piano, my sister the violin, while my brother skipped guitar lessons and played out instead. We were none of us any good, but to this day my sister and I – and possibly our brother – can bash out a carol if required.

Playing something used to be a teaching requirement. How else was the class to sing? Yet somehow, it was all allowed to go. Classes that sang were assumed to be classes that never got round to doing phonics.

In the state system – the private schools ignored it of course – music was seen as inessential, when it can transform the most joyless classroom into a warm, inclusive space.

School music should be one of the things parents look for. When a child comes home with the offer of a cornet or a violin, saying: “It’s only £30 for a term, mum,” don’t respond with: “You’ll be bored in a week.”

Find the £30. They will practise, and make your life a misery. Then they won’t practice, and you will turn the tables.

In years to come, whether they abandon the violin or turn into Nigel Kennedy, they will say it is all your fault. But such is life.

We all want our children well educated. In Britain as it is now, they are competing on a global stage, against people for whom good enough is not enough.

But we also want learning to be happy. Music, thanks to our inspirational Yorkshire teachers, can bridge the gap.