Trailblazing £1.5m campaign can turn inner-city pupils into choristers

AN INNER-CITY primary serving one of the most deprived areas of Leeds might seem a world away from the traditional image of an elite choristers' school.

But Holy Rosary and St Anne's Catholic school, in Chapeltown, is working toward becoming the first state-funded cathedral choir primary school in the country with the launch of a campaign yesterday to raise 1.5m.

The aim is to form separate boys' and girls' choirs who will regularly sing at services at Leeds Cathedral. It will also teach every pupil from nursery upwards to sing, read and write music and be able to play an instrument. The 1.5m funding is needed to pay for new facilities and staff to make the project sustainable.

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The vision is being turned into a reality by a former Holy Rosary and St Anne's pupil who has taught at some of the country's most prestigious cathedral choir schools.

Sally Egan has returned to Yorkshire as the choral director for the Diocese of Leeds after a career which has seen her perform opera around the world and teach at both Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral.

She is now working in her former primary school in Chapeltown to teach pupils to sing.

Holy Rosary and St Anne's headteacher Kathryn Carter said becoming a cathedral choir school would allow staff to use music to raise the aspirations of pupils from a deprived part of the city.

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They also hope it will help to unite a diverse community. Just under 90 per cent of Holy Rosary and St Anne's pupils come from ethnic minorities and more than 20 languages are spoken by children in the classroom.

"Music will be integral to the school," Mrs Carter said. "We will include everyone irrespective of their musical ability.

"Music has the ability to transcend barriers of poverty, faith and culture.

"We have pupils in our school who are asylum seekers who have come from war-torn countries and I believe music has the power to heal.

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"It can also develop discipline and boosts children's confidence and self-worth.

"The director of music at the cathedral runs a 'Sing Up programme' across the Diocese with children from different schools but what he found was that the children they are working with tend to come from outside the city and we thought wouldn't it be wonderful to have a cathedral choir that comes from the inner city.

"We want to give opportunities to children whose families do not have the infrastructure to be able to provide them."

Leeds Cathedral already runs the biggest singing programme in the country reaching 1,300 pupils in 45 schools across West Yorkshire.

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Its director of music, Ben Saunders, said: "We have thought for some time that it would make sense to have a centre of excellence within a particular school.

"In Chapeltown there are so many languages, cultures and ethnicities and we can use music as a way of uniting these children going across boundaries.

"If we can show children they can excel at choral singing then it raises their aspirations of what they can do in other aspects of their life.

"We are very fortunate in the fact that we have been able to recruit Sally Egan, who herself was a former pupil of Holy Rosary and St Anne's and sung in the cathedral choir here in Leeds before going on to become a vocal coach at Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

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"She has come back to Leeds and will be teaching the pupils these high level skills bringing the sort of teaching she used for pupils at Westminster to the children in Chapeltown."

Minister backs status battle

Children's Secretary Ed Balls threw his support behind the plan for a state-funded cathedral choir school in Leeds during a visit to the city yesterday.

The Normanton MP was invited to Holy Rosary and St Anne's by the Bishop of Leeds, Arthur Roche and Leeds North-East MP Fabian Hamilton, as a drive to raise money for the project began.

"It was truly a fantastic experience," he said. "The choir – the first of its type in the whole country – performed fabulously and I was impressed by the obvious pleasure and joy the children get out of their singing, inspired by their brilliant teachers.

"The children told me that singing gave them confidence, helped them learn new languages and inspired them to get on better in all their other subjects."

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