Question:
UK schools
Hey there!
I just thought i'd write and tell you all what bad musical school support there is here in the UK.
Music during your school life begins at age approx 7 (grade 2) with the offer of playing the recorder. If you are lucky you may also have the chance to play the guitar in grade 4. Certainly not a sax though!!
In secondary school (age 11-18, grades 7-13) the music departments generally are classical based. I was i believe only the 2nd person ever to want to learn sax in my school back in the early 90's and it was frowned upon!
Choices of bands were the 40 strong classical orchestra (without music for saxes) or the concert band, which mainly consisted of clarinets. Choices of music were dull, to say the least. The most exciting pieces in the concert band were an Abba Medley, and the Pink Panther. When i started to play in the band, more people requested to play sax, so we ended up after about a year of having approx 5 altos and a tenor.
Music here is seen as not an acceptable path to go down, it's academics or nothing as far as the UK education system is concerned. Time spent outside of class to play in concerts is, well, almost banned. And anyone seen playing in any of the school band's is deemed an abnormal freak.
There are generally 2 concerts a year - the Annual Concert, and the Christmas concert. They are both attended by parents/relatives of the musicians or school governers. It is simply not seen as cool!
I thought that perhaps that was just the 90's and now times had moved on, but this year i was fortunate to play in a sax quartet during the interval of the school's annual concert at the local theatre.
The music, although technically excellent, was still classical and without life, movement or fun! And i saw loads of clarinets but hell no saxes!! And all the audience that i could tell were either parents or governers.
Going onto college or university is not much different. You study either academic subjects or you study music - there is no middle ground. Yes there are always bands to play in, but they are simply hobbies, and never to interfere with the course you are there for. There is also no sponsorship that i read you have. And if there were sponsorship, it would certainly not be to aid anyone's sax playing.
The moral of my rant is that you are SO LUCKY!!! to have such an open minded and wonderful education system that allows and encourages jazz (or more specifically saxes) from such an early age. Please never never never take it for granted,what i wouldn't give to spend my school years again, in the USA, playing some darn good music and feeling as though i wasn't a geek!
Thanks for listening, i feel better now :)
Helen xx
West Sussex, which is in between London and Brighton.

Answer:
Hey! I just thought I'd let you know that it's not just limited to the UK. It happens in the States, too. It just depends on where you are!
I've been through a few school systems. To say the least, one or two of them were a bit frightening for musicians, unless you were playing guitar or drums. Orchestral / jazz music is simply not "cool" anymore to the younger generation (yeah, I am part of the younger generation). We just don't seem to get it. We like hard and heavy. Heavy metal. Music without meaning. Being in band now is much the same as you described it; the only friends I ever really had were others that were in band.
Now, as far as the limited musical selection, that is partly because the saxophone is (relatively) a new instrument. Instrumentation for it is still fairly new, and several "classics" may not have a saxophone part. I've run into a few. Try playing bari! There's an alto part, a tenor part, but no bari part! So what did I get stuck with? Of course, bassoon and tuba. *sigh*
In addition, when the saxophone is scored, it is often stuck as a double because it's unique voice is rarely thought of. I think most will agree that in concert settings, altos are stuck doubling french horns, tenors are stuck mirroring baritones, and baris are stuck reading a tuba or bassoon part! In marching band, it's the same except altos mirror mellophone (for obvious reasons...I hope).
I've seen a few schools here and there that don't even have a music program. At all. In the town I'm currently in, one of the high schools has a band of...I think 7 members. WOW! Talk about scary! I think it's one alto, one tuba, a snare drum, 2 or 3 trumpets, a trombone, and maybe a clarinet and flute. So yeah. Pretty frightening stuff!
It's not just the UK. Music is in decline all over the world. At least the music we're talking about.
*sigh*
Such a sad state of affairs...

Answer:
Yep - school music is crap!
However - I've now left school, and I'm going onto to do Music and Music Tech. AS- and A-Levels at 6th Form College... Should be good!
Actually - aaaarrrrggghhhh!! GCSE results tomorrow!

Answer:
It's all very hit and miss. When I was at primary school, music lessons comprised the whole class (about 40 kids) sitting round the piano fighting to get hold of the two tmbourines and one triangle. At grammar school, it was a matter of drawing clef signs and key signatures without any understanding of their meaning.
Fast forward nearly half a century and my children went to a county music centre, now a privately run Saturday morning community music centre (which I am proud to have established with a couple of others) with 300+ members and 15 tutors and 15 ensembles for all ages.
They exist in other areas apart from Lancaster (with one starting in Kendal next month), but I cannot speak for Sussex.

Answer:
My school isgood for music. It's a state school in England. We have a really well established, competition-winning bigband, good windband, choir, recorder group (:D) and me and 3 friends are setting up a sax quartet. Going on tour to Italy next July with the bigband and windband and we toured 2 years ago in Spain. We also have a recording studio and a load of tech stuff..don't really understand it all tho :?
In my county (B&NES) there, a symphonic windband, orchestra, brass band, clarinet ensemble, flute ensemble, choir and a load of junior stuff.
I guess it varies from school to school and area to area. :!:

Answer:
Originally Posted by Manek Actually - aaaarrrrggghhhh!! GCSE results tomorrow!
btw, Hope you did well...I got mine on the 24th too...I too am doing music next yr...not tech tho...way too many wires for my liking..

Answer:
40 years ago at my school the choice was to learn violin or violin. So I learned violin. But part of the attraction of popular music (whether rock or jazz or even, in my case at one stage, folk) was that it *wasn't* taught so you could do it whatever way you liked, without having to take exams and toe the line.
The bloke I sat next to in French became the bass player in a world-famous new-wave group. Another guy I knew from the next school had a Top 5 US hit in an AOR band, and John Renbourn from the same school went on to become a world-class acoustic guitarist. Jazz musos I met at University had the same kind of experience, and one of them is a regular at the Montreal Jazz Festival, whilst another writes film-scores.
I just wonder if that's what's given the UK music scene so much originality over the years? Maybe it's not all bad.

Answer:
Here in Lebanon, you play recorder in grades 2-about 5, and then you stop. If you're a metalhead, you'll pick up guitar or bass at age ~15, and pretend you're a musician till you're in your mid-20s, and then get a life and forget about it for a long long time. I was lucky to be able to go to an American school and get hooked on sax.

Answer:
Originally Posted by saxali_uk btw, Hope you did well...I got mine on the 24th too...I too am doing music next yr...not tech tho...way too many wires for my liking..
I got 2x A*, 5x A, 1x B and 2x C Grades... How about you??
As for music in schools - the "League Tables" have squeezed it out... Certainly out of Primary Schools and mostly out of High Schools too... Nowadays, a school is "good" if it can get children to understand the Quadratic Equation by the age of eight... Never mind the fact that they have NO basic arithmetic or writing skills and have a miserable time each day at school! Music is not an "academic" subject, and is therefore "unimportant" in the fecking League Tables...
:x

Answer:
I got
4 A*s, 2 As and 4.5 Bs (one B is being remarked tho...)
So all's good.
My primary school did NO music..except we had the coolest handbell group and played in the millenium dome 8-)

Answer:
Maybe it depends on where (or when) in the UK
I had recorder inflicted on me like everyone else, and then started on Clarinet at 11. By 13 My clarinet teacher (working through the school) suggested sax, and I played clarinet in the school orchestra and a local junior orchestra, and Alto sax for the wirral schools concert band, which was far from all clarinets, and played all sorts from movie music (Star Wars etc,) through Gershwin to Big Band Stuff. I enjoyed it, although I was out of my depth most of the time!
So there was at least back some good support for music in pre league table days in my corner of the UK

Answer:
Yeah, I imagine just if you want to learn Jazz you will have to come to the US. As the US is where the birth of jazz hapened. Im not saying you cant learn it in the UK. Im just saying you may want to think of college in the states. Jazz is basically what makes playing sax worth it.

Answer:
It really depends on where you go to school - both the individual school itself and the education authority. In the East of Surrey where we live, the provision is often very poor in the state sector, yet travel a few miles to Bromley in Kent, and they have a fantastic music centre. Many independent schools are much better - we have 500 individual music lessons per week at the school in Croydon where I teach, for 900 pupils, many of the teachers are also top playing professionals, and we have plenty of orchestras and ensembles. Don't overlook amateur bands locally, many of which have a programme to develop younsgters - especially the barss bands who will often lend instruments and provide coaching for free (OK its not a saxophone but....). The saxophone is always going to be a bit of a problem as it doesn't belong in an orchestra, so unless your school runs a big band, wind band or sax enemble, you could get sidelined. It's one of the most popular instruments to learn but few parents think about where their child might actually use it and then seem surpised when their kid is not in an orchestra.

Answer:
Singlereed is absolutely spot on - school and youth music education in the UK is not one single story - but thousands of different individual tales.
Sprog #2 plays flute and attended a school which was keen to use music - one day he forgot his flute, it happens - the teacher said "Go get one from the cupboard" - sprog really did not expect to find a muramatsu.....
Since then He's had the chance to play the Royal Albert Hall, The Stables - Tate Modern - Tour Spain.
But it all depends on the individual school, the county, and very often on individual teachers - especially so in primary schools where so much make-or-break work is done (or not done).
You might get lucky.

Answer:
Some schools here in the UK arnt as bad as people make it out to be, i was able to learn the sax at the age of 7 i was big enough to do it, and i didnt like the fact that people suggested that i should learn the clarinet first (which i sort of regret now). When i was young, in Year 3 or something, there were quite a few choices like violin and stuff.
The best thing where i live though is the area's youth music trust (Bromley kent) . It is the best, the serious, and non serious musicians (the ones who dont wana do music for a living) all go there to be put into various bands and some orchestras, theres a band and orchestra for anyone of any standard. It truly is a great place

Answer:
You know, there are a lot of schools in the US without decent music programs too. It's a matter of budget...in certain areas of the US, music isn't even offered as an extra-cirricular activity, let alone an actual class. The only people you hear about are the ones with strong music programs because they are the only ones who are going to post here. Now, it's gotten even worse because of the idiot George Bush backed "No Child Left Behind" Act, which forces schools to administer tests to the students to keep federal tax money. (Among other things. It's a really poorly thought out piece of legislation.) So, if the kids don't pass the tests (given in the "important" subjects), the schools get no money. Well, guess what, some districts in poorer areas who can't afford to pay decent teachers or be able to afford decent equipment and books, now have to make sure that their students can pass the same tests as the suburban richer districts. The money has to come from somewhere to be able to afford to pay, because they get less of their share of the federal pie, so guess what the first thing they cut is?
I'll give you a hint: it isn't math, and it certainly isn't sports. Music, theatre, and art classes are always the first to go because they are expensive to run and they don't matter on the "No Child Left Behind" tests.

Answer:
In every country in the world, there are spots with sad music programmes. In Australia, it's not too bad, pretty much every capital city has an ok jazz program at its University and high schools usually have a few big bands. Mine actaully has 3 and more of a jazz focus than a classical one, but there's another problem in Australia. Everyone is obsessed with sport, musician=nerd, no matter what sports you play, and it's a pretty anti-intellectual society really, so stuff that might take some brain effort to appreciate, like jazz, is discarded for Cold Chisel and other 80's-90's rock...
And hey, what about the NYJO, they are a fantastic big band, all made up of young british jazzers.

Answer:
I had an awesome Primary School teacher in the NW of England called Terry Roberts who each lunchtime for over 30 years held a school band rehersal and then for an hour after school on a Friday, the guy retired recently but still went back in and did the after school Friday slot. I reckon over 2000 kids had the opportunity to start playing due to Mr Roberts and his work....at Stanah it was the NORM to PLAY AN INSTRUMENT so many other places its the geeks that play the instruments....I think it is down to teaching good teachers will produce good music programmes but they also always need the backing of the headteacher, music is not a top goverment priority no matter what SPIN you look at

Answer:
I'd say that since about the mid-1980s there's been a rapid decline in the general acceptability of any profession that isn't perceived as a (really) good financial provider, with computer graphics being the only arts-based profession I can think of that isn’t thought of as needing a fallback plan.
Despite this, there are an increasing number of tertiary education providers offering jazz and popular music programmes catering to those that are willing to pay. User-pays tertiary education, which has always been the norm in the US, is new to the mainstream in the likes of the UK, Europe, and Australasia. And the one benefit that I can see of this commercial approach to education is that as long as there’s someone willing to pay, courses will be offered, irrespective of pervasive cutbacks in arts budgets, fewer music venues, declining devotees, etc.
To me, that’s the glaring paradox of increasing commercialism.
IMO, it’s also important to consider that outside of the US and Germany, even if you are fortunate to find employment in an orchestra, the salaries for all but a very few musicians are not liveable, and most have to teach private students to make ends meet. Whereas, in the US and Germany, the musicians in the top orchestras get good salaries. And, AFAICS, in the US, salaries are very good indeed in the top orchestras, and are still pretty attractive in the second- and even third-tier orchestras too. If you contrast that with those working in Britain’s leading orchestras, as an example, you’ll find a very different story.
As far as State children’s’ education is concerned, I think it really depends on the local community’s expectations, which I also perceive as often being cyclical. For example, there wasn’t much emphasis on arts or music, or much opportunity, in my day, but there was in the previous generation, and there seems to be a much greater diversity of subject offerings these days. Of course, it also depends on funding, and if money’s tight, music programmes are usually the first to get cut.
No matter what, AFAICS, most of those that really have a passion for playing music will find a way.