Prime Highlights:

The music is embedded in almost all subjects at Shireland CBSO Academy, with various music groups, including orchestras, choirs, and jazz ensembles.

This is the first state school to collaborate with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) that gives students access to professional musicians regularly.

Key Background:

Shireland CBSO Academy, in West Bromwich, is making a change in school education by integrating music into nearly every subject that is taught to students. Being the first affiliated state school in the UK with a professional orchestra, this school was started in 2023. In this school, music is all around the subjects, and all students are considered part of this musical hub.

The school’s corridors are filled each morning with a rainbow of groups, including steel pans, strings, jazz orchestras, and wind bands. “It’s all part of our musical culture, where children come to school with instruments in hand,” says Principal David Green. With the aid of the Black Country Music Hub, the school will offer free access to an instrument and weekly tuition to every student.

The mission of the Shireland school is teaching music to its students where it ensures that whatever the background and income level of the students, they have equal chances of accessing music opportunities. The student regularly participates in concerts, ensemble classes, and even sessions with CBSO musicians. The model of the school is making music education accessible, especially since 38% of the pupils receive free school meals within a region considered deprived.

Shireland is hope, despite general decline in the nation’s overall music education as witnessed in significantly decreased GCSE and A level entries. Here, Matt Griffiths, of Youths Music believes that there might be a looming imbalance in who has access to music, calling out that there is a very real danger in the future that music will be an elitist activity and Shireland is proving to be opposite. Focusing on diversity-from Western classical instruments to world music, the academy is offering a rich musical education. Shireland CBSO Academy, at its capacity of 900 students, hopes its integrated model will become a transformational example for schools across the country.