Music
Intent
Our Music curriculum is designed to ensure every child at Bevington sees themselves as musical and develops a lifelong love of music. Music is not a luxury but an entitlement for all pupils, regardless of background. Rooted in our values of aspiration, respect, and perseverance, the curriculum reflects the diverse cultural heritage of our community and draws on musical traditions from around the world.
The curriculum is informed by the Model Music Curriculum (2021) and builds what Toyne (2021) describes as musical knowledge: learning how to make music, understanding musical practices with insight, and recognising how music enriches life. Learning is carefully sequenced so that pupils experience music through singing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing, with each unit developing procedural skills alongside cultural and historical understanding.
Across Key Stages 1 and 2, pupils gradually deepen their understanding of the dimensions of music—pulse, rhythm, pitch, timbre, texture, structure, dynamics, and harmony—by encountering them in varied and purposeful contexts. For example:
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In Key Stage 1, children explore beat and rhythm through marching music and samba, and pitch through Carnival of the Animals. They begin to represent sounds symbolically and compose simple pieces such as soundscapes and motifs.
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In Lower Key Stage 2, pupils build on this foundation by performing sea shanties, jazz standards like Take the ‘A’ Train, and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. They begin to improvise using rhythmic notation, create layered textures, and explore major and minor tonalities.
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By Upper Key Stage 2, pupils move into more complex genres and social contexts: exploring Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, West African drumming, and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. They study the 12-bar blues and protest songs, linking musical form with historical and cultural movements such as the Civil Rights era and wartime solidarity.
Every unit follows a clear structure: pupils encounter repertoire through active listening, investigate its key musical features, practise through composition and improvisation, perform their own and others’ work, and evaluate outcomes. Singing underpins this journey, with a rich repertoire that revisits and develops across year groups to build confidence and skill.
Our pupils are exposed to music from six centuries and across the globe—from Indian ragas and Indonesian gamelan to jazz, folk, blues, and minimalism. Music also connects with the wider curriculum: Year 3 link Nigerian drumming with African art, Year 5 explore protest songs alongside human rights, and Year 6 consider WWII through songs of resilience.
Above all, our intent is that every child, regardless of their starting point, gains a rich, practical, and inclusive musical education that fosters creativity, collaboration, and confidence—empowering them to carry a love of music throughout their lives.
Implementation
We follow the Primary Knowledge Curriculum (PKC) for Music, which provides a coherent, spiral curriculum that builds progressively across five interwoven strands:
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Performing
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Listening and evaluating
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Creating sound
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Improvising and composing
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Notation
Music is taught weekly by class teachers, with units carefully sequenced so that pupils revisit and deepen their understanding of the dimensions of music — pulse, rhythm, pitch, timbre, texture, structure, dynamics and harmony. Each unit has a clear musical focus, and learning is deliberately structured to ensure that knowledge gained through experience is built upon over time. For example, children march to understand pulse in Year 1, use notation to perform Pachelbel’s Canon in Year 3, explore improvisation through jazz in Year 4’s Take the ‘A’ Train, and by Year 6 compose and perform protest songs linking music with social justice.
Every lesson follows a familiar structure: warming up through singing and movement, recalling prior learning, listening and responding to repertoire, engaging in creative practice through composing, improvising or performing, and finally evaluating outcomes. This consistent approach supports progression, builds technical skill, and gives children confidence in expressing their own musical intentions.
Our curriculum is enriched by:
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Performance opportunities, from assemblies and in-class sharing to large-scale events such as the Winter Concert and Summer Arts Festival. Each unit culminates in performance and peer evaluation, embedding confidence and expression.
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Cross-curricular links, such as Year 3’s study of Nigerian drumming alongside African art, Year 5’s Blues unit connecting to PSHE themes of resilience and social justice, and Year 6’s World War II songs supporting their History topic.
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Local engagement, including workshops with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, trips to the Royal Albert Hall, and opportunities to experience live music in the community.
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Practical accessibility, with untuned percussion introduced in EYFS and KS1, progression to tuned percussion, glockenspiels and recorders in LKS2, and the use of keyboards, digital tools and more complex ensemble work in UKS2.
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Cultural celebration, with repertoire spanning six centuries and traditions from across the globe: Indian ragas, Indonesian gamelan, African-American spirituals, samba, Blues, English folk songs, Baroque and Romantic works, and 20th century minimalism.
Music is timetabled weekly in every year group. Singing runs as a continuous thread through the curriculum, with songs revisited across year groups to build fluency, confidence and expression. By Year 6, pupils compose and perform their own Leavers’ Song, demonstrating their secure understanding across the key dimensions of music and the confidence to share their creativity with an audience.
Impact
We assess the impact of our Music curriculum through ongoing formative assessment, observation of practical music-making, and the use of unit knowledge organisers to track secure understanding of key vocabulary, concepts and skills. In line with the PKC structure, each lesson revisits prior learning, introduces a focused musical element, and builds towards opportunities for creative practice and performance. Teachers assess through questioning, peer and self-evaluation, and by observing how pupils apply knowledge in practical contexts.
Each unit follows the PKC cycle of listening, creating, performing and evaluating, and this structure itself provides assessment opportunities at every stage. The final lesson of every unit emphasises rehearsal, performance and reflection, allowing pupils to demonstrate cumulative knowledge and skill development in a summative context.
By the end of Year 6, pupils will:
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Perform, compose and listen with confidence, drawing on a broad and varied repertoire.
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Understand how music is created, structured and notated, including pulse, rhythm, pitch, texture, dynamics and harmony.
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Recognise and appreciate a wide range of styles, genres and traditions, including classical, folk, jazz, blues, popular music and non-Western traditions such as Indian classical music and gamelan.
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Reflect critically on their own performances and respond thoughtfully to the music of others.
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Have met or exceeded the end of Key Stage expectations set out in the National Curriculum for Music.
Pupils leave Bevington as confident, expressive young musicians with the creativity, cultural literacy and enthusiasm to participate in musical life at secondary school and beyond.