For one week at the beginning of July the South Bank Centre in London is home to an extravaganza of schools’ music. The Music for Youth National Festival, sponsored by, among others, The TES, offers schools and colleges the opportunity to participate in workshops and performances that cover the spectrum of musical styles. Reggae, jazz, punk, classical and rock genres are - with the direction of extremely supportive tutors - explored by talented and enthusiastic young musicians.

Friday was Big Band day when the 19 jazz and swing bands that had come through the regional heats took to the stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Among those performing was the Great Sankey High School Swing Band from Warrington, Cheshire, led by musical director and head of music Margaret Harwood. The 26-piece band acquitted itself well, opening with a tightly arranged (and choreographed) version of Lalo Schifrin’s Mission Impossible theme and finishing with the classic rhythm and blues piece Louie, Louie. Along with the other finalists, the swing band captivated a lively audience, with music that ranged from Duke Ellington to modern-day standards from Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock.

“It don’t mean a thing,” the Duke declared, “if it ain’t got that swing,” but in today’s highly prescribed education system it don’t mean much either, if it ain’t related to the curriculum. How to reconcile these specific demands with a style of music that is often, and perhaps wrongly, perceived as unrestrained, totally spontaneous and anti-authoritarian?

Without too much difficulty, is the simple answer. “Jazz, swing and blues allow teachers to explore music which is rich in form and instrumentation, and steeped in history and yet, at the same time, is a medium which most pupils find has instant appeal,” says Margaret Harwood, who formed the swing band when she joined the staff of Great Sankey High School in 1996. There was already a successful concert band which played a symphonic wind repertoire that demanded excellent reading skills and highly disciplined playing. The swing band “offers students the opportunity to improvise and to play music which allows them to be creative, and to a certain extent, take ownership of the music”. It was also felt that the swing band would incorporate more instrumentalists into the department and appeal to a broader spectrum of pupils.

The school now runs three feeder bands: beginner band for complete beginners; a junior band for those training to join the concert band, and a junior jazz band for jazz neophytes. Hour-long rehearsals take place each school-day evening, but extra sessions are arranged at the weekend to help students reach the appropriate standard for competitions.

There’s been quite a rapprochement between academia and jazz. Many UK music colleges have established chairs of jazz studies or jazz piano, and exam boards are reflecting this growing acceptance in their syllabuses. Margaret Harwood points out that The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, in consultation with Charlie Beale, professor of jazz piano at the Royal College of Music, “provide excellent jazz courses”.

The music department at Great Sankey consists of three full-time and 10 peripatetic teachers and caters for more than 260 students, with tuition for woodwind, brass, pianokeyboard, voice, percussion kit and guitar. Additionally, and increasingly, professional jazz musicians are being employed and this has proved particularly helpful in piano and saxophone studies.

Margaret Harwood believes all students “should be able to perform within an ensemble when playing a simple 12-bar blues”. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be able to solo confidently over a 12-bar chord sequence (see box, right), rather that they should be offered a range of appropriate musical activities: repeated bass line work; rhythmic chordal work; the chance to improvise on the melody, adding a vocal line and percussion accompaniment.

ICT is also used extensively at Great Sankey. Two teaching classrooms are equipped with enough keyboards for a class of 30 (two pupils sharing) and the third room, which “has revolutionised our teaching strategies over the past two years”, houses 15 computers that run Sibelius, EMagic, Logic Platinum and Auralia. From the beginning of this term they also include Sonic Foundry Acid and Band-in-a-Box. The department has also developed its own compositional software, written by deputy head of music Andrew Jones. Rhythm Rave is a set of dance rhythms from four genres which includes pre-set bass and accompaniment lines based on a simple three-chord format (for example, 12-bar blues). Students choose their compositional style from the rhythm dictionary and are given an instant accompaniment to “kick-start” the composition.

Far from being mutually exclusive, jazz and formal learning are increasingly interdependent. The great tradition of school jazz bands in America, supported at tertiary level by the likes of Berklee College of Music, has produced some of that country’s finest musicians.

With many examination boards now recognising the importance of non-classical music and with a national curriculum that emphasises the importance of “a range of live and recorded music from different times and cultures including... folk, jazz and popular genres” it has become easier for music teachers to incorporate the particular skills of the jazz genre into the curriculum. Last year at Great Sankey, 12 of 27 pupils entered for GCSE music gained grades of either A* or A. This “can be put down to excellent performance exams and composition portfolios,” says Margaret Harwood. “If students have substantial performance experience throughout the course many of the questions in the less predictable listening paper will be easy.”

Far easier than performing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in front of a highly partisan and vociferous audience of their peers. That, Harwood believes, is an experience which “gives pupils and their parents a feeling of achievement that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”

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TEACHING STRATEGIES

Introduce students to a variety of tracks typifying the blues. Comment on the lyrics and explain how the music fits into society at that time. The blues generates a host of cross-curricular links with subjects such as history (topics might include social history and slavery), geography (location of the blues, migration, work experiences, urban and rural blues) and English (the development of lyrical style and poetic expression, such as “bright lights, big city”.) Depending on age group, the rest of the lesson could be spent introducing the 12-bar blues structure that underpins the genre. If the teacher is a reasonable pianist it should be possible to improvise a simple melody over the chord structure. It is up to the teacher to set realistic, but challenging targets for each group. Possibilities could include:

* Students work in pairs to create their own 12-bar blues. If possible, record the finished product.

* Work as a whole class, dividing students into separate parts according to ability. Those who find the work challenging might play the bass line, while those with more skills can improvise melodies or sing lyrics. (All instruments can be used in this session.)

* Individually, using pre-set backings on keyboards or ICT software, improvise melodies using a 12-bar sequence. (Acid V2 can be used in this exercise as it is excellent for creating extended sound loops. The software also contains a library of pre-recorded loops.)