The 30 or so Key Stage 2 children taking part in a Saturday Singing Day at Hafren Junior School in Newtown, Powys, are clearly delighted to be there, despite competition from the town carnival, the annual Eisteddfod Proclamation and the local football team’s match against Bulgaria. Before the singing starts, Imelda Leah, their tutor, gets them to stand up and perform various stretches and funny noises to loosen their bodies and vocal chords.

“Shoulders up to your ears then drop. Blow down on the floor. Shake your feet and hands. Pull a tight face and then a wide face. Make slurpy chewing noises as if you’re eating sticky toffee, then the blowing out sound of a horse.”

The high-octane session begins at 10.30am. By 2.30 in the afternoon, the children are ready to perform a concert for their parents. It has been an intensive four hours for Leah and her fellow tutor, Chris Nelson, even with two short breaks and a lunch break. By the end of the session, the children have learnt ten new songs by heart, with actions, and can sing them with big smiles on their faces.

Leah, who works as vocal projects leader for Wigan as her day job, and Nelson spend much of their spare time with Sing for Pleasure, a charity that exists to encourage choral singing, especially among young people. Founded in 1964, the organisation runs singing days and weekends throughout the country for children and adults. “Singing is actually a statutory requirement - the QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) says there should be 15 minutes of singing in every music lesson,” Leah points out. “But I think many teachers feel that if they can’t play the piano then they can’t teach singing. But, actually, a piano can get in the way because you hide behind it and don’t make contact with the children.”

The Sing for Pleasure philosophy says that all you need to get children singing are fun songs they can respond to, and the ability to put them over. There are no books or song sheets - tutors teach the songs a line at a time by rote, with the help of actions and repetitions, but no accompaniment.

In Newport, Leah and Nelson start with a couple of “spoken” songs that combine rhythm, tone and pitch, but without melody. By this time the group are highly focused and enjoy discovering the different sounds they can produce.

The songs are simple, catchy and lively and include a nonsense song which allows them to improvise a verse, several rounds, including two traditional African songs, London’s Burning and Popocatepet (about a volcano), plus a spooky song, a sea-shanty and “Mexican Wave”, a new song written for this year’s Commonwealth Games.

“Each group is different and I usually don’t make the final decision about which songs I’m going to teach until I know how good they are and how easy they’ll be to control,” says Leah.

“All we’re trying to do is enable children to enjoy their voices and get them singing really well,” she says. “It’s meant to be a ‘treat’ and that’s how the children see it. But parents and teachers are always amazed by how much they’ve achieved.”

Sing For Pleasure also runs courses for conductors so that teachers can gain confidence to run school choirs. Twenty-four-year-old Helen Rigby, the music co-ordinator at St Thomas’s Primary School in Halliwell, Bolton, believes she wouldn’t have had the confidence to conduct without the benefit of attending a Sing for Pleasure conductors’ weekend.

“They give you basic techniques that stay with you for ever. You learn how to break a song up into manageable chunks and pattern tunes with your hands. The conducting style is very clear and easy to follow so children understand what you want from them. And the course is great fun because you work in small groups supporting each other and gaining confidence.”

The charity also runs Singing in the Primary Classroom, a specialist course for primary teachers, and residential weekends for children and their teachers.

If singing to your class yourself is out of the question - although Sing for Pleasure guarantees it won’t be after one of their courses - there are CDs to accompany the charity’s songbooks for teachers.

The repertoire includes echo songs, rounds, actions songs, slower songs and part-songs. “It’s a pity singing doesn’t happen in all schools,” says Leah, “because everyone has a voice and, unlike a musical instrument, it’s free!”

Sing for Pleasure

National Office, Nortonthorpe Mills, Wakefield Road, Scissett, Huddersfield HD8 9LA.TelFax: 0800 0185 164; Email: admin@singforpleasure.org.uk; Website: www.singforpleasure.org.ukCost of school-based or regional Singing Day: sometimes free or about pound;2 per child, depending on outside funding. Teachers’ residential weekends: pound;155 to pound;200 depending on accommodation.