Assessing a Creative Process

The current lead Ofsted HMI for Music, Robin Hammerton writes: "Firstly, pupils’ progress in creating and understanding music is not straightforward or linear..."

"There are many facets to the subject. Some pupils will excel in some aspects and not others. One person’s creativity is, thankfully, different from another’s. Therefore, using levels and sub levels to try to prove pupils’ ongoing progress in music doesn’t work, as Ofsted has pointed out many times. It is usually superficial, time wasting and neither reliable nor valid. It is most certainly not any kind of ‘Ofsted requirement’. To be absolutely clear, our inspectors do not expect to see it. There are no, and never were, sub levels in music anyway, for good reason." Music in schools: where words finish, music begins: 16th June 2014