Children in one of the most deprived areas of Liverpool are reaping the benefits of the RLPO’s In Harmony project, as Laura Davis reports

“UNLESS they watched X Factor and heard Carmina Burana as the judges walk out on stage” most of the children at Faith Primary School, in West Everton, would have been unfamiliar with classical music.

Words spoken by Peter Garden, the Liverpool Philharmonic’s director of learning, who over the past two years has witnessed a dramatic turnaround in one of the city’s most deprived areas.

Under the RLPO’s In Harmony scheme, every pupil at the school is learning to play a musical instrument, with 4¼ hours of dedicated music lessons built into the core curriculum every week. The teachers are also being taught to play, and some parents have expressed an interest.

An assessment of the project so far has found its benefits stretch beyond music lessons, with “significant improvement” shown in all three areas of the curriculum – reading, writing and numeracy – as well as positive impacts on behaviour, attitude and interest in learning.

Faith Primary School’s Ofsted reports have improved, with inspectors concluding In Harmony is “reaping exceptional rewards, especially how it engages pupils in their learning and motivates them”.

The next stage is to look at the impact on the children’s health. Figures so far suggest a very slight rise in GP visits and a slight decrease in prescriptions written, although it is too early to tell whether this is an accurate trend.

“We all started learning the instruments together so, in some cases, and certainly in my case, the children are actually more advanced than the adults and volunteer to help them,” says headteacher Sister Moira Meeghan, who has taken up the double bass.

“We were getting ready for a concert and I was struggling with one piece and one of the children said to me ‘If you come and find me at dinnertime we can have a practice together and I’ll help you’.

“Children are usually in a situation were the adults know more, but this has enabled them to see that adults learn, too.”