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Partnership with Somerset SCITT
The success of our Singing School Research Project brought home to us the importance of empowering and upskilling teachers in using music. Along with our reach into the primary sector (we have a relationship with 19,000 primary schools in the UK alone) this led to our partnering with Somerset SCITT to bring the lessons we had learned to teachers at the very start of their careers.
Meet The Education Team
The Out of the Ark Education Team believe that music has the power to transform a school and that every teacher can and should feel inspired to integrate music and singing into their daily classroom practice.
ANTONY COPUS
Head of Education Development
Antony studied at the Royal Academy of Music and enjoyed a successful career performing and recording with most of the major UK orchestras, including the London Symphony, BBC Symphony and Royal Philharmonic. He is an experienced teacher and spent several years as Director of Music at an independent school. He also composes music, much of it for Out of the Ark!
NIKKI HEWSON
Education Development Editor
Nikki is an experienced teacher having worked in primary education for over twenty years. She has been a primary teacher, advanced skills teacher, NQT mentor and Teaching and Learning Manager for the music service. Nikki is an experienced teacher educator and has delivered ITT for the SCITT, PGCE and School Direct programmes in Somerset for many years. Nikki is also a songwriter for Out of the Ark.
PETER TAYLOR
Education Development Editor
Pete is an experienced choral director who has worked with adult and children’s choirs in South Yorkshire and also regularly performs as a baritone soloist. He was the Singing Project Coordinator and Vocal Music Leader for Sheffield Music Hub. In all areas of his professional life Pete is committed to promoting safe singing technique, and believes a sound understanding of the physiology of the voice is key to this.
Partnership with Somerset SCITT
In Autumn 2017, our Singing School Workshop led to a research collaboration with Professor Susan Hallam, MBE. The project measured the impact that fully integrating singing into the school curriculum could have on a range of measures, including wellbeing, social inclusion, pupil confidence and teacher confidence, as well as academic attainment across the general and music curriculums. The study extended to 24 schools in Milton Keynes and Sheffield, involving 300 teachers and nearly 9,000 children.
Workshops
In Autumn 2015, we recruited singing and music specialists to join our workshop team.
Our Workshop programme includes:
Where can a song take you?
Making songs a springboard for fun, fresh and imaginative learning journeys, relevant to any subject
 
A Singing School Is A Successful School
How music and singing can improve literacy and numeracy, influence mood/attention and promote wellbeing and team spirit across a whole-school setting
 
Winning Warm-Ups
Looking after the health of young voices
Fabulous Phonics
Supporting the teaching of phonics and other key literacy skills such as speech processing, reading comprehension, recall of verbal information and creative writing
 
Marvellous Maths
The important place music has in enhancing the teaching and learning of maths, from internalization of counting processes to spatial reasoning
 
SEND
How music supports work in the SEND classroom, developing sensory approaches that help to promote inclusion for SEND pupils