Mr and Mrs K's New Journey to a Debt Free Life.

gallygirl

Well, you have a month to prepare for it so a few choices:

• Sit down and write out a plan of action, or
• Decide to take January off. Spend lots of time on here and get nagged into selling more pens .

Joking apart, you have a healthy business account for exactly this reason - well done on that score :T.

AlexLK

The business (any business) has it's ups and downs. So long as there are more ups than downs, I'm happy. No need to worry about it at the moment.

Currently, I'm reading an article about Music in higher education, it's rather interesting to see just how undervalued the subject is. Yet I never got that impression through my school or university days.

ETA: Just finished reading it and it has got me thinking, there was a comment that alluded to Music (in HE) being the preserve of those from specialist music schools (Chethams and the like) and those from private education. This was quite true even years ago. Of course, the discussion goes on to talk about "widening access". Personally I don't see how they can for even a first study pianist will have had many, many hours of private tuition to reach a standard of anywhere near grade 8. Play an orchestral instrument and that's said instrument plus piano lessons. Want to be ahead of the game, there's theory tuition to factor in too.

Somehow, I can't imagine your average state school parent paying for all that.

LannieDuck

I got through to grade 7 flute and grade 5 theory of music (distinction!) in a state school. I'm pretty sure we got subsidised music lessons at junior school, and for the first three years of secondary school. After that I think they stopped the funding and my parents paid for the last two years of lessons (the theory was all privately funded).

Not sure what subsidies are around any more.

AlexLK

LannieDuck wrote: »

I got through to grade 7 flute and grade 5 theory of music (distinction!) in a state school. I'm pretty sure we got subsidised music lessons at junior school, and for the first three years of secondary school. After that I think they stopped the funding and my parents paid for the last two years of lessons (the theory was all privately funded).

Not sure what subsidies are around any more.

Thank you for the insight. So far as I'm aware there are no subsidies at my niece's school and there are very few musicians there; niece knows of herself who plays piano, 2 girls who plays flute or clarinet and one boy in the last year who plays cello. This is a primary school. Not sure how they do ECs.

PippiShortsock

If you're not familiar with El Sistema in Venezuela you might find it interesting to read up on it and the attempts to replicate it on a smaller scale in Scotland - it's very inspirational! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Sistema

I'm another one funded by parents and my local Council to get to grade 8 flute and grade 7 piano despite getting my main education through a state school.

cosette

AlexLK wrote: »

ETA: Just finished reading it and it has got me thinking, there was a comment that alluded to Music (in HE) being the preserve of those from specialist music schools (Chethams and the like) and those from private education. This was quite true even years ago. Of course, the discussion goes on to talk about "widening access". Personally I don't see how they can for even a first study pianist will have had many, many hours of private tuition to reach a standard of anywhere near grade 8. Play an orchestral instrument and that's said instrument plus piano lessons. Want to be ahead of the game, there's theory tuition to factor in too.

Somehow, I can't imagine your average state school parent paying for all that.

De-lurking to comment on this. Sadly, you are only too right. I now have two children at different conservatoires and it has almost crippled us to get them there. Our children went to a pretty good state school but it's music department is very poor indeed, with the exception of a few very inspirational instrument teachers (not employed by the school, they just teach there).

I hate to think how many thousands of pounds we spent over the years on instruments, tuition, orchestra fees, courses etc. We got a little help from the government as part of their Centres for Advanced Training Scheme but we bore the brunt. In the end we had to remortgage to buy my daughter the new instrument she desperately needed - I'm just thankful she doesn't play bassoon because it would have been a no-go.

Many a time we really, or almost really, wished we'd never embarked on any of it. Now of course it seems almost worth it. Still, their world is dominated by people with money. At my daughter's conservatoire, almost everyone she meets is rich or went to a specialist music school, or both. Seriously. Son's conservatoire is slighly more varied, but not much. This means that few people there understand money problems, even daughter's tutors and head of department struggle to understand why she probably won't do a postgrad. It's just the assumption.

As part of the 'widening access' scheme, daughter has been teaching in state schools - however the schools her college have links with are all in very well-to-do areas, and she has been teaching primary school pupils who play two or even three instruments. So not exactly disadvantaged. She is very disillusioned with that side of things.

I don't know what the answer is, like you say music education has to start so very early - my children were very very late starters at 11 and 10 respectively and struggled because of this, later on they were mixing with children who had their grade 8 by the age of 11.

Sorry to hijack your thread (I love reading it!), but this is something I am passionate about.

AlexLK

Just to clarify, I was not trying to be rude, merely inquisitive following reading an article this morning (more focused on HE than school level). However, I did think it raised an interesting point about cost and perceived impressions of whom music graduates (as in classically based music degrees) are.

I'm interested in perhaps taking this music teaching a little more seriously than a couple of pocket money pupils and not knowing even what they are taught about music within state schools (well, recently ANY school) doesn't exactly help when I have pupils from local schools and it's not as if I can turn up to their schools and say "well, then what DO you teach little Johnny in Music?" :rotfl:

PippiShortsock: Not familiar but will have a look.

AlexLK

cosette wrote: »

De-lurking to comment on this. Sadly, you are only too right. I now have two children at different conservatoires and it has almost crippled us to get them there. Our children went to a pretty good state school but it's music department is very poor indeed, with the exception of a few very inspirational instrument teachers (not employed by the school, they just teach there).

I hate to think how many thousands of pounds we spent over the years on instruments, tuition, orchestra fees, courses etc. We got a little help from the government as part of their Centres for Advanced Training Scheme but we bore the brunt. In the end we had to remortgage to buy my daughter the new instrument she desperately needed - I'm just thankful she doesn't play bassoon because it would have been a no-go.

Many a time we really, or almost really, wished we'd never embarked on any of it. Now of course it seems almost worth it. Still, their world is dominated by people with money. At my daughter's conservatoire, almost everyone she meets is rich or went to a specialist music school, or both. Seriously. Son's conservatoire is slighly more varied, but not much. This means that few people there understand money problems, even daughter's tutors and head of department struggle to understand why she probably won't do a postgrad. It's just the assumption.

As part of the 'widening access' scheme, daughter has been teaching in state schools - however the schools her college have links with are all in very well-to-do areas, and she has been teaching primary school pupils who play two or even three instruments. So not exactly disadvantaged. She is very disillusioned with that side of things.

I don't know what the answer is, like you say music education has to start so very early - my children were very very late starters at 11 and 10 respectively and struggled because of this, later on they were mixing with children who had their grade 8 by the age of 11.

Sorry to hijack your thread (I love reading it!), but this is something I am passionate about.

Please don't be sorry to "hi-jack" my thread! It's very interesting

Can't help but be impressed by two of your children at conservatoires especially starting so late. Confession time: I knew I wasn't a strong enough performer to get a conservatoire place, so went down the academic route yet failed to get into Cambridge.

My son likes playing about on the piano and knows how to find all the notes and I started fairly early (5 for violin), which wasn't unusual at my school. I was quite shocked to find hardly anyone seems to play an instrument at niece's school.

Iwillsucceed_2

Hello Alex!
How are you? Very interesting you are talking about music in HE, to be honest I think a lot of state schools (non private) are poorly implemented in their music department!
My son loves playing the piano and guitar, this year we bought him a mini grand piano and he is the happiest boy! Neither my husband or I are interested him achieving excellence in music, we bought it because he enjoys it. We pay his piano teacher £30 for a 50 mints session each week! We think is not bad, he is very good, initially he mentioned whether he was practicing yo be graded? We did not pay attention .. We only asked him to teach my son what my don asked to learn. As a result he plas all sons by the Queen ha ha sky fall etc etc but he only plays what he wants to learn..
On Sunday, we invited some friends for dinner, and she asked whether he was being graded, so I wondered how all this grading works and what are the benefits of it? Does it matter being graded if he is not going to be a pianist?

Regards and thank you in advance!
X

AlexLK

Tuesday 3rd December, 2013.
Day 94.

Dear Diary,

Today has been generally rather nice, a crisp winter's morning spent with my happy and lively young son who is very proud to have moved up into the new class at nursery. This time last week I was really not feeling well and yet today I am grateful for what I do have. Hopefully, these good days will start becoming more the norm, leaving the dark ones a thing of the past.

I have had news from the exam candidates - they all passed, some with distinction. Music wise I have spoken to my current pupils about raising my hourly charge to £30.00 which is more inline with those who have similar qualifications, fortunately none have refused. Furthermore, I am considering having a recruitment drive come the new year as I am enjoying the work and it bring a regular income that my other business does not.

Unfortunately, I have not got anything done towards the debts today but I do have some watchers on my eBay listings.

Summary:
-£5.85 Groceries.
-£5.00 Christmas Cards.

Yours Faithfully,
Alex.