When I began revisiting the music curriculum I had developed during my early teaching career, I initially imagined that I might update the original scheme of work. It had been written for a residential school for autistic children and young people aged from three to eighteen, and was organised as a four-year cycle extending across the school. Musical ideas such as sound, duration, pulse, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics and timbre returned at different stages, alongside singing, movement, instruments, notation, technology, composition and ensemble performance. Progression was understood through increasing breadth, challenge, depth and quality, with an emphasis upon revisiting familiar ideas rather than continually replacing them with new activities.

Once I began examining it more closely, however, I realised that the part I most wanted to develop was not the collection of activities. Some of those activities belonged very clearly to the educational context in which they had been written. The repertoire, technology, curriculum language and wider understanding of autism and disability had all changed. What remained important was the thinking beneath the scheme: how a musical idea could be made available to pupils whose ways of listening, communicating, moving or responding did not fit the assumptions built into conventional music teaching, and how that first point of access might develop into a continuing musical education.

That became the starting point for Music for Every Learner: Inclusive Music Teaching and Curriculum Design for Children and Young People with SEND. The book is not a rewritten scheme of work, and it is not a handbook of activities to reproduce lesson by lesson. It is an attempt to examine what we are really asking learners to understand when we teach music, how that understanding can be separated from one expected form of response, and what an inclusive music curriculum needs to preserve if access is to lead towards genuine musical development.

Beginning with music rather than diagnosis

There is an understandable tendency, when thinking about SEND, to begin with the learner’s diagnosis or identified area of need. Teachers may look for strategies for autistic pupils, children with physical disabilities, learners who use AAC or pupils with sensory impairments. That information can be useful, particularly when it draws attention to possible barriers within the lesson. It cannot, however, tell us how an individual learner will experience music.

Two autistic pupils may have almost opposite relationships with repetition, live sound, singing or ensemble work. A learner with limited physical movement may possess highly developed rhythmic or structural understanding. A pupil who finds spoken instructions difficult may remember a complete piece of music after very little exposure. Diagnosis can help us consider where access might require attention, but it cannot determine which musical ideas a learner will understand, which sounds they will value or how far their musicianship might develop.

The book is therefore organised primarily around music rather than categories of need. Its central chapters explore sound and silence, timbre, duration, pulse, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, pitch, melody, texture and structure. Later chapters consider how these areas come together through listening, singing, movement, instruments, notation, improvisation, composition, technology, ensemble work and performance. Questions of communication, sensory access, movement, memory and adult support remain present throughout, but they are considered in relation to the musical idea being taught.

This changes the direction of the enquiry. Instead of beginning by asking which activity might be suitable for a particular category of pupil, the teacher can ask what the learner is being invited to notice, remember, control or decide. The response method can then change without allowing the musical purpose to disappear.

Separating the musical idea from the expected action

Many familiar music activities contain several demands at once. A pupil who is asked to clap a pulse must hear or feel the recurring beat, predict when the next beat will occur, organise a repeated physical movement, coordinate both hands, regulate the force of the action and remain synchronised with other people. When the clapping is inaccurate, it is easy to conclude that the learner has not understood pulse. The difficulty may instead lie within motor planning, coordination, processing speed or the particular action chosen to demonstrate the idea.

The same problem appears elsewhere. Pitch understanding may be assessed through singing, rhythm through body percussion, listening through stillness, melodic memory through instrumental performance and structural awareness through following a visual score. Each of these can be a valuable musical activity, but none provides a transparent view of understanding. The conventional response may make the musical knowledge more difficult to see.

One of the central distinctions within Music for Every Learner is therefore between the musical idea and the action ordinarily used to demonstrate it. Pulse is a recurring temporal framework; clapping is one way of responding to it. Pitch concerns relationships between sounds; accurate vocal production is one possible expression of those relationships. A learner may recognise that a melody rises without being able to reproduce it vocally, or anticipate the return of a section without being able to track a conventional score. A pupil may understand duration through choosing when another musician should stop, rather than by physically sustaining and damping a sound independently.

This is not an argument for removing technical development. Instrumental control, singing, movement and notation all form important parts of musical education. It is an argument for greater precision. Before deciding that a learner has not understood, we need to consider whether the difficulty belongs to the musical idea itself or to the means through which we have asked the learner to reveal it.

Once these demands are separated, adaptation can preserve the substance of the curriculum. The learner is not given an unrelated substitute activity merely because one conventional response is inaccessible. They remain within the same musical field, but reach it through another combination of listening, movement, choice, symbols, technology, direction or supported performance.

Participation is not the same as musical agency

Inclusive music lessons can look convincing from the outside. Everyone may be seated within the group, holding an instrument and producing sound. Pupils may appear engaged, adults may be supportive and the complete performance may be lively and enjoyable. These things have value, but they do not necessarily tell us how much influence an individual learner has over what is happening.

A pupil may play continuously because no clear beginning or ending has been established. Their hand may be guided through the action by an adult. They may receive a cue immediately before every entry, leaving no opportunity to anticipate or remember it. They may be offered a choice between instruments while the structure, timing, expressive character and development of the music remain controlled elsewhere. The activity is shared, but the musical decisions are not.

This distinction between presence and agency became increasingly important as the book developed. Musical participation involves more than producing sound at the same time as other people. It may involve noticing when a sound changes, waiting through a silence, anticipating an entry, selecting between alternatives, repeating an idea deliberately, rejecting a suggestion, altering how something is played or deciding what should happen next. A single sound placed intentionally within a musical structure may carry greater meaning and responsibility than a long period of undirected playing.

Agency also includes the possibility of stopping. In educational contexts, choice is often understood as selecting from the options adults provide. A learner’s refusal, hesitation or attempt to end an activity may be interpreted as disengagement rather than communication. Within music, however, stopping, withholding, rejecting and revising are genuine musical acts. Silence can shape a phrase; a sound can be removed from a texture; a performer can decide that a section should end. Consent also matters in relation to singing, touch, physical support, loud sound, public performance and recording. Participation becomes more meaningful when the learner has some control over its limits as well as its content.

The question running through the book is therefore not simply whether the learner has taken part. It is whether something within the music has changed because of what that learner noticed, intended or decided.

When support reveals musicianship – and when it conceals it

Children and young people may need substantial support in order to participate in music. An adult may stabilise an instrument, present symbols, operate equipment, interpret a response, provide physical assistance or perform sounds selected by the learner. Technology may hold a pulse, repeat a loop, correct timing or allow a composition to be constructed outside real time. None of this makes the resulting music less valid. Independence does not mean the absence of support.

It does, however, require us to describe the location of control accurately. If an adult chooses the instrument, positions the learner’s hand, decides when the movement begins and determines when it ends, the learner may experience the sound without yet controlling it. If a pupil selects a stored loop but the software fixes its duration, tempo and repetition, their choice is real, although it does not extend to every aspect of the outcome. If a learner uses eye-gaze to arrange recorded material while another person performs the final work, their authorship may lie within selection and structure rather than physical execution.

This precision is particularly important when assessing progress. Broad descriptions such as “participated with support” reveal very little about what the pupil has learned. The support may have enabled the learner to demonstrate a decision that could not otherwise be expressed, or it may have supplied the decision itself. Those are very different relationships.

The book repeatedly returns to this question across instruments, AAC, composition, technology, ensembles and performance. Support should widen the learner’s sphere of influence. Where possible, it should create space for anticipation, memory, choice, expressive control and revision rather than filling every silence before the learner has had time to act. The aim is not to remove necessary support, but to understand what it is doing and to ensure that the resulting musical achievement is attributed honestly.

This feels especially timely as accessible music technology becomes more powerful. Digital systems can produce complex and highly polished outcomes through very small actions. That can transform access, particularly for learners who cannot perform music through conventional physical methods. It can also make it difficult to see which aspects of the music have been controlled by the learner, programmed in advance or automated by the software. The quality of the output cannot, by itself, answer the question of authorship.

Protecting the breadth of the music curriculum

One of the reasons I wanted to return to the original scheme was that teaching across such a wide age range had made curricular narrowing particularly visible. An activity that provides an appropriate early encounter with sound can become limiting if it remains unchanged throughout childhood and adolescence. Familiar songs, simple percussion, sensory exploration and opportunities to express preference may all provide valuable access. They cannot constitute the whole of a learner’s musical education.

The risk is not always obvious because the pupil may continue to appear engaged. An adolescent can take part successfully in an activity that was originally designed for much younger children, particularly when the routine is familiar and the adults know how to support it. Success within the activity can conceal the absence of development beyond it. The learner continues to participate, but the curriculum does not expand.

A broad music curriculum should include opportunities to encounter and shape melody, rhythm, tonal organisation, texture, structure, notation, technology, composition, repertoire, ensemble relationships and performance. It should allow learners to listen critically, exercise preference, refine ideas, take different roles and develop increasing responsibility. These opportunities may need to be approached through very different routes, and not every learner will develop in the same areas or towards the same outcomes. The breadth of the subject should remain available.

This is where the distinction between accessibility and simplification becomes important. An accessible curriculum may reduce visual information, change an instrument, slow the presentation of choices or allow a learner to direct another musician. It does not have to reduce music to sound-making without structure or participation without progression. A simple musical part can carry significant responsibility. One sustained sound may define harmony, mark a transition or bring an ensemble to an end. Its musical importance depends upon its function and the learner’s relationship with it, rather than the number of notes it contains.

The book therefore argues for subject entitlement. Children and young people with SEND should not receive a separate version of music made up only of those activities that are easiest to organise or most visibly inclusive. They need routes into the same broad domain of musical knowledge, creativity and cultural participation.

Progression as an expanding relationship with music

The original scheme returned to key musical ideas across different ages and stages. Sound exploration developed towards more deliberate control and descriptive use. Repeated actions developed towards pulse, rhythm and ostinato. Pitch contrasts led towards melody, scales and tonal organisation. Individual responses became part of arrangements, ensemble work and performance.

That spiral remains central to the book, although I no longer see progression as a single ladder through which every learner moves in the same order. Musical development is multidimensional. A pupil may have strong auditory memory but find real-time physical performance difficult. Another may control an instrument fluently while needing support to recognise larger structures. A learner may compose with considerable intention through technology while remaining unable to explain their decisions verbally.

Progress can therefore appear through increasing breadth, depth, quality and agency. A learner may recognise a musical relationship in a new context, sustain attention for longer, need less prompting, recover after losing their place, make a more deliberate expressive choice or listen beyond their own part. They may move from accepting an adult’s suggestion towards comparing alternatives, or from selecting a sound towards deciding where it belongs within a complete piece.

This requires time and repetition. Familiarity is sometimes treated as the opposite of challenge, particularly when teachers feel pressure to introduce new activities and resources. For many learners, however, the first encounter is occupied by the work of understanding the environment, the people, the equipment and the expected form of response. The musical idea may only become available once some of those demands have settled. Repetition allows recognition, anticipation and refinement to emerge.

The challenge lies in ensuring that repetition does not become confinement. The material may remain familiar while the learner’s responsibility changes. The same rhythm can be recognised, copied, maintained, varied, arranged, notated, transferred to another instrument or used to lead an ensemble. Progress lies in the changing relationship, rather than in replacing the music as soon as the pupil has taken part once.

Why this approach feels timely

I would not claim that every principle in Music for Every Learner is new. Inclusive music educators have long adapted instruments, used alternative notation, responded to individual learners, worked with technology and recognised forms of musical communication beyond speech. Ideas about agency, participation, disability, learner voice and environmental barriers also belong to wider conversations within education and disability studies.

The distinctiveness of the book lies less in a single new technique than in the way these ideas are applied consistently across the whole music curriculum. It begins with musical knowledge, separates that knowledge from one expected response, and asks where perception, intention and control lie. It uses those questions to examine everything from an early encounter with sound to melody, notation, composition, digital production, ensemble leadership and public performance.

That approach feels timely because inclusion can still be judged too readily from its appearance. A learner is in the room, an adaptation has been provided and a contribution can be heard, so the activity is described as inclusive. The more difficult questions concern what the learner is coming to understand, which decisions they are making, how their role can develop and whether they are gaining access to a musical world larger than the activity immediately in front of them.

There is also a growing need to hold access and ambition together. Greater awareness of sensory, communication and processing differences has helped teachers recognise why conventional methods may exclude learners. At the same time, adaptation can become a destination in itself. A particular switch, symbol system, sensory activity or repetitive role may provide the first route into music and then remain in place because it works. The learner gains access to the strategy without necessarily gaining expanding access to the subject.

The book argues that inclusive teaching needs to remain curious about what might come next. What can the learner already hear that the current task does not allow them to demonstrate? Which part of the difficulty belongs to the musical idea, and which part has been created by the response method or environment? Is adult support revealing the learner’s intention or replacing it? Does the pupil’s role have a real consequence within the music? Is familiarity supporting deeper learning, or has it begun to limit the curriculum?

These are not questions with one fixed answer. They are ways of looking more carefully at the relationship between the learner, the music and the conditions created around them.

Keeping music open

Music for Every Learner grew from a scheme of work, but it became a book about something wider: how a curriculum creates, limits or enlarges musical possibility. Learners cannot demonstrate knowledge they have never been given an opportunity to encounter. They cannot exercise authorship if adults retain every important decision, or develop musical independence if support fills every space in which they might begin to anticipate and act.

An inclusive curriculum does not predict potential in advance. It creates the conditions through which potential can become more visible. It gives learners time to form relationships with sound, while continuing to widen the musical ideas, roles and contexts available to them. It recognises that the route may involve voice, movement, an acoustic instrument, AAC, digital technology, the direction of other performers or one carefully controlled sound. These routes are not identical, but each can support serious musical thought when the learner’s intention has a genuine consequence.

The central concern of the book is therefore not how closely every pupil can be made to resemble a conventional music learner. It is how music teaching can remain precise enough to recognise different forms of musicianship, ambitious enough to protect the breadth of the subject and flexible enough to allow learners to shape what the music becomes.

Find out more about Music for Every Learner.

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Written by Kate Coldrick, an educator and writer based in Woodbury near Exeter. She began her career as a secondary music teacher before specialising in autism, SEND and literacy, and Music for Every Learner brings these strands of her work together through a shared focus on access, communication and curriculum.