We are passionate about empowering our students and provide plenty of opportunities for each to personally develop from a wide range of leadership opportunities. We are pleased to announce some new musical leadership opportunities, especially to appeal to our Junior musicians. Music is an integral and thriving part of life here at Wakefield Girls’ – not only are there exciting and varied practical music lessons for all students, there are also plenty of music groups and clubs to participate in, and private 1-1 music tuition available. 

We are delighted to introduce our new roles of Junior Musical Leaders. During the Spring term we shared details about becoming a Junior Music Leader with our Junior students, inviting written applications from Juniors including details of their suitability and ideas for the role.

We were so impressed with the high quality of the written applications. Students wrote clearly about impressive leadership and communication skills that they had acquired during their years at Wakefield Girls’ and evidence of their passion for music. It was extremely difficult to narrow down the candidates and choose our leaders… Congratulations go to: Idun, Mariead, Nitya, Olivia, Patricija and Priyah who were awarded their Music Leader badges on Friday 12th April and will hold their positions for the remainder of summer term. 

We are looking forward to seeing our Junior Music Leaders in action. Their responsibilities include making decisions about the choice of hymns and songs to sing in assembly, organising live music for the beginning and close of each assembly,encouraging pupils to perform solos and incorporating ensembles from both the Junior and Senior sections. An especially important aspect of the role is to inspire our younger Junior musicians, to encourage them to participate in groups and perform in school, in essence promoting a flourishing music community throughout the Junior section.

Here are some quotes from our Junior Music Leaders about ideas they have for their role: 

• ‘I would like to see the juniors and seniors mixing more musically. It would be great to perhaps have a mentor in senior school who also played the same instrument’ – Mariead.
• ‘I think we should have more workshops with different professional musicians playing, I could ask local bands to play at school’ – Olivia.
• ‘I am part of four bands, including Junior Strings Ensemble. I would encourage senior groups to play in our assemblies’ – Nitya. 
• To encourage students to play their instruments in assembly, ‘they can earn 1 house point! This will make people want to play music and earn house points! But, you can only play once in one week so everyone can have a go!’ – Patricija.
• ‘If chosen, I would include a different genre of music to be played at each assembly such as jazz, classical, rock, blues, baroque, country, pop, funk etc, so that people can hear all styles of music and how versatile our beautiful instruments sound; maybe even inspiring pupils to take up learning to play them’ – Priyah.

Mrs R White 

Junior Assistant Director of Music