Reading passage
At seven thirty on a cold Tuesday morning, the music room of Brookfield Secondary School is already full. Twenty-four students aged between eleven and sixteen are unpacking trumpets, clarinets, drums and one enormous tuba, while their director, Mrs Helen Okoye, taps her baton on a music stand for silence. The Brookfield Concert Band is rehearsing for the National Schools Music Festival, and for the first time in the school's history, it has qualified for the final.
Brookfield is an ordinary state school in a former mining town, and it does not select its pupils by musical ability. Anyone who wants to join the band may do so, and the school lends instruments free of charge to students whose families cannot afford to buy them. More than half of the current players had never touched an instrument before their first rehearsal, and some still share one instrument between two because the school's collection is small.
The band's rise began eight years ago, when Mrs Okoye arrived as a young teacher and found fifteen dented instruments in a cupboard. At first only six students attended, and rehearsals were held in a corridor because the music room was used for storage. Slowly, word spread that her sessions were strict but cheerful, and by the third year the band had grown to thirty members. The school then cleared out the old room and bought second-hand chairs with money raised at a cake sale organised by parents.
Rehearsals take place twice a week before lessons, from half past seven until a quarter to nine. Attendance is remarkably high: the school's records show an average of ninety-two percent over the past three years. Mrs Okoye believes the early hour is actually an advantage, because students who give up their mornings feel that they belong to something special. Former members often return to help the younger players, and several have gone on to study music at university. New members start on simpler parts and gradually take on harder lines as their reading improves. The band also keeps a practice diary, in which each section notes what went well and what needs work, so rehearsals begin with clear goals rather than guesswork. Section leaders check that everyone has the right sheet music before the first note.
The festival, held each year in Birmingham, attracts more than two hundred school bands from across the country. Bands play a set piece chosen by the organisers and one piece of their own choice, and a panel of five judges awards marks for accuracy, tone and interpretation. Brookfield's own-choice piece is an arrangement of folk songs from the region, including a melody once sung by miners, which was suggested by a student's grandfather. Mrs Okoye says the piece reminds the players that the competition is not only about winning.
Preparing for the final has not been easy. The trip to Birmingham costs around four thousand pounds, and although the local council contributed a grant, the band still had to raise most of the money through concerts, sponsored walks and an online appeal. Some parents worried that the extra rehearsals would harm examination results, so the school compared the grades of band members with those of other students. It found no difference in most subjects, and slightly better marks in mathematics, a result that surprised even the teachers.
Researchers who study school music say that Brookfield's experience fits a wider pattern. A review of sixty studies, published in an education journal, concluded that regular ensemble playing is associated with improved attendance and self-confidence, although the effects on test scores are usually small. The authors warn that such benefits depend heavily on patient teaching over several years, and they criticise schools that expect quick results from short projects.
Whatever happens in Birmingham, the band has already changed life at Brookfield. Applications to join next year's band have doubled, the waiting list for instrument loans is longer than the collection itself, and the town council has promised to repair the leaking roof of the music room. As one thirteen-year-old clarinet player put it, the best thing about the band is not the trophies but the sound of twenty-four people breathing together before the first note.