ABSTRACT
For the last thirty years, the development of musical literacy has tended to be neglected in primary schools. Both the Plowden Report (1967) and the Reading University/Schools Council Project (1971), reported in Bentley (1975), indicated that it was given low priority by primary school teachers. This finding was supported by Pugh (1980) who suggested that it was partly the result of a lack of notational expertise amongst primary class teachers. Terry (1994), on the other hand, pointed to time constraints as a reason for notation not being introduced at this level. This is very different from the situation in the late nineteenth century. Soon after the passing of the 1870 Education Act, singing became virtually a compulsory subject in all Board schools, while the Code of 1882 introduced a scheme of ‘payment by results’ where schools received six pence per pupil for the rote learning of a defined number of songs and a shilling per head if pupils could sing at sight. However, such a situation was short-lived and by 1900, sight- singing had begun to decline as the curriculum widened in scope (Taylor 1979).
