Youth Dance England with its many partners is striving to ensure that young people across England have access to high quality dance in schools. YDE believes that all young people should be offered opportunities, throughout their school life, to experience dance as a performer, creator and viewer.
YDE offers teachers and dance practitioners many different kinds of support to deliver a rich dance experience for their students. Schools can get involved in our national programmes: U.Dance that aims to involve every young person in a dance performance each year; YDE Young Creatives that offers young people a chance to develop their choreographic skills; and Dance Ambassadors for young people who want to take on leadership and advocacy roles. Training courses for teachers and practitioners are available here.
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Useful publications include the very popular Dance In and Beyond Schools that offers vital information on what a good dance education should involve, Dance Links that shows how to work effectively with outside of school dance providers and guidance documents on the use of recorded music, delivering a safe warm up and other areas.
YDE piloted a highly successful initiative to increase access to high quality dance in schools (2008-2011). Eight School Dance Coordinators based in different organisations across the country worked alongside secondary school teachers to build confidence and skills in teaching dance. The scheme showed how schools could be supported on modest funding to deliver dance to their students. Unfortunately due to funding cuts this initiative was been discontinued. An evaluation report is available here.
We will continue to work to ensure that teachers get the specialist help they need to teach dance. The National Dance Teachers Association as the subject association for teachers of dance in schools provides many services for teachers. See www.ndta.org.uk
“Dance is built into the very fabric of the school and helps to drive up our examination
results and value added scores, particularly amongst students with low self esteem.
Dance has a huge impact on students’ sense of connectivity to the school
and their general fitness, as well as enhancing
learning in other curriculum areas as a result of
marked improvement in powers of
concentration and overall confidence"
- Mr Elliott Furneaux, Headteacher, Heathfield
Community School, Taunton, Somerset
Delivering DANCE through the PE and Sports premium funding.
There is a funding source that is being used by Primary schools to improve their dance offer. All schools have received at least £9k in September and will receive the same funding again next year.
We have created a fact-sheet for you, click here to download.
