Essential Skills

Rhythm Academy was born out of many years experience in music and dance education, preparing young people from novice level through to exams, further study and employment via the traditional routes of school-based and private tuition. We know that the most successful young people demonstrate highly developed essential skills that are vital not just to thrive in an employment situation, but in most life situations.

Increasingly, employers and FE/HE institutions are calling on schools and clubs to help develop the four broad skills areas so that everyone can benefit from well-adjusted young people who are able to offer a contribution:

• communication skills, 
• self-management skills, 
• interpersonal skills, and 
• creative problem solving 

A fantastic by-product of learning performance art in a community of peers is the innate and "untaught" aspect of skills development as we learn to be performer, audience and critic, but here at Rhythm Academy the syllabus goes a step further in our responsibility to our students.

Using strategies appropriate to each stage and a clear, concise vocabulary for these skills, students are taught to recognise when and how to use them in the context of their Rhythm Academy classes. Practising their skills in this environment is a safe, controlled way to nurture skill development and empowers young people to be able to then apply the same consideration and get the best out of their circumstance no matter the context.

Similarly, we take responsibility for modelling and encouraging high standards of literacy and numeracy relevant to the activity we are working on.

We try to ensure we remove any known barriers to a student's progression, and many students who traditionally struggle find that their work in performing arts lessons actually brings them on in many other areas of their learning not to mention the confidence and resilience it develops in each student.