A SUCCESSFUL free scheme to help Sheffield children learn to play a musical instrument at school is to be expanded next term.
More than £100,000 is to be spent on new instruments which will then be given to pupils on a long-term loan basis, funded by a Government grant. On order are 146 clarinets, 30 cellos, 90 violins, 16 tenor horns, ten trumpets, 230 cornets, 37 baritone
s and 20 flutes, as well as lots of percussion instruments.
"That's quite a shopping list!" said Coun Andrew Sangar, the council's cabinet member for children's services. "We really want to make sure that every child has the opportunity to learn music, wherever they live, but sometimes the cost of buying or hiring an instrument can put parents off.
"This scheme will make sure that hundreds of Sheffield children can find out for themselves whether music lessons are for them," he added.
The council already operates a programme which gives free instrumental tuition to a whole class of nine and 10-year-olds for a year, so they can decide whether they want to learn music long-term.
After that, they have the opportunity to take up lessons at a small cost.
Half of the city's primary schools are involved in the project and the purchase of the new instruments will help meet a council target of running the scheme in all of them by 2011.
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