In May 2011, members of the MMA convened in Cambridge for an annual conference organised by the schools of St John's College and King's College, two of the country's leading choir schools. Delegate music teachers were thrilled, though not surprised, by the fine choral singing in the college chapels. But the real discovery for many was the very high standard of enthusiastic school music demonstrated in the joint concert in the University Concert Hall. Those of us working in choir schools were delighted to bask in their reflected glory, seeing parallels in our own departments. But it was not always so.

Choir schools originated as early as the seventh century, according to some historians, and for hundreds of years their purpose was fulfilled by training boys to sing the top line in ecclesiastical foundations. Though musical instruments certainly existed, there is scant evidence whether the young boys were given any worthwhile tuition in them. Even as recently as the early nineteenth century, it took the ministrations of Miss Maria Hackett to get even elementary schooling made available to the choristers of St Paul's Cathedral. Indeed it was not generally acknowledged that choristers (or the non-choristers, where they co-existed) need learn an instrument other than the piano until comparatively recent times. The organist was often the only competent music teacher close to a school, and this made a more general offering impossible because of his other commitments to the administration and politics of the cathedral and its music.