Music education in Scotland has a long-standing tradition of community singing, originally taught using the sol-fa method. Virtually every Scottish secondary school possesses cupboards full of dusty piles of Burns song books and Hebridean folk tunes with the sol-fa and the rhythm printed underneath. Some may still be in use! Sol-fa is not nearly so prevalent in schools as it was twenty years ago, but for the majority of Scottish schools singing still forms the backbone of music classes. After all, there are definite advantages of ‘singing’ as opposed to ‘music’ classes; large numbers of children can be taught together, there is probably less preparation or effort involved for the teacher, and other staff, parents, and the pupils themselves may readily accept that music in school is singing.