Music for learning, intelligence and healing

Studies demonstrate that early engagement with music helps to coach and improve children's ability to learn and engage with the environment around them. Music also helps to develop the part of the brain known to be involved with processing language and helps children to think issues through and examine evidence. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help the learning process and ease recognition and retention of information.

Also cited by experts in child development is a link between music and spatial intelligence (the ability to perceive the world accurately and to form mental pictures). This kind of intelligence, by which children are able to visualise how things fit together, is critical to the thinking necessary for solving advanced mathematics problems or being able to pack a bag for the day, for example.

It is in this way that music education provides more than an end in itself, promoting and enhancing children's ability in other areas.

One of the most consistent and successful programmes designed to engage young people in music, especially during the period of transition into secondary school, is Rockschool. Delivered locally in Hertfordshire as part of a youth music action zone, the programme has brought together young people at secondary school from across the county to take part in a series of music workshops and public performances.

Such programmes can offer support as an icebreaker for young people - at what can often be a difficult time - in a way that really connects with young people's own interests and helps them make friends in their new environment.

As well as promoting learning among all children, music can also have a powerful impact for children with special needs. The Sunbeams Music Trust, a Cumbria-based charity that provides therapeutic music workshops, has demonstrated the even starker effect that access to music can have on overcoming learning difficulties.

Sunbeams' Music for Life programme involves specially trained musicians working with children with learning difficulties to encourage self-expression and communication through music. Set up in 1992, Sunbeams has brought community music therapy to more than 17,000 adults and children every year.

The importance of building music into local and national strategies will be crucial in increasing academic achievement as well as enriching the childhood experience. This needs to be made a reality for all children and not just those who are lucky enough to access them.

- Anne Longfield is chief executive of 4Children.Email anne.longfield@haymarket.com.