Many people might wonder what kind of admin tasks are relevant to instructors. Some tasks are daily/weekly such as keeping a register of attendance and record of work or keeping up with email correspondence. Some are less frequent such as reporting. Others are annual, and one of these is a census of pupils, which we submit to our coordinator, Peter Antonelli. When the testing process is complete, places offered/accepted and timetables updated, we refresh a list of pupils in all our schools together with information such as year group, approximate grade and details of any SQA courses being followed. Where appropriate, it is noted whether a pupil is in possession of a school/authority or privately owned instrument. In addition to this information being necessary for the efficient running of the service, such statistics are also helpful in national surveys of instrumental instruction e.g. by the Heads of Instrumental Teaching Scotland – an organisation whose curious titular word order neatly avoids an unfortunate and judgemental acronym.
At times like this the schizophrenic nature of an instructors post comes into focus. We are responsible to the PT Music (or faculty head) in any given school, to the management of that school, but also to the local authority. Although there is no conflict here, I suspect that instructors have more opportunities to see the big picture than if they were employed solely by one school.