Sandbach, Cheshire

I've just visited Sandbach High School in Cheshire, working with their sizeable music GCSE group, also including a handful of A level candidates. We spent an enjoyable day "on vacation" from the exam curriculum, but I hope, supplementing it in some useful way. I was really impressed by how the students worked together in a very focused way in small groups, creating and performing short pieces which all sounded good come home-time.The school's head of music has a musicology PhD, assisted by a deputy who is a masters graduate in composition. We always say these days that the provision of state music education is "patchy" - this is one of those fortunate patches with very impressive teaching available. Also in town - Foden's Brass Band, one of the country's most famous.

An additional pleasure of visiting schools around the UK (rather randomly, at the invitation of teachers) has been discovering places I would never normally have come across. Crossing the market square on the way to school, I wasn't expecting to see these massive stone pillars, the Sandbach Crosses, which are 9th century Saxon, and say English Heritage, "among the finest surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon high crosses".