A year of Primary Steps on Demand

Making ballet accessible to all is one of our core missions here at the School. We launched Primary Steps on Demand last year to widen our outreach to primary schools across the globe and strive to give every student the opportunity to experience ballet. We were excited to hear about how some of the schools currently using Primary Steps on Demand have been enjoying our programme.

What our students love

Over the past year, we’ve been offering a complete dance education to primary schools through Primary Steps on Demand. The programme provides a positive introduction to ballet and aims to encourage curiosity and creativity through movement. Most importantly, it is designed so that pupils have fun through learning. It was great to discover what students are enjoying most in their lessons:

Our students enjoy telling a story through movement. They really like roleplaying.

The classes are a fun way for our children to explore movement. They love the different themes and visualisations.

They love the music and being ‘arty’.

Our students are always enthusiastic about the programme.

Educational perks

Through a creative approach, Primary Steps on Demand contains a huge range of benefits for students and teachers. Our lessons are cross-curricular, and content is designed to be engaging and relevant for different age groups.

For our students, it’s fun to relate the exercises from their ballet classes to what they are doing at school in their lessons.

They have the opportunity to listen and observe in a different way to the usual classroom practice.

Dance for everyone

Everybody should have the chance to enjoy ballet and so we ensure that all our Primary Steps on Demand content is inclusive. Gender-neutral language is used, and we use adaptable movements so that students of all abilities can participate in lessons. Delivered via our Video on Demand platform, all our content is high-quality and easy to use, making it accessible for all schools and teachers:

We enjoy the way those in our class that have learning needs can take part and all students can dance together. It’s a fun way for them to learn.

The programme is very easy. The online teachers are engaging and the lesson plans give a good preview.

I think even teachers who had never danced would be able to deliver the programme because the videos are very user-friendly. The terms are explained in the videos so would be easily learnt.

It’s easy to understand and teach and the children find it exciting and different.

Benefits for teachers

CPD is included in our programme to upskill teachers and give them the support they need to deliver Primary Steps on Demand with confidence. We’ve been running CPD sessions throughout the year to connect teachers who are using our programme with each other. Next year, we’ll be helping teachers achieve their Bronze CPD Award through termly sessions.