How did you become a music teacher?
I started at the Royal Academy of Music and studied piano and singing for five years. After that I did quite a lot of piano teaching and then I moved to London and I got a part time job teaching classes in a secondary school and absolutely loved it. I remember the first moment I went into the classroom, I just thought 'This is what I want to do'. I did it for a year as an unqualified teacher - you were able to do that at that time - then I went and did a PGCE, a postgraduate certificate in education on top of my degree and then qualified to be a teacher.

What are the options in music education and therapy?
The world of music education is a very diverse one - which is something that's perhaps not understood enough. There is mainstream classroom teaching, teaching instruments in school and as a private teacher, advisory work, inspection and all the various musical therapies. There are some very good music therapy courses around that young people can follow, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Nordoff-Robbins are well known. To do that you do need to have some kind of music qualification and know your way around music, you need to be able to improvise and be musically literate.

What advice would you give about getting into music teaching?
There are several different routes which you can take in order to become a fully qualified teacher: getting a degree in music or any other subject and then you can taking a further year at a teacher training establishment on top of your degree; there are four year B Ed courses where you train to be a teacher right the way through - that is the one to do if you're a very firm vocation and you are sure that you want to teach. If you want to teach individual instruments you don't need to have qualifications but obviously you need to know your way around the instrument that you want to. Another way to gain qualified teacher status is to become a licensed teacher, by doing that you can start working in a school and you gain your experience and your expertise as you work and then you, by special arrangements with the Department for Education & Skills, you then get our qualified status as a result of going through the licensed teachers' scheme.

What skills do you think you need to be a music teacher or what skills can a parent look for in their child?
If you are a good communicator, you know how to talk to groups of people and you love your subject and your enthusiasm comes across, the chances are you're going to be a very fine teacher. Over and above that obviously you need a range of musical skills. I think if you're going to be a classroom teacher it's an advantage to be able to play some kind of keyboard instrument, it is not a necessity it would be a good idea to have keyboard skills behind you. Also it's a very good idea to be able to improvise on your instrument and be able to think on your feet, to be able to play pieces from right across the board from jazz, pop, rock and classical and music from a round the world. And also it's a good idea to be able to sing, if you can sing with some confidence in front of children that's a good thing to have too.

What sort of person do you think that you need to be?
If you're somebody that finds it very difficult to take any criticism then you're going to find it very difficult because if you won't listen to criticism in the teaching profession you're not going to improve and you only improve in teaching on the job. All good teachers constantly go wrong. They constantly get things wrong but what marks them out as being really good is the ability to look at what may have gone wrong and then try to get it right next time.

What are the pros and cons of the job?
The most wonderful thing about being a teacher is that you have the most fantastic rewards. You can see groups of children and young people actually benefiting from what you have to offer and in music this is a very direct thing, it's something that can reach all children regardless of their ability to read or write. If a child is having difficulty with the core areas of the curriculum to be able to come to a music session and really take part on an equal footing with all the other children, this makes for a very exciting and dynamic classroom interaction. So when it's going well I would say there is nothing more wonderful than teaching a good music lesson. On the downside discipline can be difficult in a music lesson as you've got a lot of musical instruments and you've got lots of potential for things to go wrong - for children to play when they shouldn't be - but you learn as you go along the best ways to try and manage those things and what's on your side all the time is the subject itself. Children want to do music and that in the end is the thing that will support your work.

What advice do you have for me as a parent on what I can do to help my child?
I think one of the things that parents can do if they feel that the child would make a good teacher is to have an atmosphere of discussion at home where it is seen as an option. I think sadly it isn't generally in our society at the moment it is not seen as an attractive option, for whatever reason, and it should be. All the great people that you see around now at some time have had a great teacher in their lives. It is one of the great professions, and I think parents can do a great deal to reinforce that notion at home with their children.

What did your parents think when you decided you wanted to be a music teacher?
Initially there was a huge sense of relief from my parents because I'd been dabbling with probably the most precarious things that you can do, I was looking at the possibility of following performing careers and those can be enormously difficult to do. My father was a teacher so he was absolutely delighted and I think my mother too was very pleased and continues to be to this day delighted that I had found something that I had got such happiness from.