As stated in the scenario many, if not most, school do not assess music in the foundation phase; some do not even offer music as a subject. This lack of assessment may be due to various reasons and as a teacher writing to the HOD on this topic I would include the various reasons stated hereunder:

1. The HOD may not recognise the importance of music as a tool in realising true holistic learning, or may not truly value the concept of holistic learning;
2. Music may be seen as a subject that has no academic value and therefore does not need to be taken seriously or may even see it as a subject they have to incorporate to some extent due to its inclusion in the CAPS document;
3. Music may be seen as only a fun subject and that learners should therefore not be given the additional anxiety that is involved in assessment and that assessment may jeopardise the mental benefits of this subject;
4. The term assessment may be seen in terms of Summative assessment, which may be seen as a waste of valuable teaching and learning time in an already time constrained curriculum. They may forget about the other forms of assessment, such as formative or continuous assessment (informal forms of assessment) which need not take too much time.

During my schooling career we only had music as a subject during Foundation Phase and only had one lesson every other week. It was therefore difficult to truly learn anything of value in this subject and if learning does not take place, there is no possibility for true assessment of skills. As there was no assessment of the skills learned, there was very little motivation to truly try to master the skills. Most students that wanted to learn more about music turned to extra-mural activities to do so.

For music teaching and learning to be effective, and to have the greatest impact, it is important to continuously assess learners' learning in order to improve the achievement of learning outcomes and teaching strategies; as is the case for all other academic subjects. Learners attention and true learning of music concepts will enable music to gift learners with the multitude of advantages that have been identified in various research articles. Assessment may be done in such a way that the assessment of music helps to reduce the anxiety caused by the summative assessments in other subjects, by showing learners that assessment activities can also be fun. Another reason assessment is important is that it may increase learners' self-confidence and grant them the opportunity to feel a sense of accomplishment and ability to achieve.

There is therefore many reasons why music should be assessed, just as any other subject is assessed.