 While the public face of music education in schools tended to concentrate on instrumental learning and teacher-directed performances by choirs and orchestras, the book introduced teachers to ways of helping pupils to explore and make their own interpretive decisions about sounds through working at composing projects.Paynter’s ideas influenced the development of music in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in the 1980s and in the British National Curriculum in the 1990s.Composing became a core musical activity in both of these programmes of study.