Our Team

Elemental is the brainchild of Ed Watkins, a music teacher working in London's schools for the past 20 years, most recently as a founding teacher and Director of Music at the West London Free School. Under Ed's leadership the music department at WLFS gained a national reputation for high quality in an inclusive environment. The department took equal pride in both sending students to read music at Oxbridge and building a track record supporting students reintegrating from pupil referral units.

Ed has a strong track record delivering country-leading results at GCSE, with almost a third of the pupils who have been through WLFS since 2011 gaining a GCSE in music, a comfortable majority with 7s or higher. He is now working on Elemental to offer schools first class software, teacher-built and geared to the realities of our classrooms and students.

Alongside his work at WLFS Ed has worked more widely in education and policy including:

• on secondment to Ofsted as their subject specialist in music. This work included the music materials for the inspector training curriculum and writing Ofsted's research review in music;
• on secondment to the Department for Education working on the writing and drafting of 2021's Model Music Curriculum;
• as a subject expert for Ofqual, including as the Lead Reviewer for the accreditation of the current GCSE specifications;
• as an examiner for OCR GCSE and Eduqas A-level;
• as a board member of the monitoring board of the 2011 and 2022 National Plans for Music Education;
• and as the founder and director of Inner Voices, a London-based youth choir with a focus on excellence in an inclusive culture.