About
Dr Steven Berryman is an arts and cultural educator contributing widely to music education. He is the current President of the Chartered College of Teaching (2022 – 2024) and holds a variety of non-executive director roles, including school governance. Steven is one of the first Chartered Teachers and a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching. From September 2024 he joins Sir William Perkins's School as Senior Deputy Head.
Steven was formerly Director of Music at the City of London School for Girls (2015-2020); for the 2019-2020 academic year was seconded to the Education Strategy Unit at the City of London Corporation, leading cultural and creative learning projects across the family of schools in the City. Previously, Steven taught at the Junior Departments of the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity Laban and taught music at the North London Collegiate School. His recent work has included leading music across families of schools in multi-academy trusts and teaching at King’s College London, the Royal College of Music and the University of Buckingham.
Steven has contributed widely to educational press, expert roundtables, examining and as an arts education practitioner, including work as a composer; recent work includes projects with the Royal Opera House, London Philharmonic Orchestra, NMC Recordings and Ofqual. 2021 – 2022 Steven was a member of the DFE/DCMS expert panel to refresh the National Plan for Music Education – the refreshed plan was published on 25 June 2022. Steven was granted Freedom of the City of London in 2017 and is a Liveryman of both the Worshipful Company of Educators and Musicians.
As a composer, Steven’s work has included many projects. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales selected his orchestral piece 'Cypher' (2010) for performance in their Welsh Composers Showcase. It was performed by the orchestra on 18 February 2011, conducted by Jan Van Steen at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay. Opera Holland Park commissioned transcriptions of Donizetti for a dance performance, 'Dance Holland Park' in June 2012, and other work for theatre includes Jamie Zubairi's one-person show 'Unbroken Line' (Ovalhouse December 2012) and 'Corpo: Lixa da Alma' (Cena Internacional Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, June 2012). A highlight of his time at North London Collegiate School was writing the musical ‘Juniper Dreams (2011). A recent performance includes his piano solo work performed by Professor Ian Pace (2023) at City University.
His choral work 'Versa est in Luctum' was performed in Washington, D.C., in January 2013 as part of the New Voices @ CUA Festival. In September 2016, a new work for community choiry the LSO Community Choir and students from the was performed b City of London School for Girls as part of 'Old Street New Beginnings', celebrating fifty years since the joining of the St. Luke's and St. Giles' parishes. With Royal Opera House Learning, Steven assisted with re-writing the Fanfare competition (2015 - 2017) and has been a judge for the final entries for two years. In 2018, Steven was the composer educator and led the workshops, developing the finalist entries with students and the team of mentors. He has also consulted for 'Create and Sing Carmen', writing materials for teachers. Steven worked on the writing of ‘Create and Sing Hansel and Gretal’ in 2018-2019 and now sits on the Learning and Participation Committee for the ROH chaired by Sue Hoyle.
For London Philharmonic Orchestra Education, Steven wrote and presented a concert on an A-level Music set work with musicians from the orchestra (2017). In 2018/19, he wrote and presented short films on aspects of composing at GCSE for LPO that were suitable for teachers and students. For NMC Recordings, he devised resources to assist with teaching composition (2016-2017) and a new app, R: String (2017). With researchers from Guildhall School (2016), he devised and led a project that connected with the 'Understanding Audiences' research group at Guildhall, investigating school-age students' attitudes to chamber music.