Danielle Ballantine-Drake

Danielle Ballantine-Drake has been our Head of Early Years since 2018, and then she also took on being Head of Voice in 2021. She has 22 years of teaching experience, and specialises in teaching music to our very youngest children. Danielle can often be seen smiling and bouncing teddies or playing peek-a-boo with scarves. She is a big believer in everyone being born musical and wants every child to feel the joy of singing from an early age.

Danielle has a BSc in Music; her undergraduate degree focused on Ethnomusicology, Music Psychology, Music Education, Composition and Sound Engineering. She also gained a PGCE and began her career teaching in primary schools, but after a few years realised her heart was in solely teaching music so she specialised and worked in a broad variety of schools, including Thomas’s London Day School, where she led a choir of 70 children under the age of 7.

While her own children were young, Danielle ran her own music school for under 5’s. She has always enjoyed composing in her spare time, and even has an MA in Composing for Film & TV! She studied singing at Guildhall School of Music, and as a hobby now plays Celtic harp. She has two children and lives in Oxford, where she like to get out for country walks and time in nature.