Simply navigate to https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music to get started. Here you will find dozens of free tracks that you can download and use in any project you care to create with no restrictions on copyright or anything else. Just make sure you select the Free Music tab at the top of the page to find the royalty free tracks.
Music can be sorted by genre, mood, instrument or duration to make it easier to find the style of music you need. Clicking the play button next to the title of the track can be used to preview any track before you download it, and the star on the far right-hand side can be used to shortlist your favorites. You can even see the popularity of a track by looking at how full its horizontal bar is.
When you find what you need, click the down arrow (highlighted below) to download the music to your computer for use in video editing software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Finished videos that are then uploaded to YouTube will not be flagged by YouTube's Content ID scanner because it recognizes that your music is from the YouTube Audio library.
Other possible sources of free music for schools include Freeplay Music or ccMixster, but if you have favorite sources that you like to use, please share them in the comments below.
~ Jonathan Wylie, GWAEA Technology Consultant