Under NESA’s draft drama syllabus, which created outrage among drama teachers, students and parents this week, HSC group drama performance had been downgraded (NESA backflipped on this), options for students cut and the link between Year 7-10 drama and the HSC had been broken, and written exams increased.
NESA failed to listen to academics and teachers on the drama syllabus and now NESA is failing to listen on the music syllabus. I know this because I was an advisor on drama.
Is NESA broken?
They need to start again. Release a new draft for drama, provide adequate consultation, and this time, listen to voices outside their organisation. Same for music. If we let the rot in NESA continue, the ultimate losers will be our students who will be denied learning that is world leading. Surely that is more important than NESA’s pride.
Syllabus revisions for drama and music are normally sedate affairs. Academics, teachers and NESA officers work collaboratively to generate a syllabus that will create rigorous and engaging learning for students.
Not in 2024. Last week more than 350 drama teachers met at the Seymour Centre to ask Paul Martin CEO of NESA about the complete inadequacy of this draft drama syllabus.
On the same day, an emergency session of an upper house committee was convened to find out what the fuss is all about. To be fair, NESA had a perfectly good draft drama syllabus that had been constructed in the way we expect but sometime between that draft and its subsequent release the syllabus became unworkable and unteachable.
Heather Mitchell and Tim Minchin speak out
Renowned performing artists Heather Mitchell and Tim Minchin raised their voices in protest, the shift was so breathaking. Education academics and former supervisors of marking wrote letters to Prue Car asking for a restart. Most have been unanswered.
Even with all this pressure, NESA is stonewalling attempts to admit it has not got this right. They insist their process is unimpeachable.
Music also has major concerns. Calls for a new start on the HSC music syllabus have also been ignored. To me, this looks like bureaucratic arrogance.
To whom does the syllabus belong?
In the face of overwhelming advice from teachers, students, academics and the community, NESA are insisting that it is right. CEO of NESA Paul Martin went as far as to say to a room full of teachers: “It’s not your syllabus.”
Of course he is right. This syllabus does not belong to teachers and academics.
It also does not belong to NESA.
It belongs to our young people who have the right to a world-class, engaging, rigorous and transformative syllabus.
What NESA has produced so far is not a shadow of that in either music or drama.
My fear is that a narrow ideologically driven approach to learning and assessment has taken hold that does not understand nor provides space for the richness creative arts learning offers our young people.
NESA can fix this. They need to start again.
Professor Michael Anderson is Co-Director of the CREATE Centre and Professor of Creativity and Arts Education in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at The University of Sydney.
The CEO of NESA even recognised the unprecedented outrage reaction from drama and music educators at the emergency additional NSW Arts Education Inquiry hearing in response to the reaction.
Teachers and academics, so often pitted against one another, have united together for insurgence against the imposed didactics from the authorities. There is the potential for this collective to have a genuine, positive impact.
Speaking out together
On the release of the draft drama syllabus, there were several immediate responses. Academics and teachers communicated through professional organisations, voicing concerns, rather than awaiting a 6 – 18 month research journal publication or relying on the consultation survey alone. Indeed, many teachers are stifled by their employment obligations to speak publicly.
The community of voices grew in unprecedented ways, gaining a rally of responses from former drama students, industry professionals and celebrities, who made their stand against the proposed changes bold and resolute.
This week was especially momentous. Drama educators numbering in the hundreds united for an expert panel discussion “Our Syllabus, Our Stories” held at the Seymour Centre in Sydney. Courageously, the CEO of NESA, Paul Martin, attended the event, spoke, and answered questions.
One backflip
Martin has already announced one significant backflip on the proposed changes, shaking the parameters and rigour of the so-called formal consultation period that was otherwise set to end December 20 2024. Specifically, the Group Performance project will once again be externally examined. He also guaranteed that any proposed changes were not economically based. Despite the cynicism of many, if educators and the system are to work collegially with each other, there must be a belief that we are all working in ‘good faith.’
But there are still issues to address. The changes to the syllabus will not necessarily improve declining numbers of students choosing drama as an elective. The socially constructed lower ATAR branding is a major disincentive that needs to be addressed. The syllabus changes will not decrease teachers’ workload, though it is promising that NESA recognises that drama teachers sacrifice their personal time outside of working hours to prepare students for assessments.
No-one said the COVID responses were an improvement
Arguing that the changes suggested are based on positive aspects of the response to the COVID lockdowns is incorrect. Teachers made changes to support students, but no one suggested these were improvements. By limiting materials that can be used in the drama curriculum, by removing methods of submission of material, or even areas to assess, not only will NESA limit the pedagogical potentials for students, but there is also a real fear that students with a disability will be impacted.
The NSW drama and music syllabuses at the HSC level are highly regarded internationally for offering real world experiences and authentic assessment. Teachers and academics are united in ensuring it remains so.
The NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) is responsible for developing and implementing the official curriculum. NESA’s role, in part, is to provide the syllabus documents that outline the content for courses in specific subjects.
The dismay from all involved in music education also, has resulted in a sustained campaign involving an Open letter to Education and Early Learning Minister Prue Car from renowned academics from all states of Australia, a petition signed by over 5,000 teachers and education lecturers, articles in EduResearch Matters (drama and music), the Sydney newspapers, and an extra Parliamentary Inquiry for both drama and music to present their expert opinions regarding the proposed changes. NESA was also grilled by the Select Committee and refused to make any concessions on the three music syllabuses and only a minor one on the Drama Syllabus.
By uniting across disparate groups that often are pitted against each other, teachers and academics are demonstrating their power as a collective. It also shows the wider community that quality teaching and learning in schools is greatly affected by broader factors. Agencies such as NESA play a major role in enabling or constraining the possibilities for both teaching practice and student learning experiences.
Power as a collective
The inclusive design of the original Music 1 course, for example, was the attraction for students who had previously not had the opportunity to have private music lessons, where typical students can “range from those with beginner instrumental and/or vocal skills to those with highly developed performance skills in a variety of musical styles including contemporary/popular music” (Music 1 Syllabus, 2010, p. 8).
In 1978, the NSW Minister for Education, Eric Bedford, insisted that ‘society is not made by schools: schools reflect society’ and warned that if ‘society places demands upon schools such that all cannot be met, then the purpose of school loses definition and schools appear to become ineffective.’Is it Time for an Educational Audit? Introductory Address, Public Seminar, Sydney). The proposed changes to the arts syllabuses suggest that in the supposedly more enlightened times of 2024, NESA has totally disregarded this line of thought and has been intent on revising our NSW syllabuses for the sake of placing their mark on syllabus history (as distinct from the Board of Studies), with disregard for the wisdom of that legacy, intent on insisting that “one size fits all” in arts education.
Highlighting NESA’s failures
Highlighting the failure of NESA to produce robust syllabuses for review and enactment – regardless of the subject – safeguards against wrongly blaming school leaders and teachers for being solely responsible for student learning. Indeed, state level systems must provide conditions for nurturing quality education in school – a view that is applicable in all subjects. Diminishing the performative aspects of the Arts Assessment, for example, devalues the authenticity of the courses and teaching and learning opportunities in classrooms.
NESA’s proposed changes to the drama and music syllabuses need to be withdrawn so those with expertise and experience in the teaching of the various artforms can be used to truly create a syllabus that is inclusive, reliable and fit for purpose.
Biographies
Left to right: Jennifer Carter is a sessional academic at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music after a career as a music teacher and head teacher in NSW schools. She was Chief Examiner of HSC Music in NSW and was a Senior Registration Officer at the NSW Education Standards Authority. She has presented at music conferences both nationally and internationally. Her PhD thesis researched secondary classroom music teachers and the development of music syllabus documents.
Matthew Harper is an early career researcher in the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Matt has collaborated with colleagues on a range of research exploring student aspirations, quality teaching in schools and higher education contexts, and curriculum and pedagogy theory and development. His doctoral research compared secondary mathematics and drama in the Australian schooling context.
James Humberstone is a senior lecturer in music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. He specialises in teaching music pedagogies, technology in music education, and musical creativities. James publishes traditional research focusing on music teacher worldview, technology and media in music education, and artistic practice as research. He is also a composer and producer whose music is performed in major venues around the world.
David Roy is a lecturer and researcher in Education and Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle (AUS); and was formerly a teacher for 17 years. He uses his research to inform inclusion and equity practices across Australia, with a particular focus on children with a disability, policy, and engagement with the Arts.
The latest QTAC report is out, advertising (let’s face it) the ways that all general senior subjects in Queensland were variously scaled up or scaled down for students who completed school in 2023.
It’s as ‘league table’ as Queensland gets these days, with these published rankings used 1) by students to aid in their subject selection, 2) by schools to convince students to pursue high ranking subjects, and 3) by nefarious ATAR calculators that rub crystal balls and give students predictions based on assignments that they have not yet completed (!).
Just as arts educators suspected, arts offerings have fared (even) worse than previously. I’ll spare you my own analysis, but when paired with elective class numbers around the state, we see a glib picture. An old colleague has had to collapse Music into a composite Year 10, 11, 12 class this year. Other schools have been forced to reduce the number of senior arts subjects offered. I know at least two local schools that have tiny groups of Year 12 Music students working unaccompanied in the library without a Music teacher.
I keep getting this blinking error light
The QTAC report reminded me to revisit 2022’s ABC News article, penned at a time when arts advocates had sprung to life to defend extant syllabus offerings. By Sally Eeles’ assessment, kids were abandoning senior arts offerings “in droves in the belief they will secure higher ATAR with science-based subjects”.
That same year (2022), we saw invigorated lobbying and proactive steps by arts professional organisations. Drama Queensland, for instance, was on the front foot, seeking urgent meetings with QTAC to “ensure that we take active and informed steps forward to ensure a productive redevelopment of Drama curriculum provides the best possible opportunity for our students to succeed, against other subjects equally”.
Arts educators need to think bigger. Woes of inter-subject scaling are both no-one’s fault, and everyone’s fault, but QTAC and QCAA need to hear together from arts bodies and scholars. It’s time to descale the arts machine.
A bitter taste
To anyone outside of formal learning right now, I ask: When was the last time you did a two-hour, individual handwritten test in order to best demonstrate your understanding of something? And when was the last time you did that to demonstrate criticality, creativity, teamwork, sociality, tech-savviness, or any other 21st century skill (as identified by QCAA)?
To be blunt (and I stress, I am just talking as an individual artist-teacher-researcher!), the Queensland system has been characterised as cruel, unusual, biased, inauthentic, bland, and sad.
Watch out, though!
Watch out, though!
Where arts educators fail to react sufficiently to the status quo, we inadvertently subscribe to the hidden curriculum that shouts:
“Standardise me!”: The overt move towards STEM-at-all-costs through a neoliberal drive for standardisation—as demonstrated through the observations of Theo Clark (2022) and Morgan Rogers Wilson (2019)—has driven recent Queensland education imperatives. Education-as-meeting-quantified-objectives is entirely unhelpful for children, their parents, and their support dogs.
“Paint me into a corner!”: Queensland syllabi are so fixated on cognition over experience that arts learning culminates in written tests that are more-than-symptomatic of David Perkins’ aboutitis.
“Stop collaborating!”: Teamwork is deemed risky in high stakes testing environments, causing individual efforts to be reduced to quantified evaluations of individual students’ products uploaded to a (team-created) portal to be assessed by (teams of) assessors. It’s skewiff! Does any post-school worker reading this not lean on teamwork to produce work outcomes? Let’s team up.
“Creativity is great in theory!”: I hear so much about the importance of creativity and 21st century skills—and we all get it!—but I invite you to scan the latest Queensland senior syllabi and arrive at your own conclusions. Move beyond the corporatised rationales, and delve into the assessment practices. State-mandated creativity is great in theory, but it would be even better in practice.
A double shot
It is all well and good to blame statutory bodies and commissions on matters of zeitgeist, but there are two final shots to serve.
Firstly, the Queensland Government’s Creative Together roadmap for arts, culture and creativity falls far short of helpful policy orientation. The 30-page document fails entirely to mention ‘schools’, ‘teaching’, ‘learning’, or ‘students’. It mentions ‘education’ in the most generic sense, as you might expect for a public document, with phrases such as “arts in education has been linked to increased self-esteem, increased positive behaviour and enhanced academic achievement” (p. 10), and “strengthening the links between communities and other sectors, such as education and tourism” (p.16).
We might as well be watching an episode of ABC’s Utopia. Who does the government propose should be charged with identifying, fostering, and developing this magically appearing creativity in the young people (who will be the workers by the time this roadmap reaches its glorious endpoint around the Brisbane Olympics in 2032)? Are we to continue subscribing to the Romantic myth that creativity somehow drops on these children in their sleep?
Secondly, arts educators need to turn inwards. It’s a dark storm. Let’s look back—like never before—at arts curricula and pedagogy to ensure more relevance, robustness, and remarkability. It looks like we will need to do this despite vague/vanilla, mandated curriculum imperatives. Welcome to (yet another) era of pedagogical evolution. As any trumpeter will tell you, thankfully, we’ve got the chops!
Milking it, for all it’s worth
If syllabi, statutory bodies, and governments fail to recognise the importance of arts learning all the way through to adulthood, we need to keep evaluating arts learning itself.
To be honest, the quasi-science of ‘arts makes your brain stronger’ advocacy is becoming tired, and the vocational education slant could be dangerous. Arts educators know that arts learners are not just in our classrooms to become professional artists, just as they are not in German to become Germans, or in Biology to become biologists. In arts classrooms, children are with us to become adults who thrive in a world of uncertainty through creativity, collaboration, and criticality.
Well, at least, they should be. As I said, it’s time to descale the arts machine.
Andrew Pennay is an award-winning music teacher. He is currently undertaking doctoral studies in songwriting pedagogy at QUT. Andrew has taught in primary, secondary, and tertiary arts contexts for 25 years, and has presented to teachers and music education researchers nationally and internationally.
The NSW Year 7 to 10 Music syllabus is the most important in Australia. The NSW government last reviewed and renewed it in 2003, so the recent publishing of a new version, to be taught from 2026, was a once-in-a-generation opportunity,to create a world-leading syllabus embracing latest research and drawing on the most engaging and beneficial teaching practices from around the globe.
It fell far short.
It’s not terrible. There are some good things about it. It doesn’t prioritise one musical culture over any others, any more. The first draft, released over a year ago, still prioritised classical music. Its published Aim is as noble as in 2003, mentioning ambitions for teaching and learning music such as “active engagement”, “enjoyment”, and (this is my favourite) to “develop a lifelong sense of wonder and curiosity about and engagement with music”.
There is a definite de-centring of The Score as the “text” for music. Inthis work-ready world that feels about-time, given that the “text” for music is sound passing through time. And most musical engagement nowadays happens through streaming services, with music jammed live, produced on computers, or created and disseminated in other digital mediums.
Music syllabus: why it’s important
This syllabus matters because although NSW’s K-6 Creative Arts syllabus mandates the teaching of music, research suggests a clear majority of schools do not have the specialist-trained staff to teach it.
Not only that, but the NSW Department of Education doesn’t even have an employment code for a “music teacher”, and the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA) does not even offer a music specialism accreditation for a qualification for a primary school teacher.
At the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, we teach primary music approaches as part of our secondary teaching qualifications, simply because we know that our students will be in demand in the primary schools that can afford them – but technically they are all accredited as secondary school teachers.
That the Government systematically makes it impossible for schools to deliver the education promised in the same authority’s syllabus is one thing. At the same time, NAPLAN pressure, the teacher shortage, and funding pressures on principals push music to the edge of the curriculum.
Music pushed to the edge
There are wonderful advocacy projects seeking to remedy this problem, such as the Richard Gill teacher mentoring program, which pairs specialist teachers up with classroom teachers to kit them out with the skills they need to teach music. But we need systemic change, government-down, to fix such a large-scale and widespread problem.
All of this means that the chances are students arrive at high school in Year 7 having never had a class taught by a specialist music teacher – someone who actually plays, sings, writes music, arranges, gigs, leads ensembles, and all of that traditional music teacher stuff.
But at this age, we provide it, at last. We provide at least 100 hours of specialist-led music classes, in a syllabus that has historically centred the integration of all those wonderful music experiences, labelled “performing, composing, and listening”.
I call this the most important music syllabus in Australia simply because NSW has the most children of any state or territory. And in terms of participation, we are doing well.
The important thing is to grow love
And that’s why that “Aim” statement is so important. Classroom music at this level isn’t designed to produce the next Yehudi Menuin or Taylor Swift. We’re not trying to produce classrooms full of professional composers and performers – as I say to my trainee-teachers, wouldn’t it be awful if you called a plumber to fix your leaking shower and all they did was sing you a song about it? The aim of this short experience in music is to grow the love children already have for music, which according to a recent UK report is the most important thing in their lives, equalled only by video gaming.
This music education experience is to nurture that inherent love that they bring, and then open their ears and eyes to other musical cultures. It’s to give them enough of a taste in music that they think they can, and maybe they’ll do a few more years in music, or maybe later they’ll join a band, or a choir, or produce some dope beats on their laptop.
The intrinsic and the extrinsic
There is already wonderful advocacy work pushing the extrinsic benefits of learning music, especially in Australia by Anita Collins and the crew at the Albert’s/The Tony Foundation. While I do want your principal to know that there is correlation between learning music and doing well in all kinds of other subjects at school, I rather feel that I’m not going to push teaching music to make kids’ maths better until maths teachers are pushing maths to make their music better.
Music is important. So what’s wrong with the new syllabus?
I’ll explain the main shortfalls here quickly, because it’s too easy to get stuck in the detail. I’ll get into that on my own blog and podcast over the coming month, if you’re interested in finding out more.
The crowded curriculum is very real
And yet for some reason, NESA thought it would be great to give teachers 56 Content Points to check off in the new syllabus (and another 57 points in years 9 and 10). That’s one tick to be assessed every 1 hour and 47 minutes in a 100-hour course.
Music teachers are experts at teaching music. The same syllabus pared down the assessable Outcomes to just 3, only to shoot itself in the foot with pages of bullet points to be covered. And 19 of 22 content points focus on what NYU Professor Emeritus David Elliott and Monclair State’s Professor Marissa Silverman call “verbal knowledge”, knowledge about music not making music,
A step back from praxial music-making
One of the main problems my colleagues and I have written about in classroom music education in NSW is the segregation of “prac and theory”. In other words, music teachers can be tempted to draw on other subjects in the curriculum which have discrete theory components and practical skills to learn. Being an embodied skill, music-making is best learned by making music. If you’ve ever learned a musical instrument, you know this instinctively.
This was encouraged in the 2003 syllabus with a statement that learning experiences should be integrated. The new syllabus calls those learning experiences “focus areas”, which suggests they should be learned on their own (i.e. in focus), and it also removes the integration language. The result, combined with 56 Content Points to be checked off, is going to be a lot more worksheet rote learning, instead of musical learning, in our classrooms. This will be off-putting for children.
Adopt and adapt is mainly adapt and ignore
The Australian Curriculum’s music syllabus for this age range is not a perfect document, but it is one that is regularly reviewed and updated to meet feedback and research.
The NSW government have an “adopt and adapt” approach to the Australian Curriculum, but this document does very little adopting. Some terminology has been used, but it is used in such a piecemeal and inconsistent manner that it is not compatible. This has two disadvantages for Australian teachers and their students: first, resources created for teaching music in other states and territories who have more consistently adopted the Australian Curriculum will have to be “translated” to make sense in NSW. Second, teachers (and publishers) making resources here in NSW will not have reach into the rest of the country.
Which brings us full circle
What a ground-breaking syllabus would look like is probably the topic for another blog, but this certainly isn’t one. It is a syllabus with some great statements, a few improvements, and a whole lot of compromise and busywork for teachers.
That it took 21 years for us to review and refresh (this poorly) the last syllabus, which for its time was quite progressive, is the fault of successive governments of both major parties. NSW promises its citizens that their children will get a music education, with all the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits that that brings, and then fails to deliver for most children in primary schools, and keeps the brakes on the experience in this important window in high school. Other states and territories review their syllabi every three to five years. We deserve better, our children deserve better, and if we could just commit to that kind of work, with a much more transparent writing process, we could inch our way there.
Let’s just hope it’s not another 21 years.
James Humberstone is a senior lecturer in music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. He specialises in teaching music pedagogies, technology in music education, and musical creativities. James publishes traditional research focusing on music teacher worldview, technology and media in music education, and artistic practice as research. He is also a composer and producer whose music is performed in major venues around the world. His intercultural work with poet and rapper Luka Lesson, “Agapi and other kinds of love”, is currently touring Australia.
Learning music can increase thinking skills, enrich strategies
for learning and creativity, and enhance connections across subjects. We keep
discovering more reasons to foreground music education in our schools. So why
haven’t state governments acted to support music education and reform?
As I see it, music education has now been in the ‘too hard
basket’ for at least a generation of Australian students. We continue to suffer
a malaise in long-term governmental policy direction.
Lack of funding – heads in the sand
It’s been 14 years since the 2005 National review of school music education “recommended placing a priority on improving and sustaining the quality and status of music education in schools and providing sufficient funding to support effective music education”.
The
2013 Parliamentary
Inquiry into the extent, benefits and potential of music education in Victorian
schools made 17 recommendations to improve music education in
Victoria. A future direction of the inquiry was for the “Victorian Government
needing to develop a music education strategy to ensure that all Victorian
students can have the opportunity to experience a quality school music
education program.” This too remains patently neglected.
The South Australian government is acting on compelling
benefits by committing to a four-year strategy of investment and impact for
long-term outcomes to lift music education in early-years classes, teacher
upskilling and resource development in that state.
Yet,
most states endure cuts to music education, and in Victoria government funding
of instrumental music education has not improved in over 20 years. The number
of schools and students in Australia with no instrumental music tuition
available continues to increase.
Many
Victorian students in government schools, along with students in other
government schools around the country, do not receive a continuous, sequential
and developmental music education.
When
it comes to music education, there are stark differences in equity between public
and private schools, and urban and rural centres nationally.
How
music impacts wider domain learning
A growing body of evidence supports the
developmental benefits of music learning. Findings from recent neuroscientific research
have highlighted the benefits music making has on learners’ brains. It helps
develop:
their capacity to work faster and more
efficiently
A recent 2019 Canadian
study of over 112,000 secondary students found that students who participate in music-related
activities – particularly instrumental music between years 7-12
achieved significantly higher scores on science, math, and English exams in
high school than non-musical classmates.
So parents’
growing concern with maths and science education, instead of music, may be an
ill-considered approach to their child’s schooling. Responding to parental urge
to encourage a maths/science or music learning, the study asserted:
the irony that music education—multiple years of high-quality instrumental learning and playing in a band or orchestra or singing in a choir at an advanced level—can be the very thing that improves all-around academic achievement and an ideal way to have students learn more holistically in schools.
How
does music enhance learning?
Learning an instrument and playing in a band enhances diverse modes of thinking and cognition. Music tuition is replete with formative feedback and assessment, where teachers continually assess and give feedback during the learning process. Consistent expert demonstration, feedback and dialogue develops a powerful learning relationship that promotes self-efficacy and motivation to learn. Research behind the Australian Teachers Toolkit asserts formative assessment can advance a students’ learning by 8 months over their high school life.
The learning environment and teacher dynamic greatly support metacognition, where students ‘learn how to learn’. They develop reflective skills (thinking about what they have learned) and reflexive skills (responding immediately to feedback), behaviours and specific strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning to get better. Additionally, this cultivation of personal impulses and self-regulation of learning nuanced socially by band/ensemble activity can additionally advance learning by 7 months.
It immerses learners in authentic interdisciplinary learning by integrating languages, maths, science and other arts in a sequential, creative, reflective and purposeful learning adventure.
Music tuition offers a way for students to grapple with emotions and learn how to express them as they mature. They experience teamwork and an understanding of collective good and how to develop it, including goal-setting, motivation and ambition and how to attain it, and artistic creation for its intrinsic value.
The “neurological benefits of music education and its contribution to personal and skills development” were showcased in the ABC TV series ‘Don’t Stop the Music’. The support and development of this production was assisted by the Australian Society for Music Education (ASME), the peak body supporting music education and advocacy nationwide.
Further, my research on the learning processes involved in acquiring improvisational musical skills shows how effective music education develops layered metacognitive capacities for learning and creativities across individual, teacher-to-student and group/ensemble activities.
Start
purposefully and early
The late Richard Gill, renowned artistic director of the Sydney Symphony education program,asserted that music holds the key to providing a quality education system. General education can be greatly enhanced by music education, but impactful and habitual learning of music needs to start early.
Most
Australian primary school Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses include an
average of 28 hours of music learning - this pales in comparison to training
in music education in South Korea with 160 hours and Finland with 270 hours. In
Finland music learning starts in kindergarten as an essential part of early
childhood learning.
An increased allocation of funding together with a more
equitable outreach to primary and secondary schools for instrumental music can
start to turn the tide in government/private school inequity. The significance of
music departments in private schools highlights their awareness to the
benefits. Yet government attitudes seem to be that music, and the arts in general, are a luxury for the
financially able – perpetuating a societal cognitive poverty.
Considerable
research now asserts that a significant factor in improving student academic
outcomes is a holistic approach to schooling where students are engaged and
enjoying their learning. Music and the arts are central to such improvement and
engagement with school and in wider society.
Much
work needs to be done in developing innovative teaching skills and strategies
in Initial Teacher Education, supporting teacher professional development,
providing time in the curriculum and funding public school music programs
towards sustainable and impactful music education.
Two decades of government inaction must end. Our students – the workforces of the future deserve better.
Leon R. de Bruin is an educator, performer and researcher in music education, creativity, cognition, collaborative learning, creative pedagogies, and improvisation, and works in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. He is ASME National Vice-President and co-editor of the Brill Publication: Creativities in Arts Education, Research and Practice: International Perspectives for the Future of Learning and Teaching, and co-author of Creativity in Education in the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Education
