New Framework for Music Education
Music in Australian Schools Needs Curriculum, Resources and Time
May 6, 2008
Kevin Rudd’s new Australian Government has slowly begun putting its stamp on education across the continent. There are signs that effective music education for all school students may become one of the government’s priorities. To attain the goal there are certain basic things that must be done urgently.
Australian National Music Curriculum Must be Built
Across Australia there is no coherence in the music curricula used by different systems in different states. Once music is firmly included as a key learning area in the National Curriculum, the Australian Government must ensure that a music curriculum for the whole country is created by the National Curriculum Board. It must ensure that music education is inclusive, continuous, sequential and developmental. The curriculum should be based on the Seares Report’s Guidelines for Effective Music Education, with the Queensland music curriculum as an additional guide.
A National Music Education Resources Portal
Lack of accessible teacher resources is one of the major impediments to effective school music teaching in Australia.Teachers are often forced to create their own, but the absence of support networks in many parts of the nation means that such items are frequently not shared amongst the music education profession.
The National Music Workshop delegates have recommended that the Australian Government establish an online portal for music educators, to be created and maintained by a proposed Music Advisory Group. The site would offer curriculum, assessment and support materials, as well as professional development items and links with relevant bodies.
Equipment and Facilities for Music Education
In Australian schools music classes are often run in utterly unsuitable spaces – too small, or too big, or acoustically poor, or difficult to access, or used for storage of unrelated equipment and materials. Musical instruments and items of audio-equipment are frequently of poor quality or simply unavailable. Although a few hundred schools were able to upgrade their equipment and facilities with funds made available by the Howard government in its last two years, this went only a small way towards providing for universal music education. The Australian Government must set benchmarks for quality teaching spaces, instruments and other hardware. It must then see that funds to purchase them reach the schools.
How Much Can the Time-Table Accommodate?
Australian primary school education is currently bedevilled by a complex of severe constraints that, its principals report, render it ineffective. Reaction against proposals to make music education mandatory usually mentions “the over-crowded curriculum” as an insurmountable obstacle. Admittedly time-tabling to cover the eight key learning areas is difficult – though not impossible. Much can be said on this point, but it is sufficient here to refer the reader to the Seares Report for descriptions of how exemplary music programs have been accommodated within the time-table at Dawes Road Primary School (Victoria) and MLC Burwood (NSW).
A rather different issue is the constant stream of demands by system directors that specific extra programs – bicycle safety, caring for pets, and so on – be covered over and above those already mandated within the key learning areas. Music education is often a victim of this competition for lesson time. We can only hope that governments and education systems come to see the folly of foisting so much onto schools.
Time-Pressures on the Music Teacher
In addition, specialist teachers of music often have to contend with unique difficulties. For example, many have larger workloads because they must organise, rehearse for and often supervise and compère concerts, stage productions or other events.
Schools commonly insist that choirs, ensembles and perhaps soloists rehearse outside of normal school-hours. It usually makes it more difficult for the specialist to recruit adequate numbers of students for the programs. For music teachers this time-table stricture creates an additional time-burden or stressful interference with personal and family obligations. Furthermore such rehearsal times – particularly lunch breaks – are often the only opportunities for staff to meet voluntarily, and so the school’s one music teacher can feel professionally or socially alienated from colleagues.
The music teaching role frequently requires less than full-time employment in any one school. If time-tables and working conditions can be created that allow the same teacher to operate in more than one school during the week the problem of student access to effective music learning could be more easily overcome.
These and other conditions must be reviewed and remedied nationwide if music education is to attract and retain high quality teachers.
