2015-02-16
Heather King and Rosanne Bersten
It's been 10 years since the National Review of School Music and yet fewer than 20% of primary schools across Australia have access to quality music education programs, taught by music specialist teachers. Not only that, schools have seen a decline in music programmes and lesser importance given to higher education music programmes since that report.
“Unfortunately,” says Senator Penny Wright, Greens spokesperson for Education, “the unfair Howard-era school funding scheme left public schools chronically underfunded. When there just aren't enough resources to go around, music programs are often one of the first things to go.”
Arts education has experienced excruciating budget hacks over the past decade. Only last year, the music and arts sector saw the tip of Abbott's boot, with funding slashed for high-profile arts organisations. The Australia Council, for example, had its budget reduced by $28 million, to be decreased over the next four years. Screen Australia — despite a large number of Australian actors, writers and studio and graphic technicians receiving global accolade — was squashed back by $25.1 million. A further $33.8 million was cut out of the Attorney-General's arts programmes and $9.4 million from the indigenous languages support program.
The criticism from arts communities is that arts funding has become too corporatised and is ignoring community need. Brandis has been quoted as supporting the 'high end arts' but not the individual. It also presents ethical dilemmas, as witnessed in the wake of the Sydney Biennale-Transfield fallout and places a serious question mark against the freedom of social expression.
The drastic drop in funds to key arts organisations is only the tip of the iceberg and it raises many concerns about cultural preservation, as well as denying learning opportunities for developing minds and reducing capacity for training skilled mentors. How can Australia expect to have world-class performers and creative thinkers in the future if no early learning and early career incubation programs exist?
What's worse, in future it will be even harder to keep track of what's changing: the Australian Bureau of Statistics publication Arts and Culture in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 2014, first published in 1994, had its final release last October 2014. Crucial comparative data will no longer be available to enable informed decision making for the arts sector.
Take note
Australia's best-known advocate for music education, Richard Gill argues that all Australian children should have the opportunity to access quality music education. “Until this country recognises universally that arts education underpins all education,” he says, “we are way behind the rest of the world, way behind with our thinkers, way behind our people who come up with new ideas – our creators, our scientists, our future doctors, lawyers and musicians.”
Recent media reports reflect a comparative drop in Australia's world rankings for key school subjects, a flailing response to the Gonski report and critical changes made to NAPLAN – the most recent being writing skills for Years 3 to 5.
But Gill urges school principals to get creative in their responses to the challenge and raise the funding challenges with their State MPs. “Technology is not going to solve your problems. NAPLAN is not going to solve your problems.”
Not all children will become performers, of course. It turns out, though, that music education is critical for social development.
“The earlier we get kids into music, the better,” he says. “Children who have solid and structured exposure to the arts have a very different view of the world and very different view of learning. We are teaching individuals, not standardised children, yet we still talk about NAPLAN tests.”
“Research shows music programs provide huge benefits to students – socially, emotionally and academically,” says Senator Wright.
With near-universal agreement that music education from a young age is instrumental in developing cognitive skills and lays down the pattern of enjoyment of learning, what's the issue with delivering it?
Music, with its abstract and intangible nature, should be learned for its own sake — and that requires specialist skilled teachers.
“The real issue for me with arts education,” says Gill, “is that there are children all over Australia who have almost no contact with music, dance, drama or the visual arts and it's because they don't have the teachers, really, who can teach it.
So you can have the best curriculum in the world but if you don't have teachers who can teach it, there's no point.”
Master class
After fighting for support for more than a decade, Gill received $594,000 funding late last year to seed The National Music Teachers Mentorship Pilot Programme, nowhere near the amounts cut from elsewhere. The programme will boost music teaching in the public system for Preschool and Kindergarten up to Grade 2, aiming to align with private school music tuition standards.
The program is auspiced by the Australian Youth Orchestra, which is networked around the country. It will create a “bank of master teachers” who will mentor “master students”. Staff researchers and students at University of Western Sydney will be involved at the grass roots stage, extending the course programme to undergraduate practicum students and crediting the course component for pilot programme participants.
“What we have to restore in education is a child's capacity to listen, understand, discriminate and act. Those states in the educational process are enhanced spectacularly by music and by movement and dance.”
The “bonus”, as he calls it, is that a young child's “thinking future” is set for life, by strengthening neural pathways, through introducing complex problem-solving activities, such as composition. Contextually, he is speaking about children practicing discriminatory listening and applied creativity. Children would be able to carry out complex tasks like sight-singing and music composition, activities which have long been embedded in European education systems.
“Creativity sits at the heart of innovation,” says Professor Jeff Jones, CEO of the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design. Both he and Gill argue that if Australia does not take up the reins and fund its thinking future, we will fall behind other major OECD nations in business strategies and partnerships.
The current funding for Gill's pilot programme covers three states: New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. All states have expressed interest and politicians and ministerial bodies acknowledge that this change is vital. Establishing the full programme, beyond its evaluation process, will require dedicated funding to incorporate it in the state education system.
The evaluation process will be carried out by tertiary educators, researchers and music specialists, led by researcher Professor Margaret Barrett, Head of Music at the University of Queensland — Queensland's music education model has been identified as the model of choice for Australia.
At this point, there is no guarantee of funding to embed this programme in the education system. It will take a steady approach from educators, school principals, politicians with vision and the community to ensure that Australia is equipped for future thinking and innovative enterprise.
And the Greens take the issue seriously.
“The Australian Greens are committed to ending the inequity in school funding and — at the same time — promoting the benefits of the arts for young people,” says Senator Wright.
“At the last election, we committed $20m to boost music education in schools and a further $10m fund to buy music instruments for disadvantaged schools.”
Music to our ears.
Heather King is a trained music teacher who is passionate about early childhood music education. Rosanne Bersten is the Australian Greens National Communications Coordinator. Image cc-by-sa Philippe Teuwen.