YOUR CONCERNS ABOUT MUSIC AND THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM

The Music Council of Australia (MCA) is informed of anxiety among school music teachers about the consequences for music of the new National Curriculum. This missive is to tell you what we know and to invite you to post questions or comments.

Richard Letts, Executive Director, MCA

A quick list of things from the past that are relevant today

  • In the early 90s there was a parallel situation. The Federal Government chose Key Learning Areas and omitted the arts. A cross-artform alliance, the National Affiliation of Arts Educators (NAAE), fought back and succeeded in having the arts included. Five separate artforms were written into the national curriculum, as recommended by NAAE.
  • However, due to changes of government across the country in 1993, the notion of a ‘national curriculum’ was scrapped, and each (by now Conservative) State and Territory created its own arts curricula, some reflecting the five artform approach as intended by NAAE, and others setting up ‘creative arts’ curricula, combining the four or five artforms into a blancmange that became the staple subject in university preservice courses for primary school teachers. We all know the result of that.
  • In 2005, the National Review of School Music Education (NRSME), commissioned by then Education Minister Brendan Nelson, made 99 recommendations about music education. The Coalition government took baby steps to implement them and then lost office. The Labor government has made promises but mostly not yet kept them. The review of music education was followed shortly afterwards with another for visual arts. Both recommended universal education in their respective artforms. The other three artforms have not had reviews.
  • The Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA) issued a manifesto with the objective of narrowing the curriculum to focus on four core subjects (literacy, mathematics, science and social education), excluding the arts. The National Review was ignored. Efforts by the MCA and others to have the arts included were not successful, although their importance at some subsidiary level was acknowledged.
  • Last year, the Labor government announced the creation of a National Curriculum. The arts were omitted from the schedule as then announced. The NAAE (now, National Advocates for Arts Education) was reconstituted to include MCA and NAVA and, supporting action by Arts Minister Garrett, persuaded the Education Ministers to include the arts in Tier 2 of the work. Inclusion is critical because on it may depend the availability of funds and resources.
  • The Education Ministers in December 2008 issued the Melbourne Declaration, describing in broad terms the education that every child should receive. Included is an education in “the performing and visual arts”. An important plus.
  • As a consequence of these two actions, governments are now committed to a process involving all five artforms. Creation of a national curriculum is implicitly to be followed by its implementation, which means all five artforms are to be taught. There is no hint that any is to be preferred over the others.

The process of creating the national curriculum

  • The process is the responsibility of a new body, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). The person in charge of the process is Rob Randall, who previously worked in curriculum development for the NSW Department. The researcher in charge for the arts is Josephine Wise. The office is in Melbourne but moves to Sydney in the new year. Website is www.acara.edu.au .
  • We have met, through the NAAE, with Rob Randall. MCA is also represented on ACARA’s official reference group for the arts. Our experience is that Randall is exceptionally open to the issues and that ACARA promises a process that will seek the opinions of all who wish to volunteer them. You do not need to fear exclusion from this consultative process. Your input will be invited.
  • ACARA will prepare separate curricula for each of the artforms. There will be a music curriculum with integrity. The so-called subject called “creative arts” will not exist in the National Curriculum, so far as is evident at this time. We know of no-one who is arguing for its retention (including ACARA). It seems that the design process will take account of existing curricula.
  • ACARA envisages completing the curriculum in mid-2012. Presumably, implementation will begin as practicable thereafter, from 2013.

What do we want? Advocacy considerations

  • The MCA has just reaffirmed its objective: that every child should have access to a continuous, sequential, developmental music education throughout the school years. Indeed, it has fought for years to achieve this objective. Rumours to the contrary are mistaken.
  • You probably know of our campaign, Music. Play for Life. You probably know of the Music. Count Us In project, the Flame Awards, Guitars for Schools, IGNITE and others. We had much to do with the instigation of the National Review of School Music Education. We commissioned the Stevens Report and have just completed research into preservice music training for primary school teachers.
  • It’s not so easy to figure out advocacy strategies. Deciding what we want is one thing. But it’s only the first step. We have to consider the situation and interests of the people we are trying to persuade and the context. And whether what we want is feasible.
  • The context has changed. In the National Curriculum process, governments are dealing with all of the five artforms, not just music as was the case when we advocated for music and the National Review resulted. The National Curriculum will deal equitably with all five artforms.
  • The arts are in the National Curriculum because of a united front by the artform organisations. (Minister Garrett’s office tells us it’s because of!) We need to honour each other.
  • We need also to remember that this is for the kids. Speaking personally, I have run a multi-arts school. I know that some kids are best served by music and others aren’t. Our objective is to mandate the provision, the opportunity.
  • ACARA has the responsibility to create a curriculum, not to implement it. Nevertheless, it has a concern that its curriculum is capable of being implemented.

Teacher skills

  • High schools use music specialists so teaching skills there are not such a problem. Primary schools are the big problem in the six states (other than Qld and Tas) where music teaching is the responsibility of primary classroom generalist teachers.
  • To reinforce our understanding of this situation: Ian Harvey extracted figures from the MCA’s Stevens Report: about six years ago, only 23% of public schools had the resources to offer a competently delivered music education.
  • The main reason for inadequacy: the average amount of compulsory music training received by undergraduates in preservice degrees for primary classroom generalist teachers is 17 hours, as just revealed by MCA research by Rachel Hocking. A curriculum written to match their musical skills thus will be very short and very useless. The curriculum for Qld and Tas, where there is very widespread use of music specialists, would be quite different.  [Both the research reports mentioned here can be found under MCA RESEARCH on www.mca.org.au ]
  • So for whom is ACARA writing the music curriculum? The specialist teachers of Qld and Tas, or the almost totally untrained generalist teachers in the other states? (Of course, some generalist teachers are good music teachers, but that is not a result of the mandatory music instruction in their undergrad degree programs and we cannot assume that those extra skills are widespread.)
  • So we would assert that it is pointless for ACARA to write a curriculum to match the skills of the ordinary primary generalist classroom teacher. On the other hand, can it assume that governments will pay for upgrading the musical skills of the teaching force?
  • There is a very strong body of opinion in the music education community that the only successful solution will be the introduction of specialist music teachers into every primary school. Then the curriculum would be written for their skills.
  • There is another long-standing view that music is best taught by the classroom teacher because it can then be integrated into the daily life of the classroom and into the teaching of other subjects. There certainly is merit in the argument but only if the classroom teacher is capable of teaching music. Strategically it obviously is dangerous because the delegation of music teaching to classroom teachers has not been supported with training and resources. It has been a way of evading the problem rather than solving it.
  • Is it anyway conceivable that mandatory preservice training could be stepped up to a level adequate to the need: say, weekly music classes for all four years of an undergraduate degree? (And remember that increasingly, teacher qualifications are gained through one to two years postgrad courses, so weekly music classes for that short period would also be inadequate.)
  • ACARA is considering skirting the problem by setting a curriculum around a concept of what we want the kids to know/do at the end of each grade level. That’s not a bad strategy. But whatever it is we want them do know/do, they are not going to get there under the leadership of a classroom teacher with 17 hours of music education.
  • So the issue is one of resources. It was always one of resources. Having a fine curriculum is a good thing but governments have to be willing to provide the funds to pay for it to be taught and the key expense is the cost of skilled teachers.

Five artforms

  • We have to consider that since governments have agreed to the construction of curricula for all five art forms, they will be called upon to apply similar strategies to all.
  • As noted, MCA and probably many readers have worked for universal provision of continuous, sequential, developmental music education. That is our aspiration and goal.
  • ACARA has accepted, I believe, that curricula in each of the arts should be continuous, sequential and developmental. That is also the aspiration and goal of the representatives of the other artforms in the NAAE.
  • You could say that a logical consequence is that the collective goal is to have continuous etc education in all artforms in every school throughout the compulsory school years. Let us assess this.
  • The UK government has announced this year that it intends that every school student will have five hours of instruction in the arts per week1. Translated here, that would mean that say, each artform would have an hour a week of school time. The implication is that it is feasible, though it has not been implemented yet in the UK so that is, so far, only a concept.
  • 80% of public schools do not offer a continuous etc music education. It is reasonable to infer that a similar proportion do not offer such an education in the other artforms.
  • If this instruction were to be delivered by classroom generalists, they would have to become skilled in five artforms. I’m not skilled in five artforms, are you? Honestly, I doubt I could be. And to try to make me skilled would take about half the instructional time in my undergraduate degree, with very uncertain outcomes. We would need specialist teachers in all five artforms in every school. That is achievable, over time, if governments would pay. Would they?
  • The school week has 25 hours. ACARA says the principals would be unwilling to have every hour of the week tagged to some subject so we should consider that there are 20 hours available. We are advised to assume that half will go to literacy and numeracy, with the other 10 hours divided between science, history, geography etc and the arts.
  • How much time does each artform need? How much time can the arts claim without being seen as outrageous?

Alternatives

  • We could go for broke. All the arts for every child, full-blown curricula and delivery.
  • Music could say, well that isn’t going to happen. The main thing is to ensure that there is continuous music education in every school. The other arts are not so important. Would that argument work? Whose nose would that get up?
  • At the ACARA reference group meeting, one breakout group proposed “all the arts some of the time, some of the arts all the time.” The NAAE suggests continuous etc education in at least two artforms, chosen by the school, rich but not continuous experiences in all others. The intention is to find a workable solution considering likely constraints on class time and resources
  • The NAAE construct has become known in the music education community and is criticised as too much of a compromise because it abandons the proposition that music would be mandatory for all schools.
  • It would, however, not prevent music lobbying schools or governments to ensure that in all or most cases, music is one of the selected artforms. We can use the same arguments that we have been using up to now, based on research etc. They are good arguments and we have them in abundance.
  • The NAAE formulation was a response to questions from ACARA about the circumstances for which it will write the curricula. For instance, how much weekly class time should be given to each artform. That depends on how much is available in total and how many artforms have to be fitted into it. Five artforms into five hours is great, but how likely is it? Five artforms into two hours is terrible, but two hours is probably more than most primary schools are giving now. How would untrained teachers even fill two hours? Two artforms into two hours would support decent curricula…You can see the line of thinking. What assumptions can be made?
  • As noted at the top of the paper, the Australian Primary Principals Association excluded the arts from its four core subjects and has been impervious to protest. We have no reason to accept APPA’s formulation, but nevertheless, it is better that it is not an active opposition. It accepted the NAAE position as ‘reasonable’, ‘achieveable’. (Maybe it’s too reasonable?)
  • What other alternatives are there?

What should be in the music curriculum?

  • There seems to be agreement across the artform reps in the ACARA reference group that fundamentally, the curricula should be about making art – for music, creating, playing.
  • All the research showing the benefits of music education that I can think of is based on the results of music-making. It is in music-making that we find the special advantages of music education – the integration of the cognitive, affective, kinaesthetic, the special effects on self-confidence, socialisation, self-discipline and so on. These benefits to students are also our best advocacy arguments.
  • There are other more particular issues:
    • Singing as the basis of the music-making curriculum
    • But wherever possible, instrumental playing too
    • Arguments about which genres should be included: pop, classical, jazz, non-Western
    • Inclusion of history, music analysis, theory etc
    • Inclusion of technology

External providers
A few thoughts.

  • If we are to teach even an adequate music curriculum, we will need many more musically skilled teachers. If every primary classroom was served by a specialist music teacher, we would need thousands of new teachers. Where do we find them and how do we train them?
  • Well, there’s a lot of trained musicians who might be recruited into the schools if the regulations were changed and the employment conditions considered their needs along with everyone else’s.
  • In NSW, for one, a person qualified only as a specialist music teacher cannot be employed as a primary school teacher, under the regulations, even if they will teach only music. Every teacher must have a generalist classroom qualification. This in a situation where music is mandatory but the classroom teachers are not trained to teach it. Is this sane?
  • Why not make it attractive for trained musicians to teach in schools, rather than an obstacle course?
  • In England, schools are served by a “music service”, a stable of trained music specialists that can assure standards, encourage innovation, offer collegiality that may be missing for school-based music teachers.
  • In Australia, we have organisations such as Musica Viva and the Song Room that bring visiting musicians to perform in classrooms and offer professional development to classroom teachers. As it stands, such a service does not meet our objective of providing continuous education. But there would be something to be said for expanding those services, basing the entire music curriculum around such visits from live musicians and contracting out the provision of music education to these or similar organisations, provided that it is based on music-making and is continuous, sequential and developmental.
  • In Australia, we also have service programs under the education departments, such as those that offer instrumental instruction in WA and SA. SA is conducting some interesting experiments to broaden the approach, including such improbabilities as whole-of-class instrumental learning (apparently interestingly successful so far).
  • This is in fact a time of paradigm shift in a number of programs around the world. We want to achieve high standards but we could let our imaginations loose about how to get there.

Your chance for discussion

  • There will be an opportunity to make submissions directly to ACARA
  • However, if you would like to comment on the points offered above, or test or discuss your own ideas before going to ACARA, you can do so here: below, in comments.

Footnotes

1) The 5 hours cultural entitlement – and note the use of the term culture NOT arts – is linked to the Find Your Talent initiative which was launched last year. It is echoing the 5 hour sports offer and includes time a child may spend in or out of school. So far 10 “pathfinders” ie regional consortia of organisations, local authorities, schools etc are piloting what a 5 hour cultural offer would look like and piloting activities.

The difference between arts and culture is crucial as culture includes museums, archives and libraries which is not “art” necessarily.

You can find both on the internet:
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/primarycurriculumreview/
http://www.findyourtalent.org/

(Thanks to Veronica Jobbins in the UK.)

[This post was updated with minor corrections and additional information on: 03/10/2009, 05/10/2009]