Where is Music Education in Our Primary Schools?

Abstract

For several decades classroom primary music education has been seen to be unsatisfactory. Several arts in education reports were produced in the 1960s and 1970s and each recommended that specialist teachers be appointed to schools, that schools have adequate resources and facilities, that children have the opportunity for instrumental tuition, that adequate teacher training be provided for student teachers and that a new curriculum be developed, based on children's developmental stages. In 1985 a new music syllabus was launched in NSW, but, seven years later, a study undertaken in four regions of the state indicated that music education was in the same unsatisfactory situation as it was before the implementation of the syllabus. Unless significant policy changes occur in NSW primary education, in relation to music education, the future looks bleak for children of the future.