Musica Viva Australia - Arts and music education and training in New South Wales

Musica Viva Australia (MVA), one of Australia’s leading providers of music education in schools, has welcomed the findings of the Joint Select Committee on Arts and Music Education and Training in New South Wales. The Committee considered submissions from many experts in the music and arts education sector, including from MVA and the Music Education: Right from the Start initiative. In response to its findings, the Committee makes a range of recommendations on issues including:

Building partnerships between artists and musicians and external arts organisations and schools.

Funding and expanding arts and music professional development programs to enhance teachers' confidence to teach music in primary schools.

Increasing dedicated funding for organisations that deliver arts and music education and training, with additional consideration of those providing specialist programs to vulnerable cohorts of young people including youth-at-risk, young people from low socio-economic backgrounds, young people with disability, those living in regional and rural areas and First Nations young people.

Mandating a minimum amount of music education per week up to Stage 4 with a teacher (generalist or specialist) confident and capable of delivering quality music learning.

Setting ambitious targets for statewide access to primary music education.

Musica Viva Australia strongly supports the Joint Committee’s recommendations. MVA delivers performances, classroom resources, lesson plans and professional development to close to 200,000 primary school students across Australia, and Music Education Residencies in 14 schools including three in Western Sydney.

MVA Director of Education, Cassandra Lake, said: 

The work that we do on the ground in schools across Australia gives us a unique perspective. We are deeply conscious of the number of teachers tasked with delivering music education who lack the skills and confidence to do this. Enacting the recommendations of this report requires a skilled workforce, and we stand ready to work with our sector colleagues to deliver quality professional development to teachers, such as the online 12-week Music Skills for the Primary Classroom course developed in collaboration with the NSW Teachers Federation.

MVA CEO Anne Frankenberg said: 

It is heartening that the Joint Select Committee recognises the manifest benefits of quality music education, and the sad reality that it is the children who would benefit most from music education who have the least access to it. We, and our sector colleagues involved in the Music Education: Right from the Start initiative, are particularly encouraged by the recommendation to develop a Music Education Plan to support the delivery of quality, sequential and ongoing music education, and look forward to working with the NSW Government to make this a transformational change for NSW children a reality.

The full report from the Joint Select Committee on Arts and Music Education and Training in New South Wales is available here. Musica Viva Australia’s Education Program is detailed here.