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Transcript
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN CRITTENDEN, RADIO NATIONAL
22 November 2005
National Review of School Music Education
E&OE:
CRITTENDEN:
Every child in this country has no lesser right to learn how to play a musical instrument than they do to learn to read, to write, to count and to communicate. I’m not reading from one of Bob Hawke’s political manifestoes from the 1980s, it’s the view of the Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson.
The Government has just released the findings of a year long review into the state of music education in Australian schools and it found a lack of quality and consistency across many schools. And the Minister for Education, Science and Training joins us now. Dr Nelson, good morning.
DR NELSON:
Good morning Stephen and thank you for covering this.
CRITTENDEN:
Oh well it’s a very important subject to me personally. Did you learn to play a musical instrument at school?
DR NELSON:
Well when I was in grade five we were introduced to the recorder, but just over a year ago I decided to correct one of the great regrets of my life and learn the guitar. So I’ve been spending just over the last year learning the electric guitar. In fact the Prime Minister asked me to dinner at the Lodge...
CRITTENDEN:
Match the earring?
DR NELSON:
Well the Prime Minister asked me at the dinner at the Lodge with Abdullah Badawi some months ago, whether I sang or played an instrument and I told him I was learning the guitar and he said haven’t you got enough to do? But I enjoy it.
CRITTENDEN:
I can’t see John Howard playing the guitar somehow.
DR NELSON:
Oh well, I’m sure he has a musical ear.
CRITTENDEN:
The review released yesterday found that music education in Australia is of inconsistent quality and not equally available in all schools across the country. That’s not exactly surprising is it? I mean that’s true of many other aspects of education.
DR NELSON:
Well I suppose Stephen, what’s disturbing is that it’s not surprising and what I learned early last year was that the Australian Music Association and the Music Council of Australia had done a survey in 2003 and found that only about one quarter of our state government schools offered music education and about 80 percent in the Catholic and independent sector.
So what I did with Senator Rod Kemp was ask Professor Margaret Seares and a team of teachers, academics and researchers, to conduct a National Inquiry, which I released yesterday.
We spent $320,000 of your listeners’ money on the review. It attracted some 6,000 submissions and letters and so on and the findings are at best disturbing. It found for example – we asked the Inquiry to look at the factors that affect quality and status of music teaching, to look at examples of best practice in Australia and overseas and then recommend principles and priorities to their full implementation.
But we found for example that 10 percent of schools have no music program at all. We found that two thirds of the schools said that their music programs were variable in quality to very poor, and a third of the schools simply cannot find a suitable teacher.
And in some cases, by the way, when teachers are training for primary school education in the universities, over four years they’ll spend only 12 hours being taught how to teach music.
CRITTENDEN:
Okay, well let’s break some of those, as you say, disturbing comments down. The report found that many Australian students miss out on access and equity grounds, and clearly some schools are much better resourced than others.
I think the girls from PLC Burwood played at the launch and that’s got one of the most spectacular music departments in the country. My mum taught in primary schools in Western Sydney where, you know primary and secondary school kids had never actually seen an acoustic instrument, like a cello or a violin or touched it, or had that kind of contact.
Is that the responsibility of the states, or the Federal Government?
DR NELSON:
I think we all have a responsibility to it and one of the reports which I’ve also been working on is the resourcing of primary schools, for example and we found that public schools in low income areas focus almost entirely on maths and reading, basic literacy if you like, and things like science and music sort of go by the by.
And yesterday, by the way, we didn’t just have MLC Burwood who were brilliant, we also had the Conservatorium State High School, who were equally superb. And we found outstanding examples of music education in both government and in non government schools.
But I think what’s happened Stephen is that those who profess to lead in education over a generation have not appreciated the importance of music to improving the personal development and academic performance of students generally.
And as Plato said music is a moral law. It’s something which gives soul to the universe; it gives wings to our mind and also it gives flight to our imagination, and a charm to sadness and life to everything.
CRITTENDEN:
I want to put it to you that maybe the recommendations that have come out of this report, or indeed the things the government is going to do about it, don’t really match up with the findings?
You’ve identified a systemic problem about access and equity and yet your solution seems to be to kind of give rewards and sort of special points and money for people who are doing well?
DR NELSON:
Oh well firstly Stephen all I have done in the first instance is make a preliminary response to it. I mean the report has recommended that firstly we’ve got to create a culture of music appreciation in this country from prep to year 12. We’ve got to celebrate excellence with awards. We’ve got to completely reform the training of teachers in our universities.
We’ve also got to focus on ongoing professional development of our teachers. We’ve got to have a music curriculum, which is developed and nationally consistent.
We’ve got to get money in terms of equipment and facility grants into schools and it also recommended we get the states and territories focused on the issue.
What I’ve announced in the first instance is that I will obviously be writing to every principal in the country and drawing their attention to the report and its recommendations.
Secondly I will be convening a national summit on music education to consider the report and the way forward with the Australian Music Association next year.
I will also be taking the report to the State and Territories’ Ministers meeting mid year next year. I’ve committed an initial $400,000 over four years to the Australian Society of music education for awards to celebrate excellence and that should always be done in any field of activity, an immediate half a million dollars to focus on curriculum, resources and priority needs.
I’ve also asked the National Institute for Quality Teaching which I’ve also established, in building accreditation of the university education to specifically require all of them to provide music training to teachers in training.
And I’m also making continuing education for teachers in music a priority in a $140 million program. Now that’s just the first instalment. I mean clearly I meant every word of what I said in relation to literacy and numeracy and communication. Music education is...
CRITTENDEN:
It’s got to be up there as a genuine central part of the education system.
DR NELSON:
It is indeed. And if I was to simply announce yesterday, oh we’ll spend $5 million on this, or something like that, quite rightly you’d say well that’s nothing more than a tokenistic response.
CRITTENDEN:
Okay. Look, I can’t let you go without asking you a broader, a question on the broader political scene. We’ve just been speaking to Michelle Grattan there about the Herald poll today, showing that in two-party preferred terms, Labor would crush the Coalition at an election – 58% to 42. They’re landslide figures.
DR NELSON:
Well, certainly they’re polls taken, as you’re obviously aware Stephen, and I’m sure Michelle would confirm, they’re polls in terms of what people think today, or last weekend, and unfortunately much of what is being promoted in terms of the workplace relations reforms is not true, or in fact excludes key elements of information, which people need to make rational decisions.
And not surprisingly, some of the things we’re endeavouring to do are not popular in many parts of the community.
But, being in government is about doing what is right.
CRITTENDEN:
Are you concerned by these figures?
DR NELSON:
Well, not at the moment. I mean, I think what’s concerned us more, I think is the way in which elements of the Opposition, and certainly the union movement have sought to portray these changes.
What we’re trying to do is not about this year, it’s not about next year, Stephen it’s about the sort of country we want to live in, in 10 years time.
CRITTENDEN:
Don’t these figures suggest though that the broader Australian community – which is never, is always hostile to kind of heavily ideological agendas, senses one and doesn’t like it?
DR NELSON:
Well, I suspect that the vast majority of people, despite the efforts made to do otherwise, are still struggling to come to terms with what exactly the government is proposing to do.
And if you – I mean, you’re intelligent, obviously you read and work through the issues – but if you’re the average and you’re trying to feed your kids, a car loan and mortgage, and you’re told that, for example, that you’re not going to be paid extra to work on public holidays and you’re going to lose your sick leave entitlements and a whole variety of things of which are being said at the moment, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the response to people is to say, hey, I don’t like that, why is the government mucking about with things?
And, it needs to come back to it Stephen, that in government it isn’t just about doing whatever you can to see that you remain ahead in the polls. It’s about making sure that you use the privilege and responsibility of government to build a better future.
And unless...
CRITTENDEN:
Okay.
DR NELSON:
...unless we do the things we’re doing now, a decade from now, people will look back and say, why did not they make Australia more competitive when they had the responsibility and the opportunity to do so.
CRITTENDEN:
Minister, thank you very much for being on Radio National Breakfast this morning.
DR NELSON:
Thanks Stephen.
[ends]
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