A crisis in primary school music education is also happening, and it’s over a decade old. The musicians you mention in your article on the tertiary sector (“Facing the music”, August 12) will probably have either gone to primary school in an era when music and the arts were more valued or attended a primary school that could afford to buy in musical expertise, though with a significant school fee.
The National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement says students in Years 4 and 8 received an average of 11 minutes a week of classroom music in 2021. The NMSSA reports half of principals rated dance, drama and music as having low priority relative to other learning areas. Only a small proportion of teachers said they had taken part in professional learning and development in the arts over the past five years. Add to the mix research that teacher trainees get less than six hours of music pedagogy in total over three years and you have a crisis.
The arts are an “essential learning area” in the compulsory New Zealand curriculum. Advocates have been trying to get the Ministry of Education’s attention. The ministry says schools have flexibility to deliver their own local curricula based on
