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[bungo]

For alexwinolj, mainly:

Greens MLC Mark Parnell says "SA lags behind rest of nation on instrumental music"
http://www.markparnell.org.au/mr.php?mr=353

Comments

[alexwinolj]

Don't worry, I've heard all about this and then some...

Briefly, the plan was for the state government to slash the Instrumental Music Service. They managed to put an amazing spin on it: "Every child will learn a musical instrument"--in the form of a weekly group lesson, of 30 people, on whatever instrument is most convenient for that school (the students don't get to choose), for year 5 students only. This was to be achieved not through extra funding, but by entirely getting rid of individual lessons--so even if the students do miraculously enjoy the chaos of their year 5 group lessons, they can't continue in year 6 unless their parents can pay for private lessons. Just to cap it all, the minister's media release called this teaching model "UK best practice", which I can only describe as a lie.

Of course, everything I say here is hearsay, from notoriously unreliable sources (i.e, friends who teach music, rather than education department admin staff). I don't actually read newspapers any more, it's too depressing.

[davidcook]

Hmmm, interesting. I should note, though, that I had no more than an occasional group lesson on recorder in primary school, it wasn't until HS that we got to choose instruments and get weekly lessons. Has that changed too ?