We’re out of tune with best practice, but the NSW music teacher crisis can be fixed

The music education crisis in NSW primary schools could be fixed if the government tuned into simple requirements for accredited specialist primary music teachers, and aspired to have a world-leading music curriculum delivered to every child in the state.

As the Herald has reported, many schools can’t deliver the music curriculum because teachers get very little training in music, or schools deliver it in a piecemeal way that cannot lead to the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits that studying music delivers.

Currently in NSW, there is no primary music specialisation in teacher training degrees.Credit: AP

The good news is that the work required to fix this crisis could start immediately, and would cost the NSW taxpayer very little money (especially in the short term).

It should be shocking to every parent of a primary child in NSW that our schools are unable to deliver the government’s own creative arts syllabus because of shortfalls in the system. The idea that it’s relatively cheap and easy to start off a classroom singing (choir) program once an experienced teacher is found is absolutely right. Singing programs are ideal not only because they’re cheap, but also because they can be culturally inclusive and engaging for all children.

Currently in NSW, there is no primary music specialisation in teacher training degrees, although there are specialisations in other subjects, such as maths and science. To make an accreditation available is essentially an administrative task that NESA (the New South Wales Education Standards Authority) could do within their existing bureaucracy. The heavy lifting would have to be done by universities, to make courses to teach the specialisations, and this could be funded through student fees once enrolments come in.

At the Sydney Conservatorium of Music we already teach primary music pedagogies as part of our secondary music education courses, so we could be ready to run specialisations within a generalist primary school teaching degree within a year. Once accredited, we could also create a graduate certificate or similar to help skill-up existing classroom teachers who would like to teach more music in their schools.

There is a similarly simple and inexpensive administrative change that could be made by the NSW Department of Education. Currently, there is no employment code for a specialist music teacher, meaning that this work is insecure for the teacher, and more difficult for principals to organise than it should be.

Once these changes are made, seed funding should be made available for rural schools and low ICSEA schools in NSW cities, so that their children don’t miss out on valuable music education. This is the only expense to the taxpayer that I envisage, and once a music culture has been established, curricular music programs can run themselves.

Finally, we shouldn’t forget about secondary school music education, either. In NSW, we were curriculum world leaders two decades ago, but our syllabuses have been allowed to stagnate.

Education Minister Prue Car has tried to reassure worried parents, telling the Herald that the new K-6 creative arts curriculum, released last week, contains explicit content ensuring all NSW students have an equal opportunity to develop skills in visual arts, music, drama and dance. This follows hot on the heels of a new year 7-10 syllabus released earlier this year.

This “explicit content” is part of a draconian and backwards move, in direct contradiction with the latest international research, to provide lengthy lists of content to be checked off by music teachers, creating reams of administrative busywork that was never there in the past. This is being introduced by Car’s department as we speak, to take effect from 2026.

We already have a huge teacher shortage problem in NSW, and this extra work being piled on the kinds of talented and motivated young music teachers that we train at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music is precisely what puts them off joining the workforce after graduation. The whole syllabus review and writing process needs to be changed in NSW, and we should have the ambition to have a world-leading music curriculum as we did in the early 2000s.

Dr James Humberstone is senior lecturer in music education at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He leads a research group in educative evidence-based practice in music education.

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