The lawns of Parliament House were covered in a rainbow of school uniforms yesterday as 1800 students from 16 ACT and Queanbeyan primary schools took part in the world's biggest school music event.
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Across Australia, a total of more than 600,000 students simultaneously performed the song Different People (Stand Together) as part of the government-funded Music: Count Us In project to support music education.
Canberra's performance, accompanied by the Band of the Royal Military College Duntroon, was the biggest group performance nationally and was streamed online at 12.30pm.
Campaign director, Tina Broad, said music education was linked to improved learning across other subjects and that the project, now in its sixth year, was having positive impacts on participating schools by encouraging children to join school choirs and bands.
The initiative also provided support to generalist primary school teachers who weren't musically trained but were required to teach music.
Ms Broad said music education in schools was ''patchy'' across most of the country and there weren't enough specialist music teachers. ''We've got the federal government committing to arts in the curriculum and they've been very supportive [of the project], but we've had eight curricula and it hasn't made a difference to music education,'' she said.
Australian Society for Music Education President, Kay Hartwig, said support for music education began with teacher training.
''What ASME would really like to see is the government providing support to universities throughout Australia to train many, many more music specialists so that high quality programs can be delivered in all schools across Australia,'' she said.
Ms Hartwig said two half hours per week of ''quality music education'' would see ''fantastic music being made''.
The national curriculum for arts is currently being revised by the federal government and is expected to be published mid next year.
