The NSW Department of Education's Time for Music plan has the right ambitions, but it relies on expecting classroom teachers to develop new skills on top of an already overwhelming workload. Acquiring a new skill takes more than good intentions and a lesson plan; it takes mental bandwidth.
I learned this firsthand on a piece of timber from Bunnings…
What Tap Dancing Taught Me
A few years ago, before Amplify consumed most of my waking hours, Ricky Kradolfer bought me a term's worth of tap dancing lessons for Mother's Day. I'd spent much of my childhood learning jazz and classical ballet, so I arrived at my first adult tap class with an entirely unjustified level of confidence. I was the youngest in the room by at least 15 years and seemingly the only person without a joint replacement. Despite this apparent advantage, these women out-tapped me for months.
I persevered. I took on feedback, practised in my garage on a piece of timber from Bunnings and eventually improved, but I wasn’t getting the call to join the Tap Dogs any time soon.
After about a year, as Amplify grew, I gave it up. Not because I couldn't spare an hour on a Monday night, but because I couldn't spare the mental capacity required to keep learning, practising and improving.
And here's the important part: I was learning to tap dance entirely for my own enjoyment.
A Plan With the Right Ambitions
Recently, the NSW Department of Education released Time for Music, its ten-year plan to improve music education in NSW public schools.
As someone who has spent years advocating for better access to quality music education, I was genuinely thrilled to see it announced. Music deserves a more prominent place in our education system, and the plan includes some important ambitions.
But after reading through the plan, I couldn't shake the feeling that they're approaching this the wrong way...
We shouldn't be designing education reform that relies on teachers finding capacity they don't have. We should be designing a system that gives capacity back to them.
One of the plan's ambitions is to give every primary school student the opportunity to learn an instrument. Fantastic. I was fortunate enough to learn violin for ten years growing up, and I know firsthand how valuable that experience can be.
I've written previously about our tendency to bundle every aspect of music education under one convenient umbrella, as though instrumental tuition, classroom instruction and ensemble participation are interchangeable. They're not. They require different expertise, different resources and, importantly, different delivery models.
Resources Are Not Capacity
The Department's plan includes developing teachers' musical confidence and capability, creating resources to support instrumental learning and exploring greater involvement from specialist musicians and educators.
While theoretically these are worthwhile initiatives, it feels that we're once again reaching for a familiar solution to an education problem: give teachers more resources, offer them professional learning and hope they somehow find the capacity to become proficient.
There's a fundamental difference between giving someone the resources to learn something and giving them the capacity to actually learn it.
Ten Years Is a Generation
The second thing I can't shake is the timeline.
I love a plan. Live for them, actually. Give me a spreadsheet, some ambitious targets and a colour-coded roadmap and I'm a very happy woman.
But ten years?
Under the Department's proposed timeline, the goal is for every NSW public primary school to deliver 20 hours of classroom music instruction annually by 2035, with every student having the opportunity to learn an instrument for one year by 2036.
My two primary school-aged children will be adults by the time the plan reaches its final milestone. Even children starting kindergarten this year will finish primary school before the plan is fully implemented.
That's an entire generation of students who will pass through the system while we're still working towards the ambition.
I appreciate that implementing change across thousands of public schools is a considerable undertaking. There are funding considerations, workforce challenges, infrastructure requirements and the small matter of government bureaucracy.
Is ten years genuinely how long this needs to take? Or have we become so accustomed to reform moving slowly that we've stopped questioning the timelines?
What if we approached the challenge from the opposite direction?
Starting From the Other Direction
Rather than starting with what teachers need to learn, what if we started with what the system needs to provide so that teachers can deliver quality music education with the incredible teaching skills that they already have?
What if we accelerated partnerships with organisations already working in this space? What if we invested in scalable delivery models that accommodate the vastly different circumstances of schools across NSW?
Of course, teachers should have opportunities to develop their musical skills and confidence. But professional learning should enhance their teaching, not become another prerequisite for delivering something students deserve.
The Department's plan acknowledges many of these possibilities, and that's encouraging. My challenge is less about what the plan proposes and more about how quickly we can make it happen.
Ambition Is Nothing Without Urgency
I want Time for Music to succeed. I want every child in NSW to experience the joy of making music, to develop musical literacy and to have the opportunity to learn an instrument. I've dedicated a significant part of my professional life to making quality performing arts education more accessible, so believe me when I say I'm cheering this on.
But I also think we should be asking harder questions about how we get there.
If we could achieve the ambitions of this ten-year plan in a quarter of the time, would we? And what would we need to do differently to make that possible?
Because if my brief and largely unsuccessful tap dancing career taught me anything, it's that learning something new takes more than enthusiasm, good intentions and a decent set of instructions. It takes time, practice, feedback and the mental capacity to keep showing up.
When that capacity runs out, even something you genuinely love can become one more thing you simply can't fit in.
We have thousands of children who could benefit from better music education today. The question shouldn't just be how we build a better system by 2036. It should be how much of that system we could build by 2028 if we are prepared to do things differently.
There are plenty of us in the wings ready to help. Tap shoes optional.