By Mark Callaghan, AMPAL General Manager

As part of it’s brief to advance the cause of Australia’s music publishing industry, AMPAL works with other music organisations on projects to benefit not just AMPAL members but the entire Australian music community. One such project was last year’s National Review of School Music Education (NRSME), which is now starting to bear fruit in a number of areas.

One outcome of the NRSME was the recent ‘Count Us In’ project, designed to focus attention on the value of music in education. The project revolved around the commissioning of a song, which was then arranged for a variety of musical ensembles and circulated to over 800 participating schools across Australia. The students learned the song and performed it at exactly 11 AM on Thursday 30th August. The song chosen was ‘Life Is A Song’ by John Foreman and over 250,000 schoolchildren participated – making it the biggest simultaneous school music event ever staged in Australia.

Another outcome of the NRSME was federal government funding for the creation of a ‘model’ music curriculum, upon which state education departments would be able to base their music education programs. As part of this process AMPAL is seeking to contribute an education module on copyright, explaining how it works, highlighting it’s value and showing the damage done by copyright infringement.

The NRSME received over 6,000 submissions; the highest number ever, demonstrating the value the Australian community places on the importance of music as part of every child’s education. With the review now starting to bear fruit, the future of music education is looking good, as are the resulting benefits to all sectors of the Australian music community.