February 2004

Cecilia Keaveney to present report on Music in Primary Schools to Dáil

Cecilia Keaveney will present her findings of the first-ever study into Music in Primary Schools, conducted in Donegal, to the Dáil, in the coming weeks.

As a former music teacher, Cecilia has been trying to find ways of bringing more and better music into the education system, at early ages. "I am very pleased at the level of participation we got for this study, as 118 of the 176 primary schools in the county responded to our questions. Not only that, but 67% of those who took part did more than tick boxes in answer to questions, they made a point of writing additional notes with their experiences and concerns as well. This gives us a very high level of feedback which must be taken into account when planning the implementation of the new music curriculum", she said. The main points of the study show that while most schools (79%) strong or very strong interest) are quite interested in developing their music education programme, they feel that they do not currently have the resources to deliver such a programme well (62% fair, weak or very weak capacity).They cited lack of human resources, time resources and musical instruments as the main obstacles to developing music education programmes, while only 3% cited lack of interest.

I believe there is a strong link between all three of those factors preventing the development of music education. If a person doesn't have a strong music background, it will take them a lot of time to prepare and organise resources and materials, which are not readily available. Because of this difficulty, the reality is that the programme just doesn't happen, Deputy Keaveney said. She believes that a development of a workbook, a teachers' book and accompanying tapes of cds would greatly help teachers.

Other important points highlighted in the study, are the fact that singing goes on in most of the schools and about half also use percussion or instruments.

A number of schools have brought in drums and found it had a tremendous benefit on their special needs students, it helped their confidence and co-ordination and gave them such a boost to find they could do something better than other students. One teacher was so impressed that she wrote, " We noticed an amazing improvement in children's readiness to read after total immersion in rhythm work, nursery rhymes, songs, etc. As a recent example, in our senior rooms we have several children with learning disabilities. Even without very much guidance, the introduction of a drum to the classroom has led to three boys being able to keep a consistent beat, something unthinkable six months ago".

Deputy Keaveney is particularly pleased at the way teachers responded to the study. "I am delighted that the teachers, filling in the forms, were honest with me. It means we can start from the reality of their situation. I would like the recommendations of this report to be fast-tracked and Donegal to be run as a pilot project on music in education. There is no point imposing a solution without taking into account what teachers themselves are saying, now we know we should try to keep the delivery of the new music curriculum as practical as possible."

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