The National Music Teacher Mentoring Program is beginning to have a profound effect on the way music education is delivered to Primary school children in at least four states of the Commonwealth. The aim is to provide first rate mentoring to classroom teachers across Australia to assist them to deliver the music requirements in the national curriculum. Professional works alongside professional, collaboratively and not competitively.

Richard GillThe Auric Quartet visit community Preschool, Bermagui. Photo © Robert Tacheci

In a recent report prepared by the programme’s National Project Manager Bernadette McNamara it was revealed that the NMTMP is now in four of the eight educational jurisdictions, namely, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. In New South Wales, along with the State Schools, the NMTMP is being run also in Wagga Wagga Catholic Schools with great success.

As researched by Professor Margaret Barrett and her team of researchers at the University of Queensland, three key benefits of mentoring have been identified:

1) an increase in teachers’ confidence and competence teaching music, which led to improvements in children’s engagement in overall classroom learning;

2) an improvement in children’s rated singing ability, regardless of their
gender, socio-economic standing, ethnicity...