STUDENTS from St Augustine’s Primary School, Currumbin Waters, have raised their voices in collective song to support the “Music: Count Us In” campaign.
After weeks of practise, the school joined more than 350,000 other school students from more than 1600 schools around Australia simultaneously singing a song especially written for the occasion by musician John Foreman and four Melbourne senior music students.
St Augustine’s was part of the nationwide campaign that included Federal Arts Minister and former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, to raise the profile of music in schools.
“It’s great to sing with all your friends”, “it gives me a great feeling to sing with everybody”, “it makes you feel good”, “it’s fun”, “I loved seeing myself on TV”, “it was funny when Mrs Pullen had to keep holding her arms up for the photo” – were some of the comments students made following the event.
From tiny rural schools to big city schools “Music: Count Us In” gave principals, teachers, parents and students a focal point for discussions about the value of music in schools and an opportunity to collectively, loudly, celebrate it and make the call for more.
The idea came from a national music workshop in 2006.
It was a response to the first recommendation of the National Review of School Music Education: that the status and value placed on school music education needed to be raised much higher in Australian schools.
St Augustine’s music teacher Deirdre Pullen said research showed learning music can make significant differences to children’s abilities.
“Children who are active music-makers are more likely to have improved maths and language performance, better reasoning capacity and problem-solving skills,” she said.
“Their memory is more likely to improve, as are their social and team skills.”
She said the 2008 song, called Sing, was a joyous, upbeat song composed by four Victorian high school students in a songwriting workshop led by John Foreman.
Singer Kate Ceberano also lent her voice to recording the song and instrumental scores and charts were developed for almost every conceivable school music situation – choirs, orchestras, even ukulele groups.
