Provision of music education in the Western Cape through focus schools for the arts

[摘要] The enrolment of music in especially the secondary school is declining in manycountries such as South Africa, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Brazil, China,Finland, Israel, Korea, Mexico and the United States of America. This decline in thenumber of learners doing the subject in secondary school, despite its popularityoutside of the school, is often ascribed to the socio-economic context and the level ofdifficulty of the subject, but most of all due to a music curriculum that is in starkcontrast to what learners are doing in their daily lives.Post-Apartheid education focused on the redress of education by working towards theprovision of quality education through the improvement of educational resources,wider subject choices for previously disadvantaged learners and transforming thenational curriculum to suit the needs of young people to prepare them adequately andappropriately for tertiary education and the world of work. The demands of poorcommunities for greater access to subjects that were previously denied to them,compelled the national education department to introduce subjects such as the arts andtechnology in secondary schools located in low socio-economic areas where thesesubjects have not been offered before.The Western Cape Education Department, as lead agent for the province's HumanCapital Development Strategy (HCDS), established ten dedicated focus schools forthe arts that would become centres of excellence to provide quality arts education tosecondary school learners from poor urban and rural areas. It was envisaged that thesearts institutions would be equipped with the appropriate infrastructure, technology,teaching and learning support materials and qualified arts teachers to ensure thatmusic, dance, drama, design and visual arts would be accessible to a broader spectrumof secondary school learners. The aim of the study focused on the provision of music education at these institutionsby investigating the essential aspects of the focus school phenomenon such asinfrastructure that was built to create a conducive environment for music education,curricular and extra-curricular music programmes, learner enrolment and retention,use of technology, teaching and learning support materials and teacher effectiveness.The study has a qualitative research approach and is based on a case study design thatserved to provide a rich and in-depth description of the phenomenon. The data wascollected by means of focus group and individual interviews as well as observationsof lessons, extra-mural activities and music performances. An interrogation ofgovernment policies and school records also informed the research to providetrustworthy findings. After each finding, some suggestions are made concerning thealleviation of challenges which focus schools face regarding the delivery of Music inthe FET phase.Finally, the study makes recommendations for future research related to the provisionof Music in the FET phase of South African schools.

[发布机构] University of Pretoria