Declarations on Education: The place of music within policy

In Australia, school education is the responsibility of the six States and two Territories with input and oversight from the Federal government. The States and Territories are responsible for curriculum development and funding of public education while the Federal government funds specific and targeted agendas. Since 1989 the Education ministers have arrived at a series of agreed statements and principles to guide the provision and implementation of Education including: The Hobart Declaration on Schooling (1989), The Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century (1999), The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008), and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (2019). Each declaration has impacted on the development and implementation of policy, particularly as it relates to music and the arts. The paper presents an analysis of the place of music and the Arts within the curriculum and policy documents that have emerged from each of the Declarations. It outlines the first attempts at a national Australian curriculum in the early 1990s that led to development of the Australian Curriculum (2014). The various curricula that have eventuated have had an overriding agenda of equity of provision and opportunity, and an accommodation of the diversity in Australia