© Pixel-Shot / Shutterstock.com
Music Education
From the Beginning, Throughout Life: We are committed to continuous and qualified music education for everyone - because education is the future.
Ensuring a comprehensive, holistic education for everyone, especially children and young people, regardless of their cultural or educational background, must be the goal of an inclusive and sustainable society. Education policy therefore has a special responsibility to provide young people with access to their creative potential and to cultural participation in their educational settings.
The German Music Council's commitment to music education is a cross-sectional task and contributes to making our society fit for the future. Raising awareness of the importance of music education and implementing appropriate consequences in political action is therefore at the heart of the German Music Council’s music policy activities. At the same time, the funding priorities of many of the DMR gGmbH's projects are committed to the ideal of lifelong musical learning, from the German Youth Orchestra, German Jazz Orchestra, and German Youth Choir to the PopCamp, Conducting Forum, and the competitions sponsored by the German Music Council.
Zukunft braucht Musik, Zukunft braucht Dich!
Music education is the foundation of music education and our musical landscape! Find your way into a diverse, fulfilling and promising profession!
There are many different job profiles in the field of music education, but they all have something in common: you will come into contact with a wide variety of people and can share your enthusiasm for music with them.
If you are thinking about making music your career and would like to find out more about music education careers and training programmes, you can find all the important information and links here:
Bujazzo © Stephan Klein, Hunderteins
Recommendations on fee floors and appropriate remuneration in the field of music education and in the conservatoire sector
Music education plays a central role in the cultural development and personal development of people of all ages. It is part of social services of general interest and must remain accessible to all in the interests of equal opportunities. Music teachers are highly qualified professionals who have been carrying out valuable educational work for decades.
In Germany, there are more than 25,700 music teachers and over 7,000 lecturers at conservatoires.
Despite their important work, this is often not reflected in their remuneration. Many freelance teachers live in precarious conditions and are at risk of poverty in old age. The median income of music teachers in 2024 was €14,650 gross. In order to secure the existence and quality of music education, it is necessary to set lower fee limits. Appropriate remuneration recognises the value of the work and strengthens the social security of cultural workers and the professional image of music education.
The recommendations should be applied to publicly funded projects and institutions. In view of the different national and regional conditions and financial situations, e.g. at music schools or conservatoires, the recommendations can certainly not be implemented immediately at present, but should be strived for successively with the support of the respective funding bodies.
Maintain VAT exemption for music lessons!
The draft for the Annual Tax Act 2024, which was passed by the Federal Cabinet in June, provides for the current certification procedure for exemption from VAT to be abolished and for the tax authorities to decide from 2025 whether music lessons are ‘educational services’ that prepare students for higher education/vocational training or merely ‘leisure activities’ (subject to VAT). The consequence would not only be unnecessary bureaucratisation, but also an unavoidable increase in the cost of services in many places.
Good arguments and background information for the writing can be found in the Position paper, which the German Music Council has signed together with 33 other major organisations and initiatives. In order to preserve Germany's diverse cultural life, musical and cultural education, as well as artistic dance lessons and professional training, must remain affordable.
105,010 people have signed the petition ‘Qualified music lessons must remain VAT-free!’ by singer and singing teacher Saskia Saegeler (member of the Federal Association of German Singing Teachers) within just a few weeks. This is because the impending developments regarding the Annual Tax Act 2024 would have a serious impact on the education sector and also contradict the objectives of the coalition agreement. The credo of lifelong learning as a prerequisite for the viability of our society is being thwarted by making education more expensive through VAT.
The petition was handed over in printed form to Tim Klüssendorf, Member of the German Bundestag and SPD spokesperson for VAT, and Markus Herbrand, Member of the German Bundestag and FDP spokesperson for financial policy, at a press conference on 9 October 2024. Both MPs are members of the Finance Committee of the Bundestag. In addition to DMR Secretary General Antje Valentin, other top representatives of associations whose areas of activity would be directly affected by the planned amendment to the Annual Tax Act were also present. The event was accompanied musically by the Drumtrainer Marchkapelle from a Berlin drum school.
The association representatives also presented a alternative draft legislation with justified changes. You can find the press release with the statements of all top representatives involvedhere.
© Finn Löw / DMR
„MULEM-EX“
In recent years, applications for music teaching degree programmes have fallen significantly across Germany. What are the reasons for this fatal development? The nationwide study ‘MULEM-EX’ (short for: ‘Musiklehrkräftemangel - eine explorative Studie’) provides answers to this pressing question for music education.
The ‘MULEM-EX’ study was initiated by the Committee for School Music in the Rectors‘ Conference of the German Universities of Music, is supported by the Federal Department of Music Education and financed by the Rectors’ Conference of the German Universities of Music. It was conducted over a period of one year in the form of 70 sub-studies with more than 100 researchers at universities, conservatoires and teacher training colleges. Prof Dr Andreas Lehmann-Wermser and Dr Patrick Witte were responsible for the overall evaluation as a meta-study.
The study surveyed the perceptions of young students with regard to access routes into the degree programme, the suitability of the degree programme and the professional field of music teaching. In addition, options for action for schools and universities were derived from the findings.
The study was presented to the public at a press conference in Berlin on 3 June 2024 at the invitation of the German Music Council.
#ReThinkSchool: More Music!
The disastrous situation of music education in schools and its problematic future prospects, as documented in the study "Music Education in Elementary Schools," were drastically worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic: through massive lesson cancellations, the shift to digital formats, and a stigmatization of singing together, to name only a few examples. With the initiative “#SchuleNeuDenken” (#ReThinkSchool), the German Music Council seeks to initiate a fundamental rethinking: in the future, music and other artistic subjects must be a central element in the individual development of adolescents and their participation in the cultural processes of understanding and negotiation. Only on the basis of solid knowledge and rich experience can adolescents appreciate the diversity and existential dimension of music as a human cultural heritage and as an individual and social enrichment. Moreover, music education can contribute significantly to the interdisciplinary networking of different sciences, disciplines, and areas of society.
The German Music Council calls for the inclusion of music, the arts, and sports as the central entry subjects of the educational experience for all grades and types of schools.
Statement from March 2023
The Federal Expert Committee on Education developed the statement #ReThinkSchool: More Music!, which was adopted by the Executive Committee of the German Music Council in March 2023. In it, comprehensive measures to improve the situation are formulated and demanded in five core areas of music education:
In order to lay the foundation for a good musical education in the pre-school sector, for example in daycare centers, educators must also receive a professionally appropriate musical qualification in their training.
The potential and impact of artistic school subjects must be given greater consideration.
a. The number of hours allocated to artistic subjects must be increased, and more capacity must be allocated to music-related school groups and music performance courses in grammar schools. Two hours of music lessons and basic and advanced courses relevant to the Abitur must be offered consistently every week.
b. Continuous and qualified music lessons must be guaranteed by a significant increase in the number of music teachers in all types of schools.
Cooperation between the formal, non-formal, and informal education sectors must be strengthened. To this end, an appropriate legal, administrative, and regulatory basis must be created so that educational activities do not necessarily have to be restricted to a single institution, but can also take place in cooperation with local music schools, for example. Cooperation between music schools and general education schools must be intensified.
Universities, pedagogical colleges, and music colleges must be adequately equipped to provide training in line with demand. To this end, artistic and pedagogical courses of study and research departments must be expanded.
Best practice examples in the field of music education should be promoted and made visible. In addition, there is a need for continuous monitoring of all areas of music education with their needs and deficits: from daycare centers to adult education.
Download:
Music Teaching in Elementary Schools
23,000 trained music teachers are lacking in German elementary schools - and the trend is worsening!
In March 2020, the German Music Council, the Conference of State Music Councils, and the Bertelsmann Foundation published the jointly initiated study "Music Instruction in Elementary Schools - Current Situation and Perspectives". For the first time, deficits in music education can not only be vaguely named, but precisely presented on a valid research basis. In this way, the public discussion about this important topic can be intensified. It is important to strengthen social awareness of the indispensability of continuous and qualified musical education for a holistic human education and to consider together how this goal can be achieved within a manageable time frame.
In the course of the symposium #MehrMusikInDerSchule (#MoreMusicInSchools) on 09 October 2020, which dealt with the results of the study "Musikunterricht in der Grundschule" (Music Teaching in Elementary Schools), concrete recommendations for action were developed.
