NAAE welcomes the new Cultural Policy

The National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) welcomes Creative Australia, and particularly its focus on a 'National Arts and Culture Accord' and ‘A Universal Arts Education for Lifelong Learning and to drive Creativity and Innovation’.

We note two clear actions that will be important strategies for improving teacher education in the arts, teacher professional development and the provision of resources (p.16):

The Australian Government, working with state, territory and non-government education authorities to implement the Australian Curriculum: The Arts, which will introduce universal arts education in schools across Australia to ensure that every student, from Foundation to the end of primary school, will study the arts in a rigorous and sequential process.

The National Arts and Culture Accord providing a strong base for the Australian Government to work with state, territory and local governments to build support for and ensure consistency in the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts, including through resources and training for teachers.

We also strongly support the following statements:

In many areas teachers receive little support or training in integrating creative arts into their classrooms. (p. 77)

and

Bringing creative practice knowledge into the classroom will ensure the ambition of delivering a curriculum across the five artforms is achieved. This means building further opportunities to support individual artists and arts organisations working with schools, and training teachers to deliver an arts curriculum. (p.79)

The NAAE will be working with educators and teacher training institutions to achieve these goals, and will continue to press governments at all levels to support and adequately resource arts education in implementing The Australian Curriculum: The Arts.