Music Education in School
In the cycle of basic education at primary level (CP and CE1) 81 hours are allocated to arts subjects. That makes about two hours ten minutes per week. This time must be divided up between music, the plastic arts and art history. In the cycle in which subjects are covered in greater depth (CE2, CM1, CM2) 78 hours are allocated to arts subjects per year, which makes approximately two hours a week.
The main activities taught in music lessons at school are musical activities (especially singing) and listening to music. The teacher is provided with a repertoire of around ten songs. Special attention is paid to vocal training, rhythmic and melodic accuracy and breathing and articulation. The most important musical parameters to be developed when the pupils listen to music are rhythm, tempo, tone and instrumentology.
In the cycles CE2, CM1 and CM2 terms from history, geography and art history are taught at the same time as musical activities. Vocal competence is increased by means of rhythmic games. At the end of the CM2 cycle, pupils are capable of performing a song from memory and taking part in rhythmic games. Among the most important skills that pupils must have acquired by the end of primary school are finding musical elements, using the correct specific vocabulary, recognising musical works they have heard and analysed and being able to place them in their correct historical and stylistic context.
From primary school to collège there are so-called CHAM classes[6] with adapted lesson content. These make it possible for the pupils to follow the general syllabus while at the same time taking specialised music lessons in close cooperation with partner institutions such as music academies, music schools and conservatoires. A board examines candidates to determine their suitability for entrance to this course. In the school year 2005/06 there were 111 schools in France offering such CHAM classes: 68 primary schools and 104 collèges; these were attended by a total of 16,209 pupils (6,513 at primary school and 9,696 at the collèges). [7]