Background / Organisation
Music teacher training in Spain is only provided for primary school teachers. Secondary school teachers are not trained in music education at all. These music teachers are traditionally musicologists (who studied musicology at university) or instrumentalists (who studied an instrument at conservatory). In Spain any person who has graduated in any field (philology, physics, biology, history, pharmacy etc) can actually teach music at the secondary school. The only requirements for teaching music at the public school are that one must have graduated in any field and have passed a central examination (“oposición”) in one of the “Comunidades Autónomas”. The majority of this exam is related with the history of Western Classical Music[1].
Primary school Music teacher training has existed since the 1990s and takes place in universities (Departments of Music Education at the Faculties of Education). The introduction of the new title of Music teacher training for primary school (“Maestro en Educación Musical”) into the Spanish university was seen by the main social groups – parties, universities, trade unions and educationalist – as a complete success at that time. This was in spite of some serious concerns about the large number of students in each generation[2] and the fact that there is no specific entrance exam for music and no individual instrumental or singing classes. Unfortunately the degree is to have only a short life: because of the interpretation of the Declaration of Bologna Spain has meant that, from 2010, the Music teacher training primary school specialists will be replaced by teacher training for generalists (“Maestro en Educación Primaria”).
This specialist degree course, lasting three years, provides students with music abilities, skills, and knowledge, as well as the appropriate music-didactics, pedagogical and psychological knowledge for their work with pupils in classes 1-6 (6 to 12 years old). From the 7th class, the music education on offer varies widely depending on what teachers have really studied and on the pedagogical and didactical training they have obtained (or not) on their own. Although the majority of these teachers have knowledge of music, the absence of specific pedagogical abilities in music teaching is a common feature.