The new Richard Gill School opened its doors this year in the NSW Upper Hunter Valley, a region known as the ‘heart of coal-mining country’.
Founded on the legacy of the renowned music educator, the Muswellbrook school aims to set music and physical education as cornerstones of its curriculum, providing regional students with a chance to enhance their learning through a musical twist.
“The vision at Richard Gill School is to start every day with music and with whole school singing, and for music to weave and permeate through all of our key learning areas,” the school’s founding principal Chris English says.
It’s English and maths that the school believes students will flourish in thanks to music.
“We sing songs like Five Little Ducks and the students need to revise their numbering from counting backwards from five to one, which is an age-appropriate kind of number activity for children,” English explains.
“Our classroom teacher’s working on rhyming and sentence structure at the moment.
“We have some children that are right at the beginning of Kindergarten, so their speech is still developing, but doing songs and practising words and rhyming is beneficial for them.
“So really, all the singing of lyrics that we do, be it nursery rhymes, our school song or really fun repetitive songs like Chop, Chop, Chippity, Chop, they all support learning in English.”
It’s like a “full brain workout”, the principal gushes.
“Music just lights up so many different areas of the brain simultaneously, and it’s a creative, genuine endeavour students can undertake.”
He says it develops students’ critical thinking, collaboration, listening skills, and discipline.
“We just think there’s so many enormous positives from having a musical focus at the school.”
However, as English points out, the school’s focus isn’t to particularly create musicians, but rather develop students’ learning in STEAM.
“I don’t think Richard Gill School will ever necessarily be selective,” he says.
“We just want to use music as a tool to enhance the child as a whole, but certainly, it won’t surprise me if we do develop some outstanding musicians.
“Our mission is developing our students holistically through music, and of course, still delivering all the other subject areas to their full benefit.”
The Richard Gill School currently has classes in Kindergarten and Year 1, with plans to expand in the future. PHOTO: Megan Johns-Kane at MJK Creative.
It may be unusual for such a music school to land in a regional town encompassed by coal mines and factories, but that was all part of the grand plan.
The light bulb of building the school in Muswellbrook first sparked several years ago when Gill met with the town’s mayor, Martin Rush.
“[Rush] knew Richard had ambitions to start a school based on his strong philosophies around music, the arts and education,” English says.
The local council agreed with the famous musician’s vision, looking for ways to shift Muswellbrook’s economic reliance on coal-based industries, and to prepare students for a changing world.
“A STEM focus has arisen from that, so the need for children to be learning about new industries and preparing for a future workforce,” English says.
“Whilst we have a Conservatorium, I’d say that arts isn’t the highest priority for our community at the moment, but I think this school is going to help shift that.
“Now that we’re up and running, everyone’s really happy… they’re getting quite excited about what’s going to happen and the vision that we have for the school.
“The Muswellbrook Shire Council always had plans to relocate their council administration, and better utilise the building that we’re occupying now, which is just kind of almost purpose-built as a school.”
English says the school is tailored around Gill’s philosophy that every child should have access to quality, fully sequential music education in Australia.
“It really stems from Richard’s understanding that there’s inadequacies in music education in Australia,” he says.
“That was part of why he commenced the National Music Teacher Mentoring Program, which was to try and increase the skills and experience of classroom teachers in primary school, so that they could be partnered with a music teaching mentor and better deliver music outcomes in schools.”
English says many children miss out on early learning in music.
“Before the age of nine children really need to get a good exposure to music with a good musical role model and good quality repertoire, to gain confidence and gain skills in music that will set them up for later on.”
The school currently has a composite class of 13 students – eight in Kindergarten and five in Year 1 – but there are plans to expand in the near future.
“We do hope to expand into the high school as well… so we could really see the fruits of our efforts of sequential high quality music education from Kindergarten all the way through to Year 12,” English says.
