Support for Providing Instrumental Music Education Opportunities in Public Education to Deliver the Joy of Musical Instruments and Music to Children around the World
- School Project -

The benefits of instrumental music education, a style of music education focused primarily on instrumental music performance, are so well documented that such instruction is standard in schools around the world. In some countries, however, schools are often unable to provide music education at a satisfactory level or even at all due to a lack of equipment or trained teachers or inadequate curriculum.

We develop Yamaha Music Schools and other music education programs on a global basis in order to provide people of all ages with the opportunity to experience the joy of playing musical instruments and of learning about music. This track record has been utilized to form close ties with local government authorities and educational institutions in the countries where these programs are in place to further Yamaha Corporation on its quest to ensure that children around the world have equal access to high-quality instrumental music education as part of their public education.

However, in regions where music classes have either not been conducted or lacked instrumental music performance elements, it is not uncommon for music teachers to have insufficient instrumental music experience and therefore be unable to provide satisfactory instruction. A major characteristic of the School Project is that it supplies a unique program providing musical instruments, educational materials, and instructional know-how in a packaged format for such regions.

Up until fiscal 2021, the School Project was conducted in six countries—Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In Vietnam, instrumental music education was introduced into course curriculum guidelines in 2020, and music classes are now being carried out based on these guidelines. Our School Project activities were heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but we adapted through measures such as remote classes. As of March 31, 2021, the School Project had provided instrumental musical performance experiences to an aggregate total of roughly 710,000 children at approximately 4,100 schools.

Yamaha Corporation plans to commence music classes in Egypt in September 2021. In this country, local educators have criticized issues pertaining to the development of non-cognitive skills,^*1 such as sociality, cooperativeness, and discipline. Egypt has therefore begun promoting education based on a new curriculum.

Aiming to support the implementation of this new curriculum, Yamaha Corporation is working together with Egypt's Ministry of Education and Technical Education to facilitate classes promoting interaction between educators and children and among children themselves through Japanese-style music education using recorders. Japanese-style education is garnering global attention, and we look to further enhance this educational approach through the incorporation of instrumental music performances in order to provide children with opportunities to improve their non-cognitive skills (particularly cooperativeness, self-esteem, discipline, and motivation) as is being advocated by the Egyptian government.

The "Introduction of Japanese-style Instrumental Music Education in Primary Education in Egypt" that Yamaha Corporation is currently implementing was selected as a 2020 EDU-Port Japan (Introduction of Japanese-style Education Using Public-Private Collaboration Platform) Supported Project by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. This will be the third such project certified by EDU-Port Japan, following the 2016 and 2018 projects carried out in Vietnam. Plans for trial lessons at 10 schools operated by Egyptian Japanese Schools have already been approved.

The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Culture, Education and Science Bureau in Tokyo of the Embassy of Egypt in Japan is offering its support for this project, and Yamaha Corporation looks forward to continuing to this project in Egypt going forward.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, training for instructors through the project in Egypt was conducted online, with 10 music teachers educated in this manner. Providing teachers with basic recorder knowledge and performance techniques as well as information on methods of teaching children in a remote online setting was no easy task, but preparations for the start of classes in September 2021 are moving forward steadily nonetheless.

Yamaha Corporation will also partner with Tokyo Gakugei University Children Institute for the Future to test methodologies for measuring non-cognitive skills in order to assess and research the educational benefits of recorder lessons from an academic perspective. Through this project, we aim to help address the aforementioned educational issues faced in Egypt while examining possibilities for contributing to the music culture and education in this country.

Any evidence collected on the academic benefits of instrumental music education for cultivating non-cognitive skills will be reflected in the School Project and in our educational undertakings in Japan with the goal of solicitating the importance of instrumental music education in public education curricula to the global community.

• *1 :Non-cognitive skills: Goal accomplishment, cooperation, emotional control, and other skills pertaining to one's thinking, emotions, and behavioral patterns thought to have an impact on life after becoming an adult and to have a connection to the development of cognitive skills like reading, writing, and calculation

The School Project is aimed at providing as many children as possible with equal opportunities to experience instrumental music performance in their public education through coordination with the government education agencies of the countries in which the project is advanced.

In addition to giving children who have never played an instrument before the opportunity to experience the joy of instrumental music performance, this project helps foster sensitivity, creativity, and cooperativeness and otherwise contributes to the healthy development of children.

Yamaha Corporation envisions an enriching future in which everyone in the world is able to experience the joy of playing music instruments and learning about music throughout their lives. The School Project and our other music education programs are our vessel for realizing this future.