Anita Collins is out to change the world, one education system at a time, and she’s well on the way to doing it.
Although the challenge may sound massive, it can be reduced to one simple strategy: every schoolchild should receive a significant level of music education, and to begin before the age of seven.
The benefits, Dr Collins explains, are not to boost the number of future professional musicians, although she was once a performing clarinettist, but to foster a marked increase in children, and ultimately the whole population’s, cognitive capacity.
This would include improved IQ levels of around 7.4 points on average, greater resilience to learning disorders, even ADHD, and strengthening people’s capacity for sticking with difficult tasks.
‘Music education is exercise for the brain,’ she says, citing years’ worth of neurological research, including that for her own PhD and the work she undertook during her Churchill Fellowship in 2015.
‘My Churchill Fellowship aimed to explore how music programs and neuroscience research laboratories collaborate to produce research that assists educational and scientific knowledge and practices,’ she explains.
‘At present, however, music education is often viewed as an additional or extra activity to the core learning children do in their school years, as well as an entertainment, hobby or pastime in adulthood.
‘This view is out-dated and ill-informed… It should be updated not only so that the research can be disseminated but for parents to make informed choices for their children in terms of their cognitive development.
‘This is at the heart of Australia’s economic growth, social cohesion and indeed the public health of the nation. Research has linked higher cognitive development and capacity to a citizen’s ability to make better health choices, engage with complex issues inherent in a democratic system, actively support human rights and a culture of giving, and increase the capacity for professional flexibility and earning capacity.’
‘My Churchill Fellowship fundamentally changed my professional life,’ Dr Collins says.
‘Since then, I have left my academic career and established a business (Muse Consulting) whose purpose is to share the neuromusical research with the educational community, both in Australia and overseas, and to provide expert advice to educational systems about improving their provision of music education.’
The second stage of her Churchill journey has been supported by a Churchill Trust Fellow Impact Funding Grant, focused on developing and piloting a music program audit tool for school leaders in, so far, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, the UK and to an extent, the USA.
Called “Sound Assess” the program is aimed at assisting schools to maximise and evaluate the effectiveness of their music programs.
‘Most school leaders have little or no background in music education themselves, and do not know where to start to make improvements. While many of these school leaders have sought out my expertise, the current demand has already gone beyond my capacity.
‘I want to make it easier for them to start the improvement process, identify the primary areas that need to be improved and seek appropriate assistance from myself and other music education providers to improve their programs.
‘This tool will assist school leaders to effectively incorporate these changes into their school improvement plans, allocate realistic funding, map out a multi-year plan for improvement and measure improvement from the start with appropriate tools.
‘The pilot tool and the post survey advice session with me will be freely available to school leaders during the pilot phase.
‘It’s a bit like a health score,’ Dr Collins adds. ‘It has the ability to promote powerful conversations in schools, which is very valuable.’
With “Sound Assess” approaching commercial readiness, Dr Collins, a qualified and still practising teacher, has been actively liaising with government, Catholic and independent school systems to spread an understanding of the benefits of properly delivered music education.
Already up and running is an associated business, Bigger Better Brains, aimed at providing educators with professional knowledge, advocacy tools and skills based on neuromusical research. It has almost 19,000 members in Australia and overseas.
Anita Collins says no one else in the world is doing what she is, making her a unique Australian resource. Back in 2014 at a TED talk in Canberra, the audience clearly appreciated her vision and enthusiasm.
She has advised state governments, published widely, and her work has been used to inform Scotland’s Music Education in the Primary School Classroom report, and England’s The Power of Music to Change Lives: A national plan for music education.
She is lead advisory for the Australian Chamber Orchestra Foundation Program, which provides music education to underserved schools in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, and Creative Chair of Learning & Engagement for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2021.
Dr Collins appreciates the confidence placed in her by the Churchill Trust, saying the Impact Funding has enabled her to expand on her Churchill Fellowship research and take her research and business to a higher level.
‘It’s misguided and very limiting to think that children doing music education need to be super smart or talented,’ she stresses.
‘The point is that music education is the glue that can hold the learning process together. The key is sticking with something, however challenging. Our era is all for having a go at everything.
‘The main disciplinary fields are music and elite sports, neither is easy, but for cognitive development, we need to pick challenging things. Music is definitely more widely approachable.
Her own story is telling. When she was nine, Anita Collins had trouble with language… ‘I couldn’t untangle words.’
Her parents both played instruments, and through a school band program Anita was given the opportunity to learn the clarinet and after six months of lessons and challenging application, she found her reading had improved immeasurably.
‘Music education is not a silver bullet, but there is no doubt about the positive effects on our brains. Neuroscientific research is pointing to the unique capacity for music learning, especially in the early childhood years, to establish advanced cognitive brain function for all children.
‘That connection is well established and now schools need to be assisted to introduce and operate the most effective modalities. This is the purpose of the “Sound Assess” audit tool, and the response, both here and overseas, has been truly gratifying.
‘Just imagine what this could do for an entire generation.’
Or for the entire world!
Impact Funding, a post Fellowship opportunity, supports selected Churchill Fellows to implement a project of their design to achieve further impact in their field.