Why this matters

Community-run music and arts programmes are an amazing opportunity for our kids to further their education with affordable access to professional tuition not normally available in our schools. Most of these programmes we know as Saturday morning music classes, but the programmes can also happen during the week and cover performing and visual arts classes as well.

Out Of Hours Music and Art (OOHMA) gives access to 56,000 hours of music and arts classes for year 1-8 students in our communities every year.

Why action is needed

The Ministry of Education provides funding for Out-of-Hours Music, which is applied for annually by the host school. In recent years, the overall number of available hours has not been enough to meet community needs. Schools need more hours to run classes for kids and to ensure that OOHMA workers are paid for the hours that they put in.

A firm commitment is needed from the government to increase OOHMA funding, otherwise some of these programmes will face cuts.

In late 2022 the OOHMA tutors won their first pay increase in nearly two decades. This has helped schools to attract and keep highly skilled tutors. OOHMA tutors also gained access to paid time for their preparation and planning of lessons.

However, the Ministry of Education did not increase OOHMA funding to cover these changes. This means that schools don’t have the money they need to provide classes. This means that the kids will miss out! 

What we want to see

We want to see the Minister for Education, Erica Stanford, increase funding of OOHMA programmes to ensure that there are no cuts to programmes.

How you can take action

✍️Sign our Don’t Stop the Music petition to affirm your support for the continued funding of out-of-hours music and arts programmes in our communities!

❤️ Share your story of why specialist music and arts programmes are so important to your community! Share your thoughts on social media using #ValueOOHMA or share them with us at [email protected]  

📨You can contact Hon. Erica Stanford, Minister for Education, to share your thoughts on why out-of-hours music and arts education is important to you - [email protected] We’ve prepared a letter template to help you here: link