Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about an exciting upcoming school initiative, Music: Count Us In. On Thursday, 29 October, more than 500,000 students from more than 2,100 schools across Australia will come together for one of our biggest school initiatives. Participating schools across the country will all sing the same song at exactly the same time.

Last year we watched 1,000 students fill the Great Hall for this event, which is supported by the Department of Education and Training. This year I will join Grovely State School, in my electorate, who have a wonderful program planned. All the students will gather in the school quad to count down and sing with participating schools from all over Australia streamed through live webcasts. Not only will the whole school sing, but they will also have members of their band and strings program and their youngest class of recorder players play. They are also including members of the community who rehearse at the schools, such as the No Strings Attached concert band and, hopefully, the community zumba class to add rhythm to the event.

Once again, the song chosen is a song written by selected students from across Australia, working with Marcia Hines and John Foreman. So it really will be a wonderful initiative and a great opportunity to promote music education, and I encourage any schools not already involved to sign up at www.musicaustralia.org.au.