Basic education in the arts is provided to all children as part of their compulsory education. The Department of Education, Youth and Sport is responsible for arts education in Monaco.
Arts education is compulsory for students at the primary (6 to 11 year-olds) and secondary (11 to 15 year-olds) school levels. Students of the high school (15 to 18 year-olds), are offered arts education as an option.
In the early 1990s, the government introduced a policy facilitating cooperation between the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Education, Youth and Sport, to extend cultural education to schoolchildren.
The Department of Cultural Affairs offers a programme of cultural activities which covers music, drama, opera and dance. It is based on an ongoing dialogue between performers and schoolchildren. The programmes include introducing young people to works of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ballet Company.
Different policy objectives of arts education have been defined for the various levels of education:
- in primary schools, cultural education focuses on learning about the body and the range of artistic expression;
- in secondary schools, the objective is to learn about techniques and other cultures through stage performances;
- at the high school, the aim is to teach pupils to develop their own cultural lives and to encourage a more in-depth attitude to creative work in order to bridge the gap between their cultural and professional existences.
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