Toronto does not have its own dedicated body tracking music lesson participation the way it tracks transit ridership or housing starts. What exists instead is a patchwork of real sources. These include Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum policy, province-wide school surveys, Toronto District School Board budget records, Statistics Canada census and survey data, and industry sales figures broken out by country. Put together, they show a clear pattern. Formal music education is not guaranteed. School-level access depends heavily on which board and neighborhood a family lives in. And private lessons fill a gap that public funding has been narrowing for decades. Below is what the verifiable data actually says, with a source for every figure. For the full set of data behind our program decisions, see our full Music Education Research hub.
What Ontario Actually Requires
Music is not an elective add-on in Ontario’s elementary curriculum. Under the Ministry of Education’s Arts curriculum for Grades 1 to 8, every student studies four strands each year: dance, drama, music, and visual arts. That is policy, not a suggestion a principal can skip. But the curriculum document only sets out learning expectations. It does not set staffing requirements. It leaves the question of who teaches each strand, and how much time each one gets, to individual school boards. That gap, between what the curriculum requires on paper and who is actually qualified to deliver it, is where most of the variation in music access shows up. It is the subject of the next section.
At the secondary level, the requirement narrows sharply. To earn an Ontario Secondary School Diploma, a student needs one credit in the arts out of roughly 30 total credits required to graduate. Five subjects can satisfy that single credit: dance, drama, media arts, music, or visual arts. So a student can complete high school in Ontario without ever taking a music course. Music only becomes a larger part of a student’s schedule if they, or their school, choose to make it one.
Fewer Schools Have a Music Teacher Than a Generation Ago
People for Education, which has surveyed Ontario elementary and secondary schools annually since the late 1990s, has tracked a real decline in music staffing. In 1997-98, 58 percent of Ontario elementary schools reported having a specialist music teacher. By 2016-17, that had fallen to 41 percent, and 40 percent of elementary schools had no music teacher of any kind, specialist or itinerant. The 2018 survey showed a partial rebound, with 46 percent of elementary schools reporting a specialist music teacher, up from 41 percent the year before, but still well below the late-1990s level.
Where a family lives inside Ontario matters more than the province-wide average suggests. People for Education’s 2017 report found that elementary schools in the Greater Toronto Area were 2.5 times as likely to have a music teacher as schools in eastern and northern Ontario. A separate equity gap shows up by school demographics rather than geography. The 2018 survey found elementary schools with higher rates of parental postsecondary education were twice as likely to have a music teacher: 60 percent versus 30 percent. At the secondary level, the picture looks stronger on paper. 92 percent of Ontario secondary schools offered a senior (Grade 11 or 12) music course in 2018. The gap is concentrated in the earlier grades. That is where a school’s access to a specialist teacher shapes whether a child gets any real introduction to an instrument before high school at all.
A Live Example: Toronto’s Itinerant Music Program
Toronto gives a current, concrete illustration of how these staffing decisions actually play out. The Toronto District School Board runs an Itinerant Music Instructor program. These are professional musicians who travel between elementary schools to teach instruments that classroom teachers are not trained to deliver. TDSB was facing a $34.4 million two-year budget deficit. On June 18, 2025, trustees voted to eliminate the program’s 74 instructor positions, a move projected to save the board $5 million a year. The decision drew sustained public opposition. On October 29, 2025, Rohit Gupta, the provincially appointed supervisor overseeing TDSB’s finances, reversed the cut and reinstated the program.
The episode is worth citing on its own terms, not as a stand-in for city-wide statistics that do not exist. It shows that even in Canada’s largest school board, music instruction for elementary students was treated as a budget line that could be cut. It briefly was cut, in a single vote. It took public pressure and a provincial supervisor’s intervention to restore it. Families weighing whether to rely on school-based music instruction alone, versus adding private lessons, are working with exactly this kind of institutional uncertainty.
How Many Kids Are Actually Taking Lessons
Toronto-specific participation numbers do not exist in any published source we could verify. So the honest picture has to come from national data. Statistics Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth found that 18 percent of children between ages three and seven took weekly lessons in music, art, or other non-sport activities. That figure is based on 2008 survey data covering just over 10,000 parents. It also represented real growth over the previous decade: among four- to seven-year-olds specifically, participation in these lessons rose from 14 percent in 1998 to 19 percent in 2008.
A separate Statistics Canada study looked at organized activity of any kind. Drawn from the same survey’s 2000-01 cycle, it found that 86 percent of Canadian children and youth aged 6 to 17 took part in at least one extracurricular activity. Girls were more likely than boys to be involved in non-sport activities and in clubs or community groups. The study groups music and art lessons together with other non-sport pursuits rather than breaking them out on their own, so this figure describes the broader category, not music lessons alone. Neither study isolates Toronto or Ontario from the national figures. Neither is recent enough to describe today’s enrollment levels with precision. What they do establish is a consistent, documented baseline: private lessons and non-school instruction have long played a bigger role in Canadian children’s music education than school programs alone. That pattern lines up with the Ontario school-staffing gaps shown above.
Toronto’s Place in a National Music Market
Some real numbers do exist specifically for Toronto, just not from education surveys. The Royal Conservatory of Music is headquartered in Toronto. It has certified teachers in every Canadian province and reports more than 5 million alumni over its history, according to the National Association of Music Merchants’ 2025 Global Report. Long & McQuade is the country’s largest musical instrument retail chain, headquartered in Pickering within the Greater Toronto Area. The same report says it has 35,000 active lesson students across its 108 locations nationwide. Neither figure isolates the city of Toronto specifically. But the Royal Conservatory is Toronto-headquartered, and Long & McQuade’s head office and largest store cluster are both within the GTA.
At the national level, the same NAMM report put Canada’s share of the global music products market at 4.2 percent in 2023, citing data from The Music Trades. That makes Canada the fifth-largest national market in the world, behind the United States, Japan, China, and Germany. That report’s Canada chapter states plainly that “Canada’s public music education system has been reduced by unenlightened pressure from government and boards of education.” It notes that private education, conservatories, teacher associations, and retail-affiliated lesson programs like Long & McQuade’s have partly absorbed the gap left by shrinking public programs. On the demographic side, Statistics Canada’s 2021 Census counted 965,050 children aged 0 to 14 in the Toronto census metropolitan area. That is 15.6 percent of the region’s total population, slightly below the 16.3 percent national average. That is the underlying population of children the region’s schools, conservatories, and private studios are all drawing from.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is music mandatory in Ontario elementary schools?
Yes, as a curriculum subject. Ontario’s Grades 1-8 Arts curriculum requires every student to study music alongside dance, drama, and visual arts each year. What is not guaranteed is a specialist teacher to deliver it: only 46 percent of Ontario elementary schools reported having one in 2018, per People for Education’s survey.
Do Toronto-area schools have better music programs than the rest of Ontario?
On teacher staffing, yes, by a documented margin. People for Education’s 2017 report found GTA elementary schools were 2.5 times as likely to have a music teacher as schools in eastern and northern Ontario. That is a staffing statistic, not a guarantee about the quality or consistency of instruction a specific school offers, and it can change year to year, as the TDSB’s 2025 budget vote showed.
Why did TDSB almost cut its music program?
Budget pressure. Facing a $34.4 million two-year deficit, trustees voted in June 2025 to eliminate 74 itinerant music instructor positions to save roughly $5 million a year. The province’s supervisor overseeing TDSB’s finances reversed the decision that October, but the vote shows that school-based music programs, even in a large urban board, are treated as a line item that can be cut under budget pressure.
Is high school music required to graduate in Ontario?
No. The Ontario Secondary School Diploma requires one credit in the arts, and a student can satisfy it with visual arts, drama, dance, or media arts instead of music. A student can graduate having taken no music course at all.
Music Lessons at ABC Academy of Music
Given how much school-based music access depends on which board, school, and year a family happens to land in, private lessons are how most Toronto and GTA families make sure their child gets consistent instruction regardless of what their school can offer that particular year. We teach piano, guitar, voice, drums, e-bass, and ukulele as part of our Private Lessons program at studios in Lawrence Park, St. Clair West, Dufferin Grove and Oakwood, and Brampton. Check our class schedule, review rates and payment options, or contact us to find a teacher near you.
SOURCES:
- Ontario Ministry of Education, “The Arts, Grades 1-8: The Ontario Curriculum,” Revised 2009, https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/arts18b09curr.pdf
- Government of Ontario, “Diploma and Certificate Requirements and Related Procedures for Secondary Schools,” Ontario Schools, Kindergarten to Grade 12: Policy and Program Requirements, ontario.ca, https://www.ontario.ca/document/ontario-schools-kindergarten-grade-12-policy-and-program-requirements/diploma-and-certificate-requirements-related-procedures
- People for Education, “Music Teachers Missing in Ontario Schools,” Annual Ontario School Survey, 2017, https://peopleforeducation.ca/arts-report-2017-media-release/
- People for Education, “Arts Education 2018,” Annual Ontario School Survey, 2018, https://peopleforeducation.ca/report/arts-education-2018/
- CP24 / Bell Media, “TDSB Supervisor Rescinds Board’s Decision to Cut 74 Itinerant Music Instructors,” November 26, 2025, https://www.cp24.com/local/toronto/2025/11/26/tdsb-supervisor-rescinds-boards-decision-to-cut-74-itinerant-music-instructors/
- Statistics Canada, “Organized Extracurricular Activities of Canadian Children and Youth,” Health Reports, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2008, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008003/article/10679-eng.htm
- Hill Strategies Research Inc., “Young Children’s Participation in the Arts and Reading Outside of School in 2008,” based on Statistics Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, 2012, https://hillstrategies.com/2012/01/05/young-childrens-participation-in-the-arts-and-reading-outside-of-school-in-2008/
- Statistics Canada, “Focus on Geography Series, 2021 Census – Toronto, Census Metropolitan Area,” 2021 Census of Population, https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/fogs-spg/alternative.cfm?topic=2&lang=e&dguid=2021S0503535&objectId=1
- National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), “The 2025 NAMM Global Report,” NAMM, 2025, https://www.namm.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/NAMM2025GlobalReportV3.pdf