Music Education in Toronto & the GTA: What the Data Shows

By ABC Academy of Music teaching team · Updated August 2026

Toronto has no single body that tracks music lesson numbers. Not the way it tracks transit riders or new homes. What we have instead is a mix of real sources: school policy, province-wide surveys, school board budgets, census data, and sales figures. Put together, they show a clear pattern. Formal music class time is not guaranteed. It depends heavily on which board and area a family lives in. Private lessons fill a gap public funding has been shrinking for decades. See our music education statistics article for the national picture behind this local one. Below is what the real data says, with a source for every number. 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 in Ontario’s elementary curriculum. Under the province’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 only sets out what students should learn. It does not set staffing rules. It leaves one big question to each school board: who teaches each strand, and how much time do they get? That gap is where most of the variation in music access shows up. The next section covers it.

At the secondary level, the rule narrows sharply. A student needs just one arts credit to graduate, out of roughly 30 total credits. Five subjects can fill that credit: dance, drama, media arts, music, or visual arts. So a student can finish high school in Ontario without ever taking music. Music only grows in a student’s schedule if they, or their school, choose to make it grow.

Fewer Schools Have a Music Teacher Than a Generation Ago

A yearly Ontario school survey has tracked a real decline in music staffing since the late 1990s. The numbers below tell the story.

Where a family lives inside Ontario matters more than the average number suggests. GTA schools were 2.5 times as likely to have a music teacher as schools up north or out east, per a 2017 report. A second gap shows up by family background, not location. Schools with more university-educated parents were twice as likely to have a music teacher: 60 percent versus 30 percent. At the high school level, things look better on paper. 92 percent of Ontario high schools offered a senior music course in 2018. The real gap sits in the younger grades. That is where a school’s access to a music teacher decides if a child gets any real start on an instrument before high school.

A Live Example: Toronto’s Itinerant Music Program

Toronto gives a real, current example of how these staffing choices play out. The Toronto District School Board runs a program of traveling music teachers. These are professional musicians who move between elementary schools. They teach instruments classroom teachers are not trained to deliver.

This episode matters on its own, not as a stand-in for city-wide numbers that do not exist. It shows that even in Canada’s largest school board, music was treated as a budget line that could be cut. It briefly was cut, in one vote. It took public pressure and a provincial supervisor to bring it back. Families weighing school music alone against adding private lessons are working with exactly this kind of uncertainty.

How Many Kids Are Actually Taking Lessons

No published source gives real Toronto numbers. So the honest picture has to come from national Canadian data instead.

That last figure lumps music and art in with other non-sport activities. So it describes the wider group, not music lessons alone. Neither Canadian study is just about Toronto or Ontario. Neither is new enough to show today’s numbers closely. What they do show is a steady pattern: private lessons and non-school teaching have long carried more weight in Canadian kids’ music education than school programs alone. That fits the Ontario staffing gaps above. It also fits what we found in music lessons and school performance.

Toronto’s Place in a National Music Market

Some real numbers do exist for Toronto, just not from school surveys. The Royal Conservatory of Music is based in Toronto. It has certified teachers in every province. It reports over 5 million alumni, per a US industry report. Long & McQuade, Canada’s biggest instrument retailer, is based in Pickering, in the GTA. The same report says it has 35,000 active lesson students across 108 stores nationwide. Neither figure is Toronto alone, but both firms are based right in the GTA.

At the national level, that same report puts Canada’s share of the world music market at 4.2 percent in 2023. That makes it the fifth-largest market, behind the US, Japan, China, and Germany. The report says plainly that Canada’s public music education has shrunk under government pressure. It notes that private schools, conservatories, and retail lesson programs have partly filled that gap. On population: Canada’s 2021 Census counted 965,050 kids aged 0 to 14 in the Toronto region. That is 15.6 percent of the region’s people, just under the 16.3 percent national share. That is the pool of kids the region’s schools, conservatories, and private studios all draw from.

Music Lessons at ABC Academy of Music

School-based music access depends heavily on which board, school, and year a family lands in. Private lessons are how most Toronto and GTA families make sure their child gets steady instruction, no matter what their school offers that year. We teach piano, guitar, voice, drums, e-bass, and ukulele as part of our Private Lessons program at our Lawrence Park and Oakwood/Conway (St. Clair West) studios. Check our class schedule, review rates and payment options, or contact us to find a teacher near you.