On our own behalf

If you are an SMPV member, read our e-mails and newsletters and occasionally visit our homepage smpv.ch you probably won't find much new information in this article. Or will you?

Who is an SMPV member and who can become an SMPV member?

It happens again and again that non-members want advice from the SMPV or want to benefit from the favorable training rates reserved for members because they are convinced that they are SMPV members. „But I work at a music school, surely I'm a member,“ they say.
If you want to belong to the SMPV and benefit from its services, you must explicitly join and pay a membership fee each year. Membership is open to anyone with a Master's degree in music education or a teaching diploma under the old law.
For employed music teachers, the most important services from which members can benefit are union representation in difficult situations at the workplace by the national operational team or the section presidents, initial advice from the association's lawyer and the political work of the SMPV, which campaigns for improved working conditions at music schools, fair wages and social insurance solutions adapted to the profession. Like the self-employed, they also benefit from the association's two platforms, rent-a-musician.ch, where they can advertise their concert activities and my-music-lessons.ch, where they can advertise their private music lessons. For self-employed people, the SMPV's tariff recommendations are very important, as are the model contracts for private lessons and the possibility of insuring their income with the Music and Education Pension Fund.

Both groups benefit from discounted, practice-oriented further training, from section-specific offers such as music lessons and teacher concerts and, last but not least, from the SMPV network.
On the initiative of a teachers' convention, the SMPV Bern created the possibility at its last AGM of accepting teachers' conventions of Bernese music schools as collective members. The individual teachers are then not SMPV members if they do not join the association themselves, but the management of the convent receives advice and support, and (cultural) political concerns of the convent can be taken up by the board in politics, and they are included in the political and trade union work of the association.

Questions about (un)possible private music studies

It happens time and again that someone calls because he or she wants to study music at the SMPV or wants to train a particularly talented student through the SMPV.

Unfortunately, this training opportunity no longer exists.
In 2005, the SMPV decided that it would have to outsource or abandon vocational training. There were two reasons for this: Although the SMPV diplomas were de facto recognized and music schools often equated them with teaching diplomas from cantonal conservatories, they were not recognized by the state. This became a real problem with the Bologna reform. It was foreseeable that SMPV diplomas issued after the first bachelor's and master's degrees in music had been awarded would become noticeably less valuable. Secondly, the SMPV had to realize that it could no longer finance professional studies. In 2007, responsibility for private music studies was transferred to the Swiss Academy of Music and Music Education Foundation (SAMP), which found ideal cooperation partners in Jakob Limacher and the Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences. In 2009, SAMP and Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences jointly founded the SAMP AG School of Music, which became Kalaidos University of Music once the Bachelor's and Master's degree programs had been accredited. During a transitional period, SMPV students were still able to complete their studies and take their SMPV teaching diploma or concert diploma examinations. In return, the SMPV supported the young conservatory with an annual basic contribution, and the „Förderkreis der privaten musikalischen Berufsausbildung in der Schweiz“ (Circle for the Promotion of Private Professional Musical Education in Switzerland), founded by five SMPV members, collected small donations to support the conservatory.
In 2019, the Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences was sold to the Klett Group. The latter decided to close the Kalaidos University of Music in summer 2027. This means that the history of private music studies in Switzerland will come to an end next summer after one hundred and fourteen years.

I admit that when I hear about the shortage of specialists at music schools, I sometimes quietly mourn this private training opportunity. But no, I don't see any way of bringing it back to life.