Live 8 was a remarkable event. In London , 200,000 people attended the concert in Hyde Park . About the same attended the concert in Philadelphia , and the one in the Circus Maximus in Rome . Thousands more were present at concerts in Japan , in Johannesburg , in Paris , in Moscow , and in Ontario Canada . 150,000 attended the Berlin concert. In all, around a million people were present at the live events.

And that wasn't all. Several hundred million watched the concerts on TV, and according to AOL five million more sampled live video streams of the concerts on the internet - a record.

What brought all these people together? Was it another tsunami? No. Was it the Olympics or the Rugby World Cup? No. Was it a speech by George Bush? No. Was it a terrorist act? No, thank goodness. Was it the idea of making poverty in Africa history? Of course that was the noble and laudable goal, but what really brought all those hundreds of millions of people together was . . . music.

I wonder, can anyone imagining such a thing happening with any other kind of activity? Could we raise money for the Asian tsunami with a Live 8 worldwide Spelling Bee? Or put make the G8 address global warming through a Live 8 worldwide Sudoku-in? How about a Live 8 worldwide goal-kicking fest for Save the Children? Not likely. You see, spelling, and numbers, and even rugby, don't have the impact that music has. Perhaps it's because all you can do with spelling and Sudoku and rugby is run a competition, while music-making isn't about competitiveness but cooperation. In the Live 8 Philadelphia concert on 4 July, Will Smith pointed out that though the date is Independence Day for Americans, for the world “today we all gather here to declare our interdependence,” and it was the inter-dependence of so many musicians making music together that really made the point.

And it's worth noting that the hundreds of famous professional musicians involved across the world, all of them able to command big money to perform, gave their services to Live 8 completely free. (Know any other professionals who'll do that? How many teachers or lawyers or doctors agree to give a day's free work for a noble cause?)

But hang on. If music is such a powerful activity that it can mobilise hundreds of millions of people, bring them together in a good cause, and make its professionals give up income, then how come we treat it so badly in our education system? We give high priority to literacy, so we can do spelling bees, and to numeracy, so we can fill in our Sudoku charts, but as for music, which can move millions and maybe even change the world, it is so far down the priority list it has become almost invisible.

According to a 2004 Education Review Office report, 35% of schools and 50% of teachers are ineffective in teaching music. 55% of classes show little or no evidence that appropriate resources are available to support the learning programme in music. 47% of teachers make little or no connection between what they teach and the identified needs of their students. 57% of teachers lack confidence in using music resources. Only 20% of teachers have enough knowledge of music to provide a range of musical experiences appropriate to their students' understanding and experience; only 19% have the right teaching knowledge to implement high-quality music programmes.

If those damning facts were made public about the teaching of numeracy or literacy, or about the teaching of any other curriculum area, there would be an uproar. The CEOs of Colleges of Education responsible for training teachers would be called to account by Ministers of Education in danger of losing their portfolios if not their heads. But while we all love music, we haven't made the connection between that and the need for high quality music education in our schools. Somehow we haven't realised that high quality music doesn't just happen – it's the result of learning and training and, above all, good teaching. Talent is a wonderful thing, but nature needs nurture.

Some of us in the music community are calling for action. We want to see this situation improve. We think music is too important for music education to be neglected. We know that some individual teachers are achieving amazingly good results, inspiring, helping, giving their students everything they need. But these are a tiny group, and music education in most schools is operating at an appallingly low level, simply because teachers haven't had the chance in their training to learn how to do it properly. The professional development linked to the Arts curriculum has been great, but it's rather like putting a Band Aid on a broken leg.

Band Aid, Live 8 - these have been great moments that remind us of what music is and what it can do – as if we needed reminding! But we do forget that our great musical experiences are the result of someone learning music, and someone teaching it. Neglect these and we doom ourselves to a world without great music. And who wants that?

John Drummond is Blair Professor of Music at the University of Otago, a former President of the International Society for Music Education, and Chair of the Music Education Trust of Aotearoa New Zealand.