Passing the test
Forget tweedy examiners behind desks, bland pieces and those dreaded aural tests. Graded exams are not what they used to be, as Clare Stevens explains
Revisiting teenage experiences of sitting instrumental or vocal grade exams must come pretty high up any register of anxiety dreams for adults who had music lessons as children but did not go on to study professionally. So many of us faced the ordeal of stumbling over scales, making silly mistakes in pieces we’d played perfectly at home or failing to identify the middle note of a chord before being released from the torture chamber by an unsmiling examiner who probably didn’t even raise their head from their marksheet. Unsmiling examiners are now rare, thankfully; even the most traditionally minded exam boards have recognised for some time that putting a child or a nervous adult learner at their ease before they start to play will give them a better chance of performing to the best of their ability. The switch to a more empathetic, candidate-centred approach has underpinned developments in other aspects of the assessment process too, accelerated in many cases by the effects of the pandemic, which meant that traditional faceto-face exams were cancelled almost overnight.
The obvious step was to move as quickly as possible to some form of remote assessment, for which some exam boards were more prepared than others. Victoria College Examinations (VCE) has been running virtual exams in some form for about 20 years, says Stewart Thompson, who has just taken over as principal after a decade as the college’s qualifications director. ‘We were happy to do single-take videos with no editing in parts of the world where it was impossible to get examiners, or candidates lived too far from a centre,’ he explains, ‘and we did do some over Skype in its early days, so we had a basis for development.’
VCE now offers either an entire exam as a live online session, or a hybrid model where candidates submit single-take recordings of their solo pieces and then take the musicianship tests in a short follow-up call. ‘That has proved popular in areas where broadband is patchy, such as South Africa and parts of America,’ says Thompson. An acknowledged developer in the field of live digital exams is the London College of Music
Examinations (LCME). ‘In the pandemic, any candidate could come to us and do their exam via a screen in almost the same way as they would an in-person exam, because we offer a live online examination,’ says chief examiner Jonathan Drennan. LCME is delighted to have inperson exams returning but will continue to offer digital examinations, not least because of the college’s status as part of the University of West London, which puts sustainability and environmental management at the heart of its operations.
‘In the past I would have been flying around the world for seven months of the year on examining trips, so my personal carbon footprint is probably terrible,’ continues Drennan. ‘Technology has shown us that if we don’t need to fly somewhere, we
‘In the pandemic, any candidate could do their exam via a screen’
shouldn’t. Also we have to be realistic: there are children and adults who don’t want to play in an in-person context – they may simply enjoy playing music in their own home. What’s the point in making them go, therefore, to an examination venue to take an exam?’
A similar philosophy was one of the inspirations behind the establishment of Music Teachers’ Board (MTB) exams, which launched its first Ofqualregulated qualifications in
March 2019 and now has over 1,500 centres across 50 countries. Its chief examiner
Mark Kesel explains that he and his colleagues shared a feeling that the grade exam system was fantastic but needed modernising. They compared it with the GCSE model, where for decades the practical element has been delivered via recordings, and could see the difference between pupils who had found grade exams unbearably stressful and those who had enjoyed their GCSE recitals, feeling they had been able to show what they could do.
The development of an app through which candidates record and submit their performances has enabled MTB to offer Grades 1-8 in 26 instruments, all marked by specialist examiners for each discipline, which has not always been possible with traditional exams. The system is cheaper and allows more flexibility in terms of times and dates, plus Kesel says the app removes technological barriers such as managing file sizes, making it a seamless, efficient process. So much for the nuts and bolts of exams – the big debate of
recent years has been about those dreaded ‘supporting tests’ (other catch-all names are available): scales, sight-reading and what we used to call ‘ear tests’. How necessary are they for assessing musical ability?
Ali Bowen-davies, head of qualifications at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM), says that when she joined the organisation in 2019 she felt that ‘perhaps there was a chunk of musicians that we weren’t catering for fully, because not everybody wants to play scales, or to have the pressure of a sightreading test; some children react badly to having to sing. I wanted to give candidates and their teachers or parents the option to choose the qualification that would best reflect them as a musician.’
The result is the new ABRSM Performance Grades, introduced alongside the existing Practical Grades to offer an additional route to musical progress. Candidates are invited to select and perform four pieces or songs, presented as a continuous recital programme: at least three pieces need to be from the board’s existing syllabus
(one from each list) and one is of the candidate’s own choice. The exams are assessed from video performances sent in to be examined when the candidates themselves feel ready. They are then marked according to the ABRSM’S established criteria and are equivalent in standard and value to the Practical Grades, but have a difference in emphasis, with a focus on performance.
The Practical Grades too have been refreshed by a restructuring of the syllabus lists, so that pieces from List A demonstrate technical skills, List B pieces are designed to reveal the quality of the candidate’s sound, and List C includes more quirky, encorestyle pieces.
The word ‘choice’ comes up a lot when talking to representatives of the exam boards. Trinity College London (TCL) has just taken a radical decision to stop decommissioning pieces from its syllabuses when new ones are introduced, so that teachers no longer have to say goodbye to favourite pieces that their students have enjoyed. ‘We have been doing a lot of work on the kind of repertoire we serve up to our candidates and teachers and how we deliver it, developing our online e-commerce store so that increasingly our repertoire can be bought either as a book, an e-book or an individual download,’ says director of music Francesca Christmas. ‘We will still publish new books so there is a cumulative pool for people to choose from, but we will also release individual pieces, so if a fabulous tune hits the charts and we know young people want to play it, we’ll license it and put it out.
‘Another thing we’ll be bringing in with the next upgrade of our digital exams will be the option for much more of students’ own musical choices to their exams,’ she adds. ‘We’ll be opening up to new styles and genres, music that’s special to learners from different parts of the world; and of course you can already perform something you’ve written yourself. We’ll continue to support that and encourage our candidates to flex their creative muscles.’
Back in the 20th century, the exam boards seemed like faceless organisations in faraway administrative buildings, with whom one’s teacher communicated by snail mail. Websites, helplines, online forums and social media have changed all that. If a grandparent supervising a practice session isn’t sure whether or not the child is playing a C clarinet, they can tweet a photo of it and receive the answer in seconds. If a board publishes a great new piece they can post a Youtube clip of a student playing it and orders for copies will flood in.
It’s all a far cry from that anonymous examiner barking out requests for melodic minor scales, contrary motion, to a pianist’s back.the boards are all now doing what they can to encourage candidates to enjoy the experience of performing to a receptive listener. VCE certainly succeeded with one candidate, as quoted on their website: ‘… the examiner immediately put me at my ease. Instead of a dreaded chore, my examination actually turned into a pleasure. I had a lovely time!’
‘We have been doing a lot of work on the repertoire we offer’