I work as a secondary music teacher as well as private piano and vocal teacher. For some of my students the exam fees are really too expensive and one or two parents recently have aksed me to teach without entering their student for exams because of the expense.

However, I find teaching without the goal of passing an exam quite difficult to direct and manage. Even for pleasure, music, adn espeically music learning, is about making progress and reaching certain standards or mile stones. Without these students start to loose interest and. to be honest, so do I.

I'm thinking about setting up my own assessment days using other teachers as assessors. The assessment would be the same criteria as if it was an ABRSM exam. It would take place in my house or at the house of another teacher and the examinter would be another local teacher who I would pay the same hourly rate they charge for teaching. I think the cost to the student would be less than ?10. I'm even prepared to get some really nice certificates printed and then add their names and marks to them myself.

This proceedure would be for students who found it difficult to pay, or who find exams very threatening and difficult, or who I don't think are going to be gong to higher grades. I was also going to limit it to a maximum of grade 3 or 4.

What do people think?

I am doing exactly that with some of my students. Some because of financial difficulties and others just because they don't want to do a formal exam. The "examiners" are the two music teachers at the school, and myself. And our first one is in a couple of weeks.

I also feel that a goal is useful for motivating students but in addition to the option of exams (and for those not yet ready) I put on termly student concerts and they are much appreciated by the parents and useful for focusing practice.

Firstly, to my mind, exams should always be a secondary consideration to the teaching itself. Not all pupils want or need to do exams. There are lots of other things to work towards - for example, could you run some informal performance sessions, workshops for pupils, concerts, duet sessions etc. Could they work towards making a recording? All these are good things to work towards beyond exam stuff. If they don't want to do conventional exams, have you considered LCM Leisure Play, Recital Grades or Performance Awards? There are also TG Performance Certificates and the AB has the Performance Assessment for adult learners.

Personally, I'm not keen on in-house assessment schemes. A lot of music services have had them over the years and they seem to always end in dissapointment. If you do want to go down that road, you need to be 100% clear to pupils and parents what you're offering, especially with talk of certificates. Whilst your intentions would I'm sure be entirely above-board, these in-house assessments do leave it open to misunderstanding. The other thing to consider is how will your pupils do should they want to go on and do a formal exam at a later date?

I agree that it is difficult when pupils seem to have no goal, but I think there are lots of things we could offer them outside of exams - you just have to be creative.

I don't see why you can't use the syllabus as a structure. You can still cover the material and not take the exams. So your plan sounds fine.

I decided from the start that I wasn't going to take the early exams as I felt that for me it would be a waste of money, but I wanted to be able to measure my progress against the levels expected. So teacher gave me some old syllabus music which we worked on and I downloaded the scale requirements etc.

We did a mock exam with teacher as the examiner. It was mortifyingly bad. So bad we laugh about it now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I think I would have found it easier with an unknown teacher.

As an aside I think I would be slightly alarmed to know that my teacher was losing interest without the impetus of exams.

I wonder if you find it more the case with singing rather than piano. I find, due to the lack of structured resources for singing that you can't as easily track progression. Whereas with piano you can see the student progressing through their tutor books and then graded repertoire.

Most of my students choose not to do exams.
I don't see how this is related to progress. In some ways taking exams stalls progress.
As others have said you can set other goals if you wish.

I'm with SeerGreen and Badstrad on this.

Have a look and see how they do things in the USA and Germany where, so far as I know, people learn without doing ABRSM exams.

Also, as you are a secondary music teacher, have you ever looked at the Musical Futures pedagogical methods where children are put in bands from Year 7 up and learn to play songs from recordings? I'm not saying you have to change your secondary practice, it's just that these materials might stimulate you to think of other ways of recording progress and other kinds of milestones.

By the way, is it not likely that there is something else going on here? After all, you must be charging between ?10 and ?30 weekly, so the exam fees will only be a small proportion of annual lesson charges. Is it possible that they only want to learn for fun, and that they've chosen you because they rate your teaching expertise highly and perhaps don't want to disagree openly about the exam thing? I would absolutely love to have a qualified secondary teacher as my children's music teacher - all that experience of dealing with different learning styles......

good luck.

I worked for one music service which successfully ran in-house graded exams up as far as Grade 5. Part of the staff's contracted hours included the last Saturday of each term, and we would be scheduled to be examiners, accompanists or stewards as necessary in various locations across the county. There was no entry cost, as access to these exams was part of the agreement when schools purchased tuition, which made it much easier for less well-off families to participate equally.

It's a mammoth administrative load, when they have hundreds of exams to deal with in one term! Nonetheless, the system has worked for many years...

In France there is only an exam roughly once every four years; for most children this is too much of a long-term goal to provide much of a motivation.

There are however regular concerts at the music school throughout the year (both instrument specific and ones open to anyone on any instrument who has a piece ready to perform) so pupils have those to work towards. The music school also issues twice yearly progress reports (although I have to confess that I don't find these terribly useful).

That's true, but on the other hand even a Grade 3 exam is now ?44.00. Given the length of time the exam lasts (around 15 minutes for that grade) I'm not surprised if parents think it's a bit steep. I usually find myself apologising when I have to ask people for exam fees. Furthermore, some parents struggle just to find the lesson fees, never mind the incidentals like strings, rosin, music, etc, and an exam (which is, after all, optional) can just be one expense that they can well do without.

It's also worth bearing in mind that exams can cause additional costs for parents - anything from childcare costs for siblings to taking time off work to be able to bring the child to the exam.

Not to mention the cost of the accompanist, it really does start to add up very quickly.

We must remember that the fee isn't just for the 10 or 15 minutes that the candidate's in there - it's for the whole process right from when the entry's made, right through to when the results come. What the exam fee is, is a big expense in one go and it's something which needs to be planned and budgeted for.

I now suggest to pupils/parents that they put away a small amount each week to save towards an exam. Most probably only do one a year maximum, so putting aside even 50p a week into a jar makes a big difference when the time comes round to pay.

I think it's a great idea. As it is, not all my pupils take all of the theory exams - they might take 2, 3 and 5 for example. Youngsters in particular can end up with far too many formal exams in my view, so why not mix the occasional actual grade exam, with interim "learn the material and have an informal assessment?". I probably wouldn't issue any kind of grade certificate for the level, but would still give marks, write a helpful and encouraging report and celebrate with a cake! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/fruitcake.gif)
I've felt the same as Rockmeamadeus at times - one or two of my pupils are difficult to design a curriculum for - I'd struggle without my regular concerts, CD making and entertainment in the community (carol singing for charity, playing in care homes etc).

None of my students are interested in exams (yet) and all are learning jazz/rock/pop etc, but I still work to a general structure tweaked to suit each student. I keep records of what they are learning/have learned, continually assess and monitor their strengths and weaknesses in order to plan future lessons. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)