I note that London College of Music exams have no problems having all their various types of exams whether it be classical,jazz,rock, electric keyboard,drums and so on all on the same day. The present ABRSM system involves putting jazz exams on a seperate date from the classical exams and this means that if their are insufficient candidates in a local area the exams have to be either cancelled or taken some considerable distance away from a local exam centre.

I would propose that the present LCM system be adopted by the ABRSM so as to avoid this problem, i have e-mailed my suggestion to the Board today and will forward my results here. Please feel free here to offer your thoughts and add poll opinion.

Isn't the issue that they have different examiners for classical and jazz?

Other exam boards seem to manage to hire very flexible examiners so i see no reason why the ABRSM can't do the same. I honestly think it would work out to their advantage and it would also make life a lot easier for us teachers who want to enter just a few students for jazz exams, at present to have the local exam centre used for jazz exams is quite a headache finding enough candidates from the few teachers in my area who are interested in jazz.

I think this can already be done proving there's an hour of Jazz at a special visit or an hour in ten hours of exams at a normal session. I'm not clever enough to do you a link to the regs .

When I did my two AB jazz exams I had to travel to different centres - 50 mile round trip each time, but it was worth it. The second examiner is also a general examiner, so it's possible that a "normal" examiner could examine jazz if they undergo the right training.