Grrrrr, I am so cross. Entered a child for Grade 1 Rockschool piano, exam venue local private school, so I assumed there would at least be a decent piano. Couldn't be there myself on the day for various reasons, so only heard about this afterwards.

There were pianos in the practice/warm-up rooms, but apparently only an electronic keyboard for my candidate to play. In the musical knowledge section of the exam, the examiner then asked him a question about one of the features of the keyboard. Totally unfair - this was a piano exam, and the syllabus specifically states that the exam centre will have both acoustic piano and keyboard available.

Thankfully my candidate is an experienced exam taker with another board on another instrument so unlikely to be completely thrown by this, but I am going to complain pretty strenuously about this - outrageous to charge for a piano exam and then put the candidate through some garbled nonsense.

Anyone else had similar issues? I seem to remember reading of a similar situation elsewhere recently...

Is this the one you were thinking of?
I remember ExpressYourself having a pupil do Rockschool exam with a dodgy piano?

Hope the link works but it is in the teachers forum with the title "Dodgy piano in exam"

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showt...p;hl=rockschool

Yup, that was me. Plus the keyboard in question didn't even work properly!

I emailed the board and got an apology and promise that they'd kit the venue out for next term.

But my worry is that this isn't the first piano student to go there and presumably we weren't the first people to lodge a complaint.

I'm so sorry for your student. It's really disgraceful

It's annoying because I would like to be able to use this board for students who want to play rock and pop, and I like the format of the exam, but if they are going to mess people around like this, it just isn't viable and I won't go back.

That sounds terrible! As well as the board not providing the instrument they promised, the examiner appears to have taken leave of his/ her senses and forgotten the difference between a piano and a keyboard. I hope your pupil wasn't too thrown and that the marks won't be affected.

No word from Rockschool in response to my complaint. My candidate did very well, but I'm not letting them off the hook!

Hi Scooby,

Your inbox is full!!

Just wondered if you'd heard anything? I emailed them a week or so ago because my student is ready to G3 in the autumn. They said still no piano but told me which centre had one (bit far though) . They said he could bring his own (which he will). I told them they should make it clearer to applicants what the state of the instrument is, rather than having them find out when they arrive. They didn't comment!

Still no response, so I'm even less impressed than before.

Won't be using them again - it's not worth the aggravation, and I can do without parents' expectations being messed about too.

Will clear out my inbox forthwith!!

That's bad! I get good responses from email but a letter should be taken seriously!

Trouble is, my student loves the repertoire so we're going to continue with it. But if a student doesn't have a portable piano then I'll be steering them away from it.

Love the idea of turning up with removal van and piano tuner for a grade 3 exam......
Maybe all piano exams should be bring your own piano to give equality with other instruments......

Update - had to email to get a response, but helpful reply eventually received and an offer of a free grade book or free next exam for the candidate. An offer not to be sneezed at, but whether the parent / child will want to go through the aggro again is another matter!

I like the free book offer! At least the student could get something out of it (rather than just a re-sit that they don't really want to do)

Unsurprisingly, the parent wants to explore other options for the next grade, so I'm just getting the book for repertoire. Still annoyed that I had to chase them for a response, and it hasn't exactly convinced me to give them another go.