Hi, I've been reading this forum for the last few days and I'd like to introduce myself. I am about 41, male, and I am re-learning the cornet. I played it and gave it up in my youth.

Now after 18months of re-learning I'm getting very close to my personal target - Grade 8 - and I am wondering how many Grade 8 cornet/trumpet players there are each year.

I find that aiming for something helps me improve more quickly. When I've got my Grade 8, I'll aim for a Jazz Grade 5, or maybe a Diploma. Then, I will be wondering how many Dip cornet/trumpt players there are each year

Are there some statistics lying around? I mean for all boards, not just the AB.

AB Practical exam stats (UK)
AB Theory exam stats UK
AB Diploma stats UK

No breakdown as far as instrument though...but interesting to look at the % pass rates.

Thanks Maizie. I had already found those, but it would be interesting to know the numbers for individual instruments.

eg. what percentage would be cornet or trumpet - 5%?

Or possible quite a few people can manage grade 5 but just aren't good enough for grade 6+?

I suppose we'd get the answer by looking at Trinity statistics - do many students move to Trinity post Grade 5? If there is there the same drop in entries for Trinity Grade 6 then we can assume that SS1986 is right.

With apologies to original poster for going off-topic.

There are probably a lot of students skipping grades, and coming straight in at G5, and then again at G8. If you ignore those two, you can almost make a nice curvy graph joining up the figures.

Generally it looks like 75% of students continue after each grade.

At one time, the Board used to send out their annual review to teachers & it did list results by instrument - I remember feeling rather annoyed that it seemed much harder to get high marks on piano than some instruments. They don't seem to publish such detailed stats now, unfortunately.

Thanks Bev. Maybe they stopped publishing them, because of complaints from eg. piano teachers. You wouldn't happen to have an old one in you possession, would you?

No, sorry, I don't think so (or at least I wouldn't know where to find it amongst my enormous & very disorganised collection of music, books etc!). Maybe somebody reading this will have one?

Yes, I remember that - and I used to find it very interesting. It's a shame that they don't publicise them any more....

Hi Bards and welcome to the forum
I don't have anything useful to say (no change there then ) except it just made me laugh to see that you are "about 41" - are you not quite sure?

I used to find it a most interesting document.

As to the number of trumpet grade 8's in a year - I should think the answer is "not many". I've done a fair bit of stewarding etc in my time and I think I've only ever seen 2 or 3 across a number of years.

You could try asking ABRSM if they know?

Good Luck with your exam whatever.

I am sure that there must be some "number crunchers" who prepare such statistics at ABRSM!

Do you think this could be added as a question for the chief examiner to respond to through the topic "ask the CE"?

At 41 I am older than my grandfather was when he was 40. Something to think about

Thank you for the welcome.




Feel free to ask on my behalf. I'm wondering about sending an email to AB, but your way might get a quicker, more useful answer.

I'm sure both reasons factor in to some extent.