I am interested in guaging peoples' opinion on the consistency of ABRSM examiners. ABRSM claims to be very professional in its examination system and ensures that grades awarded are consistent across examiners. I found this was not the case. At one series of exams I was awarded 97/150 and the next series (same exam, new pieces and six months later) I was awarded 117/150. I know that the standard was not that different between the two performances and yet the marks differed by 20 points. Have others had similar experiences?

Yeah i know almost exactly where you are comming from! I took a piano exam quite recently and the examiner i had seemed to get his marks from who-knows-where! because he gave people who were totally rubbish really high marks and people who were quite good and were expected to gain distinctions, marks ranging from 100-110!! Well, in my case he said that my scales were rubbish (not in so many words obviously!) but that my arpeggios were "very secure" well i messed up EVERY single one of my arpeggios because i didnt know them! i mean that's just ridiculous and he said that my sight reading was rubbish too even though i know for a fact that it wasnt cos that's the one thing that i am extremelly good at!! So i really dont know what on earth had gone on there!!!

I really hope i dont get someone like that again!!

I had exactly the same prob.

Last Easter I took my grade 6 piano, thought it went really badly as I got stuck in one of my pieces, and made up the aural tests! However, when I got the mark back, i was sooooo shocked! 145/150!!! Distinction!!!

When taking my grade 7 at xmas, I wasn't expecting that again, but I thought the exam went really well (bar the sight reading) and was hoping for a distinction. I didn't get it, 128/150, close but no go!

My point is, a difference of 17 marks, is the difference between a merit and a distinction, and I didn't play much better in one exam than the other, so is it down to the examination's interpretation of the pieces?
That's the only thing I can think of that would give such variation in the marks

yeah! sometimes, i feel that i deserve a higher mark that what the examiner gave me......... maybe it's just me being too confident but.............. honestly, i think it depends on the examiner's mood too!

I wont mention names... but... I did a grade 6 exam... and failed... everything comemented on was style....... butbut.. i took the same exam a month later... less practise.. totally bummed out everything *according to me*.. got merit!!! wow... my 1st merit ever!!!

I think sometimes the examiners aren't so worried about mistakes in pieces but how well you can reflect the style of them.

I do hope I had a generous examiner for grade 7, else... well I won't tempt fate.

In my last exam the examiner made some really nice comments, then took off a lot more marks than you would expect. I didnt do badly(i got a merit) but it was a bit disappointing when you compared the marks to the comments!
Has anyone else found this?

another thought occured to me.

sometimes I don't think the examiners know all the pieces very well (in my grade 7 the guy asked to look at the music for my study--is this normal??) so perhaps they don't always appreciate, say, the difficulty of a certain passage, or even realise you've made a mistake That might explain the discrepancies.

I entered one of my 8 year old trumpet players for his grade 1 (this is a few years ago now) and in every section (except aural) he commented upon the quality of his tone and how it wasn't very good.

This really wound me up because you don't pick up a trumpet and instantly get a good sound out of it - that is something that develops with practice and time and also I think age and size (and also control etc etc) has a great deal to play in the quality of tone.

I thought this was very cruel (he did pass but deserved a much better mark than the one he got (can't remember what it was now)) - somehow I don't think the examiner was a brass player - that's what I like about the guildhall exams - if you are doing a brass exam, you get an examiner who is a brass specialist.

In my grade 7 exam, my A piece was a Mozart sonata, an alternative piece. and while I was looking at my sight reading *which I fluked... totally, passed my 1st sight reading ever in my life*, he picked up and book *ABRSM MOZART SONATA VOLUME I... or II* and had a flick through... probablay looking for my piece!!
This time... doing grade 8, I havnt bought the standard book, I flicked through my mate's *also grade 8ers* and made notes of the alternatives... my teach said it was maybe a good idea to try picking alterts, heh, so maybe the examiner might not be so familiar with them

I agree with most of these points as it has happened to me before on many occassions, however i think even if you do make mistakes in an exam that you feel your prepared less for than the first time round, examiners are used to seeing how well performers have practised even if mistakes are mde. Usually when you take an exam the second time your far more relaxed and although many people dont feel they play as well as there first exam, it makes a difference if the examiner can see that your not uptight and nervous, people may or may not disagree with this but I feel that the MAJORITY of examiners (that doesn't mean all of them!) are skilled at their job and as performers themselves they realise how nerve racking exams can be. So although you may have played better first time round, the expression might not have been apparent due to nerves etc, and as for aural tests, i don't think anyone comes out of an exam and says I know they were right!!you cant be sure so even if you feel you mde them, theres a chance you may have actually learned something and it was stored in your brain! Sorry if I dampened anyones spirits for having a moan about examiners!