What are people's feelings on group lessons as opposed to individual?

My opinion of group tuition (GT) is that, yes, the cost to the pupil is less, but progress is severely hampered.

I teach a mixture of individual lessons (IL) right up to groups of 30 in a class and, without exeption, pupils who are taught individually make better progress and turn into more well-rounded musicians.

In an ideal world, a pupil should begin with an IL and, when they have learned a few notes, join a small ensemble of similar-ability players to run in conjunction. That way they get the best of both worlds.

Unfortunately, my LEA thinks that GT is the way forward and has stopped subsidising ILs altogether. They claim studies show that GT is more beneficial. Has anyone read any of these studies?

No I haven't read any studies, although I have read in some instrumental teaching books that group teaching can be more effective - in fact they had a graph too...hang on...

RIGHT - According to the article I've just dug out by Keith Swanick, Kevin Thompson did a study into this, comparing similar pairs students, with one in ILs and one in GLs. He was looking at how much time was spent on various areas per lesson, and whether this impacted the kids:

"In spite of group-taught students having received less time in this category, their level of achievement in fluency of notation was disproportionately high. Perhaps teachers made fewer repetitive statements in group settings and saved instructional time. This, couple with the possibility of learning from others, may account for the alacrity with which the group-taught students acquired notational skills. (Thompson, 1984, 168-169)"

Swanick also talks about how group lessons mean you can't teach by just listening and correcting mistakes, but have to structure/plan to avoid mistakes where possible instead.

That's the total sum of what I know on the subject. I only teach one-to-one. My gut says it would be harder to teach instruments in a group, but maybe teaching in a group forces you to cover less material, which actually means it's more thorough and people learn more? In ILs I've certainly found that less is more in terms of progress, although this approach doesn't fit every student, and I haven't got heaps of experience. Kodaly stuff also seems to work best in groups, and this certainly seems to create ultimately better musicians who are able to learn more...but I'm just brainstorming here.

I think you will probably find that the "group" lessons they are talking about are those where there are a maximum of 5 pupils. I think it can be a real advantage to teach in small groups, 2 or 3, maybe as many as 4 in a class, but not in classes of 30! You just can't meet their individual needs that way - class teachers don't either, they just do the best that the circumstances offer them. I really benefitted from learning alongside a girl who was very good at rhythm but was lacking in her theory and aural work where I was all the other way around, and I got to listen to how she did things and compare notes. Our local policy was group lessons of 2 or 3 pupils together until grade 6 and then you got your own lesson to yourself and an extra 15 minutes a week. I'd like to have seen that boundary go down a bit, I think I would have come on quicker if I'd had my own lesson from grade 4 onwards, but then I also changed teachers, changed instruments (as in violin-viola and also from student to better instrument) and got a longer lesson all at the same time, so I might not have needed the individual lesson part.

One great thing can be to overlap lessons. We used to have 30 minutes for each student at the next school but only 10 minutes was your own. The first 10 minutes you shared with the person before you and you being slightly more advanced helped to push them on, and the middle 10 minutes was yours and the final 10 minutes you got the next student up in to do duets and combined lesson with you.

But yes, the group tuition book I am reading just now does seem to imply that "groups" are about 5-8 children. Certainly my young daughter needs a group to join. If everyone else were putting their violin on their shoulder she'd copy them, but at home on her own with no other children it's going to be a cello.

My music service is moving to a focus on group teaching rather than individual lessons for primary school children. I find these work quite well at this level because of the types of activities and musical games you can include. However, I agree that learning is at a slower rate than if they were being taught individually. However, at high school level I am not a fan of group lessons at all. I get frustrated when I'm forced to teach pupils of different standards in the same lesson because the school wont buy in any more time for me to teach them! I had one school who wanted me to teach a complete beginner sax, grade 1ish flute, and grade 3 clarinet all together in 20 mins!

I've done a lot of group teaching, as well as one-to-one. I think the statement made earlier about 'fewer repetitive statements' is very relevant. During my group teacher training, I was taught techniques for teaching as quickly and effectively as possible in the time available. I still use some of those techniques in my individual teaching.

Groups can be faster or slower than 1-to-1 - their dynamics vary and depend on the personalities involved. Sometimes a healthy competition develops which means that progress is swift, and sometimes the opposite happens. But that's very much the case in 1-to-1 tuition too.

I think that effectiveness of group teaching must depend to a large extent on the quality of training the teacher has received. Unfortunately some instrumental teachers seem to be thrust into group teaching situations with no training at all, and it's hardly surprising if they struggle.

I teach small groups.

To be honest, I think the real improvement is massively down to the amount of practice that students do. Usually with most instruments there are common errors, for example, with classical guitar, when students play with just one finger, I correct the student and the other student hears me correcting that, and if they were about to play with just the one finger, they'll quickly change that!

I think group lessons have a slight advantage in that students can hear other similar standard musicians and pick up on stuff that they might not be able to otherwise. Having said that, I think one to one lessons can be quite beneficial in that I am giving that student my entire attention.

When I was a child, all my clarinet and double bass lessons were shared. I started clari in a group of about but we dwindled two. We all went to the same secondary school and the lessons continued. I went up to Grade 8 with the same pupil as I began with. We also shared double bass lessons (same girl- I am still in contact with her!).It worked as we both moved at the same rate. We were quite similar and could enter duet classes in music festivals! It was great! However, if she had never practised etc- it wouldn't have worked! But all of my lessons now are individual that I teach. The pupils all move at different speeds etc! I do overlap lessons - that works quite well in school!

I started clarinet in a group of 3 flutes and 3 clarinets, taught by a flute teacher (who I never saw play a clarinet in the 3 years she taught me). It was awful. We all ended up going at different paces. I was a grade ahead of the others after a year and was left to teach myself a lot of the time and consequently learnt bad habits which took years to correct.