Hi,

I have just had my first fail by a pupil and the poor( 8 year old) kid was doing Grade 1 piano. He had worked really hard for it, knew his scales etc etc. We had done 'mock exams' and he had been fine. (I always do these with pupils and my estimate is normally 4-6 marks within what they actually get). He said it went ok on the day but he got 97. Ihavent seen the actual mark sheet yet, just the numbers on the website. He got 14 for scales, 14 for Sightreading but the pieces were suprisingly low too.
Does anybody know if you can do anything to check the amrking? A re-mark or anything? Obviously there is only the examiner and the pupil in the room and its not recorded so I dont know how this would work really?
Its really upset me, I really felt that he deserved a much higher mark.

Thanks

It's disappointing, but I'm not sure there's much you can do.

Hopefully the examiner's comments on the pieces will be helpful in showing where the marks were lost.

By the way, I wouldn't consider 14 for sight reading a 'low' mark.

thanks for your quick response! Yes the sight reading wasnt so bad but I was disappointed with the mark for the scales. Like you say, when I get the write up hopefully it will shed some more light on the situation.

14 is the pass mark for both scales and aural.
The mark sheet should show where the pieces fell short on the day.

Realistically, if you appeal, then your complaint has to fall into one of two categories:

1. There was something wrong on the day (i.e. the roof fell down, he examiner was horrid, there was a pneumatic drill outside the window); or
2. The comments on the sheet don't match the marks awarded.

If neither of these applies, then there's not an awful lot you can do. The two appeals I've made were because of the second reason above and in both cases they were upheld. See what the marksheet's like when you get it.

No matter how well prepared, I'm afraid even the best candidates can occasionally go to pieces on the day. If one thing goes wrong, it can throw everything else. Wait and see what the mark sheet says and then put it behind you and move on. If you know the boy is well up to standard, don't make him re-sit, just move on to grade 2 when he is ready. Hopefully it won't be too big a deal for him (or his parents... ) Can you find another performance opportunity for him in the near future? pupil concert, school concert, something of that ilk, so that he can have a 'success' fairly quickly after this setback?

Yes, I agree - there are really only two things that can get you a fail - being insufficiently prepared - either becasue you haven't practised enough or becasue your tescher had unrealistic expectations - or because you "crash"

My only ever grade 1 fail was a girl who I had confidently expected to get an upper pass. He mark was appallingly low (mid 80s). I didn't give her and her parents the mark, just said she hadn't passed (luckily her parents didn't know enough to know there would still be a mark). When I'd debriefed her after the exam, she had said she thought it had gone OK, scales and pieces pretty well as she had played them with me. The mark sheet told a different story, though. Scales very hesitant, and two pieces suffered quite serious breakdown in places. So she either had no perception of the difference between her playing for me and in the exam, or she had blotted it out. We didn't do any more exams (she was a very slow learner of pieces) but by the time I moved away, she had started GCSE music.

So it's possible that your lad may have "crashed" a little more than he realises. Luckily you don't have to take all the exams. I sometimes put pupils through grades without the exam and using an out-of-date books (so that they won't suspect they're about to be trapped into one!) just for the purpose of their knowing what level they're at. Your boy is a grade 1 player OK, just without a certificate

Exactly the same thing happened for my own son with his grade 1 singing two sessions ago. In this case nerves really tore him to pieces and he failed by three marks. He was devastated.

Still he now has put this behind him (he was nine at the time and has turned ten since) and now has passed it. He still sings with far more confidence at home then when he is performing, but he is far happier with the idea of ABRSM exams.

I would be more interested to see the results of other students who also took exams with the same day (or with the same examiner).

If most were fine, then almost certainly your little boy just had a bad day (it's tricky to judge when they've never done a real exam before, you've no benchmark).

However, if other teachers' students also received really low marks then you've a far easier case to make and even if you don't want to go through the faff of appelaing and getting a re-take, then at least you can tell the parents he wasn't the only one and the board will often sideline that examiner.

The examiner was not failing the child but saying that the playing presented on the day was not up to grade 1 standard. If a standard is set it must be rigourously maintained or it has no value for those who pass it. As previously mentioned there could be many reasons why the child under performed, what is important now is that the experience and the result are used in a positive way by candidate, teacher and parents. Easier said than done!

Yes, but failing the poor child by 3 marks? He was obviously quite close to the standard... I think the examiner could have been more understanding. My grade 8 examiner certainly was - I'm pretty sure he just "gave" me a 130...

If we want examiners to pass candidates because they are 8 or because they are only 3 marks off, then we might as well all give up now, because at that point, the exams have no value at all.

too.
A standard is a standard end of story.
I do feel for the child in question but if, for whatever reason, he just wasn't quite up to the standard, then 8 years old or not he should not be "rubber stamped" through the exam just because he might feel bad when he fails.

A few years back the LEA I was teaching in (classroom teacher, not music) decided in their wisdom that peris should enter children for the "new" LEA music exams.. not AB. What this consisted of was children learning the AB pieces and the AB scales for the grade. They were then assessed by another peri from the LEA and then they were told they had passed, got a merit or a distinction and were issued with a nice certificate from the LEA.
Not one child failed and the next year they moved merrily onto the next grade which they also passed (naturally because the LEA didn't want any of the children to fail) and so on.
This went on for about 3 years until the scheme was quietly dropped.
I thought the whole thing was outrageous - especially using the AB materials.
The exams and certificates were completely meaningless. You had children who could barely play a violin at all saying they were grade 2.

If AB started just passing pupils because they are young or only just missed the standard then the exams would become as worthless as these LEA exams.


EDIT: For the OP, it could well be he just fell apart on the day or it could be that the examiner was unduly harsh - you won't know that until you get the marksheet back and then you can decide what to do.

Whether we like it or not, candidates of all ages are occasionally going to fail. It is up to us as teachers to prepare everyone for that possibility, however remote and make sure that they view the exam as a snapshot of performance on one occasion, not some terrible 'do or die' ordeal.

If the 8 (or 18 or 80) year old can't cope with a failure, then perhaps they aren't best suited to the exam route. Totally agree about making it a positive experience, but it is in the nature of exams that not everyone can or will pass

Hmmmm. Awaiting exams for a few of mine next week - including one who a few weeks ago I was sure would fail. Appears to have got his finger out, finally, and might scrape a pass, but I had kind of decided that a tactical fail might not be such a bad thing

I'm afraid that in exam terms, maintaining a standard is the most important thing. Yes, exams might also be about encouraging candidates to progress and enjoy their music, but above all, they are a pass or fail experience - the majority will pass, but there will always be a number who fail - whether we like it or not, that's life. I didn't pass GCSE Chemistry - I didn't understand enough and didn't expect to pass - I wasn't dissapointed in the slightest. There is always going to be a degree of success and failure in all walks of life. If a candidate doesn't pass their grade exam, then assuming it's simply a case of them not being up to the standard on the day, then although it might not be what was wanted/expected, their are positives to be taken from it.

Absolutely; in the end the examiner has to mark what they hear on the day.

This is fair enough - I guess I had assumed from my own (and others of my acquaintance's) experiences that the examiners generally operate with a certain degree of sympathy... maybe I just know a disproportionate number of people (including myself) who suspiciously received exactly 120 or 130! Or perhaps they only take pity on us poor unenlightened Americans?

So what about the candidate who has worked hard and plays exactly as he has bee taught but who has been taught wrongly?
You can't be effectively endorsing wrong teaching.

I have heard that they won't give 99, or 119, or 129. So they may well round up.

I did have a girl in for grade 4 who was unprepared; we had got a bit caught out with the dates, what with holidays coming in and interrupting practice, etc, and I said about 3 weeks before that I feared she wouldn't really be ready. In the past, when a pupil has been entered becasue I have recommended it, and if I felt the fact that they weren't ready was partly my fault, I've discussed it with the parents and if we decide to withdraw the candidate, I've refunded half the lost fee to the parents (yes, I know; my prerogative, though - I think I only actually did it once). However, this child wanted to take it, had an extra lesson each week, and worked hard to learn the things that weren't ready. I felt, with a prevailing wind, that she could pass after all. She had the ability, just didn't have the work under her belt.

On the day we didn't have a prevailing wind. She came out crying and said everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. Her first scale was just about the only thing she remembered doing well. She wouldn't talk to me on the way home (her mother gave me a lift) and all I could find to say was "you're good. You just might not have been good today". She got 100. I think what happened was the first impression gave the examiner the feeling that in case of doubt, she was musical enough to be considered at grade 4 standard, so if she was at about 99, or maybe even 98, she would be rounded up rather than down.

I know that the examiners start each element not from zero, with marks to be gained, nor from full marks, with marks to be taken off for every boo-boo, but from a pass mark, which will fluctuate up or down as you go through, like a rising and falling thermometer. Maybe they approach the entire exam in that way, occasionally adjusting the various marks up and down like the spices in a curry until an appropriate total is reached (not so sure about that one)

I didn't mean in this case.

Whose to say that in fact the 97 wasn't "rounded up"? In other words, perhaps the pupil actually didn't do as well as 97 but the examiner was generous and gave a better mark so it didn't look like a fail by a long way.
None of us were there so we just don't know.

I think I must have got this wrong, but I felt sure your son had tried unsuccessfully at this exam longer ago than this? I'm sure I remember you saying he was only six or seven at the time and this was some time ago..mind you, my memory's not exactly reliable - could be a Senior Moment on my part!

Really feel for your pupil

Guess nothing can be done until the mark sheet is back.

I'm slightly worried about one of my Grade 1's, though it could just be that she only remembered the bad bits. She was well prepared and played her scales and one of her pieces beautifully in the warm-up room, but she came out of the exam in tears.

I failed Grade 5 violin first time round...I got 98 - it was a bad time in my life and things just didn't go very well - but I still felt I played better than my recent entry who was an adult who came to me insisting on taking Grade 4 despite me telling her she wasn't ready.

She got 102 despite her bow almost never coordinating with her fingers and extremely poor intonation. The difference was I had several breakdowns in my pieces - though what i did play was correct, with a nice tone and in tune! My adult pupil kept going, but with terrible intonation and dodgy coordination. Her pieces scored 17, 18 and 19....not one at pass standard - but as a singer, her aural tests scored full marks, which is what pulled her up to a pass (just!) Should she have passed when her playing obviously wasn't at Grade 4 standard, but her aural was good?

That's one of the reasons I no longer take graded exams on interesting new instruments that take my fancy from time to time. I'm certain to get almost full marks for any aural/sightreading/viva and this will carry whatever poor attempt I make with my instrument.

I thought that too. Until, last year, I saw a mark sheet that totalled 119...

I wonder, do they gain an overall impression and decide whether the exam as a whole was pass, merit or distinction and approximately where in those bands and then fiddle the numbers accordingly?
Or do they really strictly look at each section in isolation and then tot up the result at the end?

I've seen mark sheets where the numbers were pencilled in and gone over in ink, so I think there must be an element of adjustment to get the overall level right.

Yes - I think so too.

Me too

Priscilla this is something I strongly agree with that the exam standard should be maintained. Sadly it's not always the case. The difference in expectaions of examiners will always mean that there is no level playing field.

As someone else suggested I'd definately ask other teachers if they had similarly low results. If these issues are not raised with the board then they won't make any attempt to get it right in the future.

That was my understanding too. A previous teacher said they wouldn't award a mark that was one short of a pass, but would look at the exam as a whole and either round up if it was pass standard overall, or round down if it wasn't. Maybe the examiner who awarded 119 had an off day?!

I have to say I am generally more anxious for my Grade 1 candidates than for the others. You never know when one of them, however well-prepared, will crumble. (They haven't yet, but I suppose it's in the nature of the job that it will happen eventually!) It's one reason why I use the Prep Test quite regularly, especially for the more nervous candidates; then - even if they do crash on the day - they get a smart certificate. All my youngsters who have done the Prep Test have found it a positive experience.

Sue33, I do hope your wee lad can pick himself up and carry on. Remind him that even famous musicians have had setbacks along the way, and if they hadn't carried on we wouldn't see them now at concerts and on television. And a bucketful of praise for even doing the exam might help him to feel better about it.

A slightly different slant to the whole exam business -

I have a stubborn teenage lad who is entirely exam focussed and very reluctant to work on anything other than exam materials. I like to explore a range of different repertoire and expand skills in sight-reading, aural, ensemble playing etc in between grades. Students who progress very quickly occasionally skip grades if I feel that they have learned all that they need to.

So, by persisting in not practising and messing about whenever I give him non-exam related material, I have reluctantly given in and let him do the exam each time at about a year's interval, in a last ditch attempt to motivate him. The results speak for themselves:

Grade 1 Distinction
Grade 2 Merit
Grade 3 ?
He is taking grade 3 in a few days, and is going to be lucky to scrape a pass. I shall plot his results on a graph (alongside anonymised others) and use them to demonstrate to him the necessity of listening to his teacher and consolidating between grades. The downward trajectory is certain to end in a fail at some point, unless he changes his attitude.

Simialr experience. I have a teenage boy taking Grade 6 TG against my better judgement. In fact I have told his parents they must enter him if they want him to do the exam - partly because I don't want the responsibility for this and partly because they have to make complicated travel and date arrangements because TG don't examine here - and I can't so that for them either.

This one has slid down the slope ending up with a very low pass for Grade 5 last time after insisting on doing one exam per year and nothing else. He and his parents don't want to believe that you have to do a lot of work outside the actual exam syllabus in order to succeed - particularly in the higher grades.

So I think your idea of a graph is excellent!!

Thank so much for all of your feedbck. I really hope that his mark is not a reflection of poor teaching. I have entered 23 pupils for exams since 2007 and have had 3 distinctions, 6 merits and 10 passes (plus 4 prep tests). You cant help feeling rubbish though I wonder if there was anything else I could do but I felt that he was more than prepared and certainly no less prepared than any other candidate I'd ever entered for Grade 1.

I understand that exams are a pass or fail system and we all have to go through this but I just hope this doesnt put him off music for life

Many thanks for all of your reponses x

One begins to wonder what these people feel they are having the lessons for. Don't they ever consider playing just for the heck of it?



Let us know how it goes when you've told him, if that's not too intrusive of us (OK, me)

I agree that an approach should be made to the board if several teachers think the marks were abnormally low. However I'm not sure that this will actually help the candidate in question. Much better to home in on the examiner's positive comments and then try to view the criticisms objectively and help the pupil to tackle the issues raised. We all need to learn to cope with failure but I would never set anyone up to fail (I had to get that in before the thread was swamped!). An 8 year old child will learn his reaction to failure from the adults around him, if they start making excuses (the examiner was mean marker) so will he, if they say, "You're obviously no good and should give up" he probably will but if they are understaning and encourage him to keep the whole episode in perspective he probably will.

I think there must be a very small element of tweaking; there is a "pass" mark for every element, but it doesn't really mean anything much. Are there any exminers reading this forum? Can any of them tell me, whether, for instance it is or isn't a matter of policy or of personal choice?

When I took my singing teacher's diploma back in the pleistocene era (I was about 26) I know tweaking went on then. I was studying priavtely with a teaqcher from the RCM. The pass moark was (I think) 75, in which case I would have got 82%, because I remember him saying to me that "7-up" was a very repectablel mark

I got 9/12 for accompanying at sight and 10/12 for singing at sight. I was rather disappointed at the first mark - it was a very easy test! and I wondered what more I could have done with it, as I thought I'd done slightly better than just to make no mistakes. But I did express to him my disappointment at getting 10 for the sight-singing.

"I KNOW it was good, judging by the marks I got for my prepared songs; maybe they don't ever give anyone 12/12, but what on earth does a person have to do to get 11?" (I had got full marks for sight-reading in grade 8 singing when I was 16, and that was far harder than what they gave me for the diploma)

He said it was probably a tweaking of the marks in order to give me a 7-up - I wondered if that 7-up was a general classification that they gave a lot of, like a merit - and I said maybe they should have taken those marks off one or other of my songs. He said well, maybe they thought he songs were worth the marks they had given me.

Which, I think you'll agree, was a tad inconsistent

He said did I want to appeal the mark, but I couldn't see the point. After all, the action replay hadn't been invented in those days. And anyway, I knew I was still a s***-hot skilled sight-reader



I suppose you could always try telling a little whitey and suggest that actually not a lot of people pass first time, a bit like the driving test... (But he might already know better than that)

I suppose you could always try telling a little whitey and suggest that actually not a lot of people pass first time, a bit like the driving test... (But he might already know better than that)
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I totally disagree with this! It might make the child feel better in the short term but won't help him improve his playing or deal positively with failure.

[quote name='Priscilla' date='Apr 2 2011, 02:23 PM' post='1047693']
I suppose you could always try telling a little whitey and suggest that actually not a lot of people pass first time, a bit like the driving test... (But he might already know better than that)
[/quote]

I totally disagree with this! It might make the child feel better in the short term but won't help him improve his playing or deal positively with failure.
[/quote]

Depends entirely on the child, though, doesn't it? There's failure and failure - not many people win Olympic medals, but at the same time if nearly everyone else gets accepted into your local team you'll perhaps consider you're near the bottom of the heap. It's not about coping with failure, it's about coping with a feeling of inadequacy.

I have to agree with Priscilla, there is absolutely no point in telling white lies to children. If they see through them (and even if they don't now, they will) then they lose respect for you and will not believe anything else you say. In this situation, I think you need to explain that as someone further up the thread said it just means their performance on that day wasn't up to their usual standard, but it's not that big a deal and certainly doesn't mean they should stop playing.

My Head of Music in high school once consoled someone I knew who had failed an exam - I'm not sure if it was a music exam, it may have been a driving test but they were absolutely gutted about it - by showing them his Grade 8 violin mark sheet. He got 78, which is the lowest mark I've ever heard of. Obviously his musical career after that went much better (he also played piano and organ), and after showing this to us he decided to actually frame this mark sheet and hang it in his office, which was one of the music practice/teaching rooms so everyone could see it. I think that showed a real strength of character, as this man was clearly a very successful teacher and musician despite this minor setback decades previously, and if he'd given up at that point all that would never have happened. It taught us all a valuable lesson about dealing with failure.

Well, I hope you realise that my suggestion of an outright lie was slightly tongue in cheek, but I think it's reasonable to play down the fact that a failure at grade 1 is a rarity. You really think a child would lose respect for you because you say "never mind, lots of people don't get it first time"? Is knowing that you're one of the few people who didn't manage to achieve something "not that big a deal"? I can't seem to reconcile those two ideas myself. Of course you need to explain that it was just on the day itself, but not, definitely not, give any sort of suggestion that nearly everyone else passes, just not him

Ah, sorry, I'm not very good at tongue-in-cheek (or non-verbal communication in general, especially not on the internet). I didn't mean to come across as callous; I meant the suggestion of the comparison with the driving test would be right out in my book, saying "never mind, lots of people don't get it first time" would be fine because it's true. For the last 3 years, around 1200 candidates have failed Grade 1 each year, and that's quite a lot of people. I didn't mean you had to tell him how many people did pass - omitting delicate information that could have negative consequences is different from outright lying.

A child was disqualified at our local festival because she'd played the wrong piece. She appeared to accept it but her mum and piano teacher chose to make a fuss, at which point the child got really upset. It would have been much better if they'd just explained what had happened to her and that it was their mistake. She'd have understood. I failed an exam once and I got over it very quickly and moved on, I'm sure helped by the fact that my teacher was very matter of fact about it and we just moved on.

I had one of those "wish the ground would open up and swallow me" moments once when waiting for a pupil to come out of the exam. We were chatting to the next child to go in and her mother, and she showed me which pieces she was doing. This was back in the days when the piano exams stipulated List A1 and List A2 and either List A3 or List B3 (or a choice of 2 others, but still for the third piece) She was playing the two pieces from one list and instead of a no.3 piece she was playing the no.1 piece from the other list, and I was too quick to say that was not what the regulations said. Her mother looked at the book and said "no, it's all right, pieces 1 & 2 have to come from the same list but piece 3 can be from either list" so her teacher had interpreted that as meaning for the third piece she could use ANY piece from the other list - well, I knew fior certain that wasn't true, but I left her to discuss it with the local rep, who said she would speak to the examiner. Actually the child was quite upset, and I wished I had kept my big gob shut. I asked the rep later on what had happened with that child, and she said the examiner had decided to allow it but that the teacher was going to receives a strong warning from the board.

I had a guitar student once who was asked to play a scale with a particular right hand finger pattern that was not one of those on the list at that grade.

She was too scared and bemused to say anything at the time, and as a result floundered through the scale totally unprepared, and made a bit of a cod of it.

That then set her off-balance for the rest of the exam.

We wrote and pointed out what had happened, and were told that the total mark for the exam was not going to be altered.

I was a little disappointed with the response...

This seems a bit harsh. I hope at least you got a grovelly, apologetic letter.

I am still amazed at how many stories are posted on this site about examiners asking the wrong scales/requirements. I know that everyone makes mistakes but I assume that the exmaniers all have the little official list book with them and it really is NOT hard, surely, to just open the book at the right page when each candidate comes in.

(My statistician husband would no doubt say that you only hear the stories of the wrong requirements being asked and not the zillions of exams where the right ones are asked but, all the same, it still seems rather a lot to me . . . .)

But then, people aren't going to post when the examiner asks for the right scales - I'm sure that those that get it wrong are in an extremely tiny minorty.

Sometimes when the marks are low across the board there isn't that much written that either confirms the mark or explains why. That's the hardest part to deal with.

Do teachers prepare their p?pils for the possibility of a failure? I always do. However it is easier for me perhaps because my pupils are all in a highly competitive education system so are probably a bit more hardened to this kind of thing.

However, I always tell my pupils that I think they will pass because this is a confidence booster. I never tell them I think they will get a Merit or a Distinction. But I also tell them that if they don't pass it is not the end of the world. I always explain that playing a musical instrument is sometimes a matter of chance because things can go wrong on the day no matter how hard you have worked. I tell them that I am satisfied with their hard work and if they fail I will certainly not be cross with them and we'll have another go at an exam later. When we had our Presentation of Certificates tea party the year before last I made a certificate of "participation" for my one failure to date. I have only had one failure out of 248 candidates over the years but that isn't the point. I could have more. I go through the motions of talking about possible failure because I think it is realistic and confidence building. I don't make a big thing of it and I certainly don't keep on about it but each child goes into their exam knowing they might get their certificate, they might not, but whatever happens they have done their best and teacher is satisfied.

Now I expect some people will say that kids might think this is an easy way out and they don't need to work because it doesn't matter if they fail. I simply don't enter that kind of character for an exam. They usually mature and can cope with the exam system later.

I use the same technique for getting everyone to participate at the end of year concert. I tell them we are there to share our music with others, not to be judged and if something goes wrong they will be applauded for their courage in picking up the piece and having another go. I have had children mess up their concert piece but still come off stage smiling and the following year go on stage with heaps of confidence and perform well. I think it is all a question of attitude.