Have you ever complained about an exam mark to the Board? Did they review the mark? It's too late to complain about an exam in July I know, but several teachers around here had a few people fail due to one examiner.

I have not complained about a mark (you do need to do that fairly swiftly after the result is issued and you won't get the mark changed but something towards the cost of taking it again I think - need to check regulations to be sure).

I have, however, complained about the behaviour of an examiner which I thought was ill-judged and distressed my candidates but, again, you have to do this immediately after the exam if the Board are going to take notice.

I think there are variations in how examiners hear playing but I have to say, in 30+ years of teaching, only once or twice have I had results which I thought were really a bit odd. However, that's remarkably few given the numbers I have entered, so I think, overall, the system works.

I'm usually the first to defend the Board against charges of "it all depends on the examiner", "I had a stingy one" etc. I believe the system is tried and tested. Only once have I had a surprise - last Christmas, when all 11 candidates I entered did unexpectedly badly (they all received 10 marks less than I was expecting, causing one probably-OK girl to fail). By the time I discussed this with other teachers and realised that the same thing had happened to them on the same day, it was too late to do anything about it. This time round, however, the marks were exactly as expected.

This is something that's been worrying me increasingly since I came on here. At first I just used to think it was students with no idea of how good they were (and their teachers' comments reassuring them saying they should have done better) but since then too many experienced teachers have come on here and said the same thing has happened to them at one time or another. Whilst I'm sure that some people do make false accusations; there are people on here, who I know from speaking to have a great knowledge of what to expect, that have been surprised by the results.

I think that it's really time the AB started recording the exams so that something can be done in the even of examination marks going astray: it's so important to so many people and whilst it's still a small possibility that something will go wrong it can do. The current system of appeals (of which I have no experience I'm merely recounting from the experience of others here and from the regulations) is that if one is successful (this has to be proven by something like past track record and is very difficult as there is no record of the exam itself) one gets a free retake of the exam in the next term. I can't see why that's even considered approximately satisfactory: the damage to the candidate has already been done; they are probably disillusioned with examinations already (why do they want another one?); the candidate must re-sit exactly the same exam even if they wish to move on; and most importantly the candidate must waste four months which could otherwise be spent moving on keeping those pieces warm (okay so they still could move on at the same time but it will limit their efficiency).

It's a small measure to simply record the exams, and since quality assurance is so important to the board and it's candidates (and to the integrity of the exams) the extra small amount of money required on the exam fee would be well spent*. For the sake of this small measure those few people affected by this could simply have their marks reviewed by the board from the recording to check that they were fair, one doesn't need brilliant recording quality to tell if the playing is good or bad. Confidence for the exam candidate is restored and they can move on to other things knowing it was the examiner at fault and not them. Some people are nervous about being recorded, granted (I for one hate it because I sound like a 5-year-old when I talk!) but given that no-one will listen to the recording unless there's an appeal (and I don't think I could possibly get any more nervous at the time of an exam, as I'm sure many others couldn't) it shouldn't have a negative effect.

Fortunately I think my own examiners have all been very fair and consistent in their judgement; worrying things have happened though to too many people whose judgement I respect, two years ago I would have said it's not necessary the system is good, true it's excellent most of the time, but the potential damage done to those few who have problems is too great not to take a simple measure to fix. Sorry if I sound really obsessive, I have been happy with my experience so far, but all this talk of problems in exams is making me concerned about the system .

*Diplomas are all recorded, whilst I appreciate that they are higher level qualifications, is this saying that the board thinks recording is necessary for good quality assurance but doesn't think it's worth bothering for the grade exams? That would be a worrying message....

If examiners could even be given a decent-quality MD or MP3 recorder with a built in mic (I know the recorders themselves are getting cheaper and cheaper, don't know about the mic) that would address the problem without being insanely expensive wouldn't it?

Actually if you sit down and think about the costs incurred would the benifit justify it?

a) Recording equipment for EVERY examiner
Consumables for each examiner and probably on the basis of one per examinee i.e. discs/tape.
c) Software to mange the recording of exams. Referencing systems etc
d) How long should things be stored for, some one to look after storage, a place to stor it etc
e) New peocesses and procedures for appeals.

Although it sounds easy and cheap it probably isn't.

How many complaints do ABRSM get? What does this cost in terms of the cost of the above?

I agree with Sarah on this one.


600,000 exams, 600 examiners, so not much cost on every individual exam. Besides that assumes these things must be replaced every year which wouldn't be the case.

Assuming a CD-R for each exam (overkill and inefficient to manage and store) 10p on the exam cost.

Hmm, may be a problem since software production is emmensley inefficient (so much so that it has a whole research area trying to make it efficient, which often introduces more red tape and makes it slower ). Although again split across all the exams the costs would not be astronomical.

There must already be such a system in place for diploma exams (and some way of covering point b anyway) so it may be a simple case of re-use.


Data protection act comes in here: I'm sure that they have to consider that for many other things too. Not to mention diploma recordings....

If they have an appeals procedure already, and indeed one for the diplomas, it wouldn't be too hard to merge the two or just use the diploma one.


Two years ago I would have agreed with you entirely and said that the examiners should have the final judgement and people were just complaining unfairly. Since then I've heard of a number of people who have just had one problem or so which makes me feel it is important. The main problem I see is that I am worrying about this now, if more people read about these things they'd probably be worried too, the worst thing that can happen to exams is that people lose faith in the system, without trust in that they mean what they say they're worthless. It's true problems don't happen often; but it's a trade-off of losses when something does go wrong the consequences can be very serious, e.g. putting someone off their instrument for life. I'm sure those with all happy experiences (obviously except me ) will have very different opinions to those who have experienced problems.

I don't think I need to add a lot to AP's post, she's far more knowledgeable about the technical side than me!

But thinking about expenses... how about one for each examining centre? Recordings only to be collected/needed if complaints are made.

If complaints were made and marks re-allocated or upheld, it would save the board the expense of allowing a free re-sit...

I would look and see how many centres there are but the eczema on my hands is playing up and having thoroughly creamed them I now can't handle the mouse very efficiently, so opening many pages just isn't going to happen

True it's expensive and all. But this year my music centre has experienced the same thing. A lot of ok candidates failing the exams. Merit is the highest anyone got even for Grade 1. And only three people got that in my school. Our other branch had it even worse. Out of 150 candidates, 50 failed.
You can look at it in one sense that maybe it's a wake-up call to some candidates not to expect to be able to just pass with the minimal amount of work put in. But it's very disappointing to those who put in a great deal of effort to get just 115 marks!

Not all exams take place at ABRSM Centres. To be totally fair, you would therefore need to furnish every examiner with a player and ask them to carry it with them along with the increasing volumes of stuff they seem to arrive with.

Then they've got to remember to turn it on, check it's working, try and be reassuring to the candidate and not rush them or unnerve them (my candidates would "freeze" if they knew they were being recorded I think) and keep to time before everyone in the waiting room complains "the examiner ran late".

I don't defend "iffy" results from examiners having a bad day but I don't think ABRSM gets huge numbers of complaints (I am sure I heard an examiner at a seminar say they were going down) and, in the whole process of life, is it worth the additional stress on the examiner which, human nature being what it is, could well transfer to the candidate?

Yes, it's hugely disappointing when our candidates get results we are surprised by and, yes, it can sometimes be a crushing blow. However, for myself, overall I have faith in the system. We are told that all examiners are regular trained and moderated (certainly true for my colleagues who examine) - I'm sure if one complains they must notice that and follow-up the questionable examiner?

Exams cost enough now - add in the costs to equip the whole panel with this equipment, keep it running, store the material, moderate it and so on and I think we'll be looking at even steeper rises in costs for our students - because it will be from our fees that ABRSM would have to fund it. Is it worth it? For myself, much though I dislike unhappy candidates and the occasional disappointing result, I think my overall answer has to be "no".

I will apologise in advance, if as a student, I am posting in the wrong place, but I feel the need to interject with my own recent experience in my grade 6 exam ( July ). Prior to the examination, I had taken two mock exams with experienced independent teachers both of which scored me above 125 and I had a full week before the exam to further polish my pieces. My performance in the actual examination was far better than I had produced in either mock exam and everything went better than I could have expected. Apart from one small slip in the scales and my awful sight reading, I was really very pleased with how it went.
I was absolutely horrified when I received the result and it was 109.
The main falling point being my pieces which scored 21, 23, 21.
The written report for each piece reads quite well, almost as though it is worth 27, but the mark doesn't match.
I can only get comfort from the fact that it was a pass.

I have appealed once about 18 months ago. I wrote a letter with 7 days of receiving the results. I had thought about writing a letter on the day of the exam as the examiner was very cold and rude to all my students. However I just left it and was horrified when I got the results. They all passed but barely and those that deserved distinction didnt even make merit.

I wrote a letter to the board with a fee of £10 for each student that wanted to appeal. In fact only 2 went for the appeal as the rest were lower grades and wouldnt go through that experience again. Within 3 days I got a written reply and my appeal fee back and the students resat the following term free of charge. I know of one other teacher that term who appealed for her students. The 2nd exam was much better and the students both got over 21+ marks more than the 1st exam.

The comments and marks did not tally at all and both students had always scored well in exams. AB were very helpful with the whole process.

I was talking to several other teachers last night about the inconsistency of examiners' marking. The best (worst?) example was a Grade 8 pianist who received an inexplicably low 107 at the beginning of December, was re-entered next term, took the exam in March, a bare 3 months later, and got 131.

I realise yesterday I was sounding rather manic about this issue....

However I do feel that for what seems like such a small measure for piece of mind (and for which I'd be willing to pay in increased exam fees, that's my share not the whole lot!) it would be much safer for the few people to whom it does happen.

I just imagine how destroyed I would be if I got a really bad mark and couldn't see any reason; if I get a bad mark and it's fair that's fine (although I'd still be upset) but not being able to understand it would be really gutting (okay maybe I'm too obsessed about exam marks, but that's just the way I am...).

I do sometimes find it annoying when people get bad marks and won't accept that their playing isn't the standard it is, often if it's the exam candidates themselves I do doubt that their assessment of their playing is correct. It would be good, however, for these people to be reassured it was the correct mark so they know for sure where they stand (it seems that it's never the fault of the person who did the exam that they failed anymore!); and it would be even better for those who played well to be allowed to have the opportunity to get the marks they deserve, without the need for a resit.

I do trust the judgement of 99% of examiners (if someone says they got lower marks than they should in general I believe the examiner); but when these things happen to experienced teachers, I recall Maggie for example saying her pupils all scored lower than expected once (she knows what is expected), it shows the 1% are out there and its sad to think that they can unnecessarily upset people . I accept that music is subjective and there will be variation between examiners, but at least people should end up in the right band of marks except in the most borderline of cases, not be down by 10 marks.

I wonder what happens to examiners who are found to have marked lower than they should have, do they get re-training? And what about the people who took exams but didn't appeal when a batch of marks from the same examiner on the same day were found to be too low, do they ever find out? Of course on the other side of this there must be marks that are too generous too, I bet there are never any complaints about that though .

Please don't think that I'm really complaining bitterly about the system it works most of the time; I just think something so simple for piece of mind would be a much better solution.

I for one dont think you were sounding manic. I still sit on the other side of the fench to you but can understand where you come from.

I dont think we or in fact ABRSM know how big the problems is. Dont forget we are just one cross section of the exam taking music comunity? If it is just 1% i would say there is little point in putting systems in place however if it is 10% my argument would change. To be honest if it was 2% it probably would.

I too would be very disappointed if I suffered at the hands of an over zelous examiner but I have never taken an exam so can not even comment on how that feels! In fact I maybe total out of order commenting at all...

Crawls and hides under the nearest table...

Yes, I must of course say that my statistics were completely made up on the spot and may bear no resemblance to real life . The AB will of course know how many people appeal; but not how many people are disappointed but don't appeal because they don't want to sit the exam again.


Not at all your comments are as valid as anyone else's (I still tell people how to do their diploma vivas when I'm working towards grade five ).

I feel that marks are more important than grades to a certain extent, e.g. if I passed grade 5 after getting a distinction at grade 4 I would consider I was a worse not a better player, which would be rather demoralising to say the least. Because my learning strategy is based on how many marks I can get; not what grade I can get, I feel it's important that they're right not just that I pass or fail if I deserve to (obviously I should point out now that my learning is not entirely exam based, but exams are important to me).

Keep commenting, it's good to talk to anyone who's interested and has an opinion, be they a music college graduate; or someone who doesn't play .

Harking back to my conversation of last night (mentioned earlier in this thread), in nearly every instance of low marking the comments on the sheet didn't match the marks given.

I guess this could be partly because the examiners are obliged to find something nice to say so it doesn't sound too discouraging; but I think that there should definitely be sufficient bad comment to justify losing the marks. Encouragemet is one thing but the candidate needs to take away some helpful information from the exam. If I lose more than three marks, I want a glaringly obvious comment explaining why ; if it's fewer than that I could perhaps accept that they just felt it was lacking that special 'something' which is not really useful for them to write down (and would appear quite unprofessional!). It's still disappointing to see: crisp articulation and attention to detail captured the character of the piece very well: 27, what more does one have to do! (This is not literally a quote but is a similar example....).

Yes - there were a couple of examples of this on my most recent one (June 05); it was just one pupil, but the discrepancy in the marks was substantial. My main gripe was the sight-reading - where she failed; the remarks stated that one hand was correct but the other hand had slips.

The main reason I didn't bother appealing was that my pupil was quite pleased with her 115 - (she didn't know that I thought she stood a chance of a low distinction, or that I certainly expected 124-125 minimum), and I was reluctant to rock the boat and spoil it for her. If a mark or two more on the sight-reading would have made the difference between pass and merit, I might have appealed.

Yes kmt63, your observations are as valid as anyone's so please do keep posting!

But it was more along the lines of 'nicely-shaped phrases and good dynamic contrasts' (I'm paraphrasing - it wasn't my student) and then a mark of 23 rather than the 26 or 27 the comments suggested (and the teacher expected).

Indeed that's not really acceptable or helpful to the student .

I've been teaching for 11 years or so (started as a student) and have entered around 100 candidates (well, obviously some of them were the same person, taking later grades - you know what I mean) in perhaps 20 different sessions. I have to say that I've only ONCE had a surprise, and that was last Christmas, as I said. You can tell from 'These Music Exams' how a pupil is likely to do, then if you're accompanying them too, you get to hear whether they play well on the day, etc. Unless someone messes up, my estimates (using the book) nearly always come within about 5 marks either way of the actual result, so I really do believe that on the whole the marking is consistent. It's only ever been in that one session that the marks were abnormally low, and by that I mean more than 10 marks too low for everyone. On that particular day I entered two brilliant players, expecting high distinctions. They both got 123. The expected-merits just passed, and one girl who was usually in the 110 region got 92!!! I didn't appeal as she didn't want to do it again (I don't blame her after that) but after several other teachers complained, the HLR contacted the board and asked that the examiner in question would be moderated/ observed carefully.

Luckily, although I encourage people that they're likely to pass, I never tell them my predictions. Yes, they see their 'mock' exam mark and comments, but I never, ever say "I'm expecting/ hoping you get a distinction". Because then, if they get something wrong and get a merit instead, they're disappointed. And I believe that if you achieve merit (or pass, in most cases) you should be happy!

It's a shame they can't just do as A-level and GCSE exam boards do and just award everyone ten more marks if the examiner's marks have been shown to be low. Still I'm sure there would be some fundamental flaw with that (as there is in doing it in the school system too ).

Great idea, but I'm sure it would be difficult to implement. The only person it really hurt was the one who ended up with 92 instead of a pass, but lots of them had commented that the examiner hadn't been very nice or put them at ease. Luckily I hadn't told the expected-merits-and-distinctions how well I thought they were going to do, so most of them took it fine. One girl who'd always got distinctions before got 118 and said, "I'm pleased that I passed, but I didn't like that examiner. I bet you don't now!" So true!

Over 30 years of teaching I've only had one such surprise - last year, when of four entered only half passed and the other two had much lower marks than expected. The girl who failed grade 8 was expected to get at least a high merit and she is quite experienced enough to know whether she played well enough to pass. She thought she had done really well and after all that work she only got 96 marks. I asked around and other teachers in the area had the same experience in that session and with that particular examiner. I haven't had a failure for 15 years and these two should not have failed. I didn't know you could make a complaint to the board.

I had a thought overnight about recording of exams that made me realise why the ABRSM probably won't consider it, namely the need to get agreement these days from everyone concerned in the recording - the candidate (and/or their parent(s)), the accompanist etc. Can you imagine the hassle of it all and, on the day, the examiner trying to remember whether this candidate could or could not be recorded.

It would be a huge undertaking and I'm sure it would impact on the timing of the examining day. Also, what happens if the machine breaks down. Do you stop the whole day's examining until another one is found?

If there are huge numbers of appeals which get upheld then maybe ABRSM might consider it but I'm guessing, in relation to the total number of examines they administer worldwide, it probably isn't worth it.

I had a thought overnight about recording of exams that made me realise why the ABRSM probably won't consider it, namely the need to get agreement these days from everyone concerned in the recording - the candidate (and/or their parent(s)), the accompanist etc. Can you imagine the hassle of it all and, on the day, the examiner trying to remember whether this candidate could or could not be recorded.

It would be a huge undertaking and I'm sure it would impact on the timing of the examining day. Also, what happens if the machine breaks down. Do you stop the whole day's examining until another one is found?

If there are huge numbers of appeals which get upheld then maybe ABRSM might consider it but I'm guessing, in relation to the total number of examines they administer worldwide, it probably isn't worth it.

Anyone know how this is done for diploma exams? It's probably just on the entry form as a 'you agree to this by entering' or in the regulations. Might be a little easier in the diplomas case as the candidate enters themself. What about those with accompanists? Do the accompanists in diploma exams sign anything or do they not need to be/get asked?