Passing the test

Forget tweedy examiners behind desks, bland pieces and those dreaded aural tests. Graded exams are not what they used to be, as Clare Stevens explains

- Clare Stevens

Revisiting teenage experiences of sitting instrumental or vocal grade exams must come pretty high up any register of anxiety dreams for adults who had music lessons as children but did not go on to study professionally. So many of us faced the ordeal of stumbling over scales, making silly mistakes in pieces we’d played perfectly at home or failing to identify the middle note of a chord before being released from the torture chamber by an unsmiling examiner who probably didn’t even raise their head from their marksheet. Unsmiling examiners are now rare, thankfully; even the most traditionally minded exam boards have recognised for some time that putting a child or a nervous adult learner at their ease before they start to play will give them a better chance of performing to the best of their ability. The switch to a more empathetic, candidate-centred approach has underpinned developments in other aspects of the assessment process too, accelerated in many cases by the effects of the pandemic, which meant that traditional face-to-face exams were cancelled almost overnight.