Just above is my teaching motto, inspired by a TV slogan from the past: “A puppy is for life, not for Christmas”.
I will say it straight: there is no intrinsic value in taking graded exams; the exam system is simply a tool for motivation and for performing experience. My students take exams if they want to (most do), but it is counter-productive to push them into arbitrary deadlines.
Assuming the student is doing enough practice to make steady progress, my only goal for them is that they reach each exam level with the proper set of of skills and knowledge for that level, so that each exam becomes a springboard to the next. When competence is not allowed to build solidly over time, taking the grade exams is like negotiating a series of obstacle courses of rapidly escalating difficulty with no rest or training between each course. The student will eventually, inevitably, fail, because the foundational knowledge and skills are not there.
The strategy of rushing to exams seems to be so prevalent that of all the students who have ever come to me after taking exams up to Grade 1, 2 or 3 with another teacher, only one did not have large gaps in their knowledge or skills. The further along the grade system they had got, the more serious the gaps tended to be.
I had intended to write here on this website about the many examples of unhelpful practice habits and basic knowledge gaps I have seen resulting from students being pushed hastily towards exams, but the list became too long and unwieldy! Instead I shall mention two particular egregious problems.
The most common problem I discover is that the student has little or no experience learning to read rhythm for themselves; instead they have always relied on the teacher to show them “how it sounds”. It always makes me wonder: how can they said to be “learning to read music” if half the information in front of them is being ignored? These students have been deprived of the gift of autonomy; they are left forever reliant on someone else to decipher that half of the information. They often also play unrhythmically, because they are relying on memory to play the correct rhythm, rather than combining their own knowledge with real-time awareness of their own rhythm.
Another sadly common problem is that the student spends a year or more learning only the three pieces for each grade (3-5 minutes of material), never learning other repertoire. Most of my students play at least twice as many pieces as that as they move through their grades, while still mostly managing to do a grade exam roughly every year. Spending too long on the same piece is frankly boring and demotivating for the student, but it also reveals a very slow pace of getting the music from the page into their fingers. As the pieces get more complex through the grades, the student’s reading and practising skills are supposed to keep pace; basically, the student should get faster at learning the pieces.
My students at Grade 3 would be able to learn a Grade 1 piece very quickly (I have tested this) because of how much their skills have improved over time. The student who took a whole year to learn only the three Grade 3 pieces, without ever playing anything else of Grade 3 level, would take a long time to learn even a much easier Grade 1 piece. Their reading and practising skills would not have been improving enough. As the music becomes increasingly complex from grade to grade, it ends up beyond the reach of their level of competence. This tends to happen around the Grade 3 level - sometimes even earlier.
My students generally take longer to reach their first exam than these students who started with other teachers. That extra time in the first years is, I strongly believe, the necessary investment to make the whole experience rich and lasting, instead of shallow and ephemeral.
Imagine the student who has raced through to Grade 3 learning only the minimum and mainly by rote. What happens next? After what is likely to be a disappointingly low mark for Grade 3 they will find themselves feeling daunted by the more difficult, long and complex Grade 4 repertoire, and will only manage to learn it by relying more and more on their teacher to keep showing them how to play it. They will probably give up soon, before or after a difficult run at Grade 4, because the more complex repertoire of the intermediate or advanced levels will be beyond their skill level. In the future, without a teacher, they will not even be able to learn simpler pieces by themselves, because they never developed that autonomy.
Later in life, they will be that adult who says “I did learn piano but I really don’t remember anything”. They will never be able to enjoy playing piano as a pleasurable hobby.
Now imagine a student who took each grade when their level of skills and knowledge matched that exam level, having played twice as many pieces along the way as the first student. After their good Grade 3 mark, they will in their lessons easily manage to grasp any new knowledge needed for their Grade 4 level pieces, and they will enjoy noticing how much their skills have improved, always being able to tackle higher levels of complexity. They will probably succeed in passing Grade 4 with a decent mark and will look forward with confidence to steady progress beyond that.
Even if for some reason they have to give up piano at this point, they will already be able to learn by themselves for pleasure a lot of readily available sheet music. More importantly, they will retain much of their skills and knowledge, so if as an adult they decide to take a refresher term of piano lessons, assuming they have time to practise regularly, it won't take them long to get back to the level they attained as a child, and if they choose to, they could continue lessons and progress even further.
In fact, well-taught students don’t even need to get to Grade 3 level to acquire long lasting skills and knowledge; they will retain the basics very well even if they only get to Grade 1.
To summarise, the performance of 3 set pieces for a graded exam is an accomplishment, but it is far from being any kind of true goal of learning piano. The exam experience should be simply one part of the whole happy result of working towards the true goals, which I invite you to read about on the Goals page.
My answer to parents of students who ask “When will they do their grade x?” is “When their skills and knowledge have reached the proper level for that grade”. My answer to “how long will that take?” is that it depends almost entirely on the quantity and quality of practice. It is true that two students doing the same amount of practice will not progress at exactly the same rate; students have different natural strengths, whether musical, practical, or intellectual. Practice, however, is the vital element that every student has under their control.
I guarantee that any student who practises enough, and who practises well (who follows my weekly Practice Guide), will over time reach the levels needed to have success in the grade exams, with lasting results.
I once heard that a private school offered lower fees to students who passed a specific grade exam (as opposed to offering scholarships based on musicality and contingent on music participation). I don't know if this is true (I am curious to know - perhaps it is an unfounded rumour), but if it is true, I am appalled.
Any musical assessment on which opportunities depend should involve face to face interactions with a student, and not be blindly based on a mark externally awarded without any investigation of the depth of knowledge and skills acquired to achieve that mark.