Music GCSE differs from many other GCSE subjects in that coursework carries more than half the marks awarded for the qualification. As a subject leader, taking on the responsibility for the preparation, marking and moderating of coursework needs careful planning and consideration. One of the best pieces of advice I have ever had is to not work in isolation.
Controlled conditions
Know your course inside out. Talk to experienced colleagues both locally and nationally. Engage with your local exam board adviser, music hub, teacher network, and national associations. Join online chat groups and ask questions. There are a lot of good people out there who are happy to help.
Never cut corners, and make sure you always obey coursework restrictions – don't just cross your fingers and hope for the best. Find out how flexible or inflexible controlled conditions are and what the tolerance margins are for each paper.
Be organised
If you've got 30 candidates, that's potentially 120 pieces of coursework (two performances, and two compositions). In order to make this manageable, set interim and ‘mock’ deadlines. Have clear expectations by providing examples of what you expect from a submission and provide plenty of notice when it comes to deadlines. At Huntington School in York, we run a two-year GCSE. All the performance recording occasions and composition submissions are plotted out at the start of Year 10 so that everyone knows what's happening and when; and by everyone, I mean students, parents, and visiting instrumental and vocal teachers (if students have them). It's human nature to leave things to the last minute, but when nerves get frayed, relationships break down, putting unnecessary pressure on all concerned. Mitigate this by having a transparent plan, reinforced with timely reminders and targeted support.
Key points to remember
- Build in time for the non-linear nature of learning. Students need the freedom to ‘go again’ with performances or change their mind about repertoire or compositional choices.
- Allow time for students to make plenty of recordings and complete paperwork.
- Build discussion time into your schedule so that students understand how to make good repertoire choices for performance. Talk to everyone involved when making those decisions.
- Have a bank of tried and tested ensemble repertoire with varied levels of difficulty. Arrange bespoke material where necessary. Your VMTs are a goldmine of information, so talk to them.
- It's a good idea to schedule a couple of mock performance occasions in both Year 10 and 11. This provides students with interim deadlines and enables you to check in on intended submissions, way ahead of final deadlines – you can also time performances while you're at it.
The craft of teaching composition
I shudder when I hear stories of students in some centres being told to ‘go off and compose’ or just ‘play something, anything’ in class lessons, with little or no guidance. It's like asking a toddler to make Sunday lunch. It's not going to end well.
Students need to be taught the craft of composition. They need to see and hear a range of models, and watch you devise material, live in the room, warts and all. Let students see and hear you make mistakes. Feel free to flounder and stumble in order to show the honest face of creativity. Let students watch you shape and refine what might have started out as something rather unpromising. They need to understand that it takes time to shape something with integrity and imagination.
Deliver a KS3 curriculum that paves the way and evolves naturally into patterns of working at GCSE. KS3 should be all about teaching students how music works and opening their eyes and ears to the wealth of music that's out there. Equipped with that, students can start to develop independence because they've seen and heard a variety of models and have had the hands-on experience of using commonly used compositional devices.
In addition to compositional devices, teach students how to generate, develop and refine ideas. You could start Year 10 with a series of workshops that explore this very craft, using a range of musical styles and genres. Model everything in sound, both live and recorded using a range of familiar and unfamiliar repertoire. Verbalise your thinking and show students exactly how you and other living composers do it. Teach fail-safe ‘tricks of the trade’ that you can demonstrate live and provide real-world examples.
Create structural journeys through familiar pieces, highlighting the high points, the turning points, the expected and the unexpected. Sketch out structures, deployment of forces and textures on long strips of paper to help students visualise ideas – away from the computer screen and away from manuscript paper.
It's your job to equip students with the tools they need to work effectively and independently. Before asking students to embark on any controlled conditions coursework, they need to be equipped with the fundamental tools of the trade and understand how to apply and adapt what they have been taught.
Before composition coursework controlled hours begin
- Ask students to create a five-track playlist to give you an insight into the musical world they want to explore. Here's an example of a playlist one of my Year 11 students made for me last year. Once I had listened to it, I understood the sound world she wanted to work in, and our resulting conversations were focused and purposeful.
- Create a checklist for students, reminding them of everything in their armoury.
- Put all the resources you've devised and worked with in a shared folder for students to access whenever they like. Take a tour of the folder's contents with them, reminding them of all the techniques and processes they have had experience of handling.
During controlled hours
- Check the guidance restrictions stipulated by your exam board and stick to the rules.
- Provide students with opportunities to work at lunchtime and after school so that they can come and go as they please, perhaps working for as little as 10 minutes, sometimes working for an hour or more. Creative thinking doesn't happen in tidy, equally spaced units. Keep a log of who does what and when.
- Make students aware of the time they have remaining and structure coursework slots more formally for those who find meeting deadlines challenging.
Marking and moderation
Leave plenty of time to do this properly. If this is your first experience of marking or you are in a one-person department, use the exam board's exemplars, attend training, and work with local and national networks of teachers who are well versed in the process. Keep talking and take advice.
If there are two or more of you in your department, assess a piece of coursework together with the marking criteria in front of you. Follow up by marking a handful of your colleague's candidates’ work before marking your own. Meet again to compare your top, middle and bottom scores and finally agree on a rank order across the groups. It's unlikely you will be able to mark and rank everything in one sitting. It is utterly exhausting, so plan a series of times when you can meet to do this.
As much as you think you won't be biased when marking, you will be drawn to leaning positively or negatively towards certain students’ submissions based on how hard they have worked for you. Be disciplined and mark the artefact – you're not marking progress or effort. If in doubt, go back to the contacts you've established and ask for their opinion on a submission. Offer to moderate a piece of coursework for them in exchange.
I've been marking and moderating coursework for more than 30 years, and every time I do it, I learn something new. When students get it right, it is absolutely thrilling submitting marks that reflect their potential. Ultimately, it's your responsibility to create the right growing conditions to allow that to happen. Will everyone take your advice and get sparkling results? Perhaps not, but with good structures and agreed working practices in place, you can tell those individual stories when it comes to your results analysis.
