Do music students benefit from examinations?
I've known a lot of students who manage really high levels of performance and who have never taken an exam, but then they come and do GCSE and it works really well, helping them to develop their skills beyond just being a performer. Doing GCSE, you focus on the parts in the music that make people think, ‘This is great, I'm really enjoying this,’ allowing students to start thinking more deeply about what hooks people musically.
Something that strikes me about the GCSE specification is that there is no compulsory solo performance – both assessed performances can be in an ensemble – and the required minimum standard is Grade 3. Was this to make the qualification more inclusive?
It's about not just being a qualification for people who have had violin lessons since they were tiny. We wanted to be able to include everybody, including those who have only really played instrumentals or participated in singing in class at Key Stage 3. While you can never get away from the fact that having instrumental lessons will help you perform at Grade 3 level, it's something that musicians can achieve through secondary school teaching alone.
Most candidates do submit one ensemble and one solo performance – that's a standard that used to be required in all the GCSE specifications – but there are candidates, especially drummers and guitarists, who naturally play accompaniment instruments, so they may well be performing in a band with their friends or be doing band work in school. I also know a lot of schools that adopt the Musical Futures approach – they've got a lot of ensemble work going all the way through Key Stage 3, so it's a natural continuation for them to keep doing that into Key Stage 4 and GCSE.
One of the GCSE learning outcomes is for candidates to ‘develop as effective, independent learners and as critical and reflective thinkers with enquiring minds’ – how does the course nurture these traits in its students?
One of the things about studying music is that you're learning to talk about something that exists in time – it doesn't exist as a physical thing. If you listen to a performance that's it, it's gone. So when you're talking about your impression of it, it really helps to develop key communication skills that everybody is going to need later in life.
In terms of musical skills, if students are listening to and analysing music, they are starting to unpack the building blocks of that particular genre. For example, at A level they have to compose a piece that's in a western classical style. In order to do that they need to have understood how the harmony works and how melody is constructed so that they can create a piece of music that fits together. Then their creativity comes in, as they must make it an individual piece rather than doing a pastiche.
Do Eduqas qualifications prepare students for work as performance musicians?
Definitely! At GCSE they interact with other musicians and must play in an ensemble of some kind – there are very few performers in the real world that don't play with anybody else. At A level, the one thing that makes our specification stand out is that we have live performance exams. Students must do the performance there and then; if it doesn't go well then you can't re-record it. It shows students what performing is like in the real world – you only ever get one shot on the night.
To find out more about the courses and qualifications offered by Eduqas, visit www.eduqas.co.uk
