Have Your Say: Letters to the Editor April 2024

Digital certificates and charges (copy of letter sent to ABRSM)

I think it is preposterous for an organisation of ABRSM's standing to deny an automatic, quality certificate to students paying considerable sums to sit their exams. In your email, you say it is to ‘maintain standards’ and is more ‘secure’. In what way? How can watermarked quality paper be faked more easily than pathetic black-and-white pages produced on a home printer? Which would look more suspicious, as a potential forgery? And if you really believe this piffe, why are you happy to forego these standards and security for a charge when sending a paper one anyway?

Ditto your point about sustainability. How is it different to the planet whether you provide the certificate or the parent/teacher prints it? I believe that if you want to give candidates a choice as to whether their certificate remains on a database or arrives in the post, it should be an opt-out, not opt-in, because the exam fee is more than enough to cover the cost.

I have taught woodwind for nearly 40 years, remained almost exclusively with ABRSM for my students' exams, and taken ABRSM exams myself as a youngster. The cost of the exams has soared. My Grade 8 cost £16.50 in 1987; I remember this because it was a considerable effort for my mum to afford it. Based on Bank of England inflation figures, this would equate to £45 today, and yet Grade 8 currently costs £130. Back then, examiners were available for face-to-face exams over a three-week period each term – the cost of venue hire, the examiners' transport/food/accommodation, and having an exam rep to oversee proceedings were presumably all met.

Nowadays, should we choose an online exam, we are charged very similar fees. An online exam, however, incurs a modicum of these costs, and we are expected to believe that the important technical tasks – previously and rightly considered essential to the development of musicians – have been dropped for reasons other than to save on cost.

Similarly, I recently complained that a printed syllabus was no longer available – even for a fee – and was told I could access it from a device. I could, but my safeguarding training states that any personal device capable of taking photographs may not be switched on in the classroom; and, as one-to-one teachers, we need to be particularly mindful of such regulations. So, I have to print offkey pages for several instruments and grades at my own expense, and often find I still don't have a particular piece of information to hand when questioned.

As a teacher, I have done everything in my power over the years to keep costs down for students. I accompany them free of charge, and charge nothing for time spent at the exam centre or for rehearsals that are additional to lessons. And now you expect me to tell students that they won't get a certificate unless they hand over £3?

For many of our pupils, music is the one thing that they shine at, and that certificate (often proudly presented in assembly or at a concert) is their first experience of success and pride in themselves. It is often a huge boost to their overall confidence and self-belief. Not only do you belittle music in this way, instead of championing it, you belittle our profession too. It suggests that a grade is not a significant or worthy event.

I would ask you to reconsider this decision before it is too late. Please regain some self-respect. Be honest that this is about money, nothing else, and be aware of what a hypocritical message this is sending to a loyal and hardworking specialist community.

– Rachel Owen