Testing times

Music teachers and students have recently expressed concerns about the ABRSM, the UK’s leading music examining board. How is it responding to the criticism?

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ABRSM students now have the option of video exams

ELMA AQUINO

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) has come under fire in recent weeks from teachers and examiners frustrated with the performance of its IT infrastructure and online exam booking system. Music teachers in the UK took to social media in the first week of May bemoaning the lengthy waiting times and difficulties that they experienced when trying to book exams for candidates during ABRSM’s second booking session of the year. This prompted an official apology from the board’s chief executive Chris Cobb, who said the issue with the booking system arose because a new mapping function designed to help people find the nearest available exam venue did not perform as expected.

Two weeks later, a leaked letter to the board, signed by around 70 of its own examiners, vented exasperation with the instability of the ABRSM’s exam marking platform Marcato, and declared no confidence in the board’s IT infrastructure and software.

In 2018 the 130-year-old ABRSM, which today delivers over 650,000 music exams and assessments in more than 90 countries every year, embarked on a programme of modernisation, developing products and digital processes with the aim of streamlining and improving the user experience for teachers, candidates and examiners. But although its digital systems gave the board the foundation to be able to pivot to video exams within six months of the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, a range of technical issues have tested the patience of some of these platforms’ end users.

One string teacher explains the frustrations being felt by some teachers and examiners: ‘Most teachers are freelance and paid by the hour, so it’s aggravating and trying for it to take hours to enter a candidate for an exam, and also for the entry process itself to be very complicated. For examiners, the trouble is that sometimes when something changes in the software, it has unintended consequences in other areas. So you’ve had examiners’ final edits of their exam reports sometimes not going out, or an update to the software making it unavailable to use offline, which makes things difficult for examiners who are out on the road. Teachers and examiners have been very patient, but it’s been frustrating for everyone, and the issues have given teachers and parents a reason to ask, “Shall we actually do an exam, or should we just move on with the teaching?”’

In response, ABRSM’s deputy chief examiner Mervyn Cousins says: ‘We are listening to concerns; we hear what’s being said and we want to get things right. The truth is that some of the technology has worked well a lot of the time, but the way some of ithas worked has been very challenging for users some of the time.’He says that the board will be undertaking an internal audit of the technology systems, particularly those that have underperformed.‘Beyond this, there will also be an external, independent root-andbranch audit,’ he adds. ‘And there will be extra energy and resources put into the IT area. When things haven’t worked so well, it’s tended to be when we’ve introduced something that’s intended to benefit everyone, but in doing so, something else in the system has gone awry.So we are investigating the effect of build on build, and what we’d need in the system to ensure that such issues don’t happen again.’

‘When things haven’t worked, it’s affected confidence, and we need to encourage that confidence back’ –Mervyn Cousins, deputy chief examiner, ABRSM

CRAIG GIBSON

Cousins recognises that there is a need to rebuild confidence among teachers and examiners. ‘None of this is about IT alone,’ he says. ‘It’s about engaging with people, how we react and respond and have a dialogue with those involved about the changes we’re making. We acknowledge that when things haven’t worked, it’s affected confidence and we need to encourage that confidence back.’ However, this may prove difficult with the teachers who have turned to other exam boards offering digital assessments during the pandemic. One violin and viola teacher who started using the digital-only Music Teachers’ Board (MTB) exams says: ‘The MTB app and the way the exam was set up just made it very easy.

It was noticeable with my students that there was less stress and pressure for them. I have a few students at Grade 5 or 6 level who had already started on the ABRSM route before they came to me, and who I suspect would have been quite keen to continue with it.

But knowing the difficulty other teachers have faced with making entries, I just don’t want to do it. I have no interest, when there’s a very good alternative, in spending hours stressing about getting entries in. ABRSM would have to do an awful lot to prove that all those issues that people have experienced are eradicated. Besides, ABRSM is more expensive for parents and in terms of pieces, there’s a lot less flexibility than there is with MTB.’

Cousins points to practical changes that ABRSM is making, such as the move this August to replace monthly booking periods and exam sessions for its digital-only Performance Grades with an on-demand service, in order to give candidates more flexibility and choice. As to teachers and examiners sticking with ABRSM while it addresses its technology issues, Cousins says: ‘The whole reason for all this noise is that teachers and examiners are so committed: they care about ABRSM so much. As an examiner myself, I know examiners are passionate about ABRSM. They overwhelmingly bought into Marcato when we brought it out. Examiners really do care.’