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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > Music Through The Ages > Now they're really making it a doddle to pass GSCE Music...
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Author Topic: Now they're really making it a doddle to pass GSCE Music...  (Read 390 times)
Reiner Torheit
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« on: 11:15:20, 22-05-2008 »
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7414129.stm

 Cheesy
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
oliver sudden
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« Reply #1 on: 11:27:15, 22-05-2008 »
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"It is unlikely that any of the 12,000 students sitting the examination would have recognised the value of the information in the copyright statement and subsequently used it".

Er......
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #2 on: 11:52:22, 22-05-2008 »
Sadly, my daughter - who did her GCSE last week - was with a different board ....

Not that much help was needed.  As I think I have mentioned here before, GCSE music is so devalued as a qualification that the sixth-form colleges in these parts don't recognise it as an entrance qualification for A-level.  They require Grade 5 theory and Grade 5 on an instrument as a minium instead.
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
Eruanto
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« Reply #3 on: 16:30:52, 22-05-2008 »
Quote from: perfect wagnerite on 11:52:22, 22-05-2008
...GCSE music is so devalued as a qualification...

It was reckoned to be about ABRSM Grade 3 when I took it on 2003, fwtw. Undecided But if A-level now is grade 5 minimum it must have slipped even further...
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"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set"
oliver sudden
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« Reply #4 on: 17:09:23, 22-05-2008 »
...I read that though as meaning that grade 5 was minimum to start the A-level - is that right pw?
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #5 on: 21:47:13, 22-05-2008 »
Quote from: oliver sudden on 17:09:23, 22-05-2008
...I read that though as meaning that grade 5 was minimum to start the A-level - is that right pw?

Yes, that's right - and it is very much a minimum.
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
owain
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« Reply #6 on: 17:40:12, 27-05-2008 »
It depends on the approach of the sixth form in question.  If they want to filter out anybody not likely to get As and Bs in A Levels, then it's understandable that they want firm evidence of the theoretical knowledge needed to ensure they can get there, and the guideline requirements to reach the highest marks in AS and A2 performance assessments (taken only a few months into each school year) are Grade 4-5 and Grade 6 respectively.  If they are not attempting to restrict entry to this extent, and are willing to accept students who will be aiming for C/D/E grades, a decent Music GCSE an appropriate minimum.

And no, from the small sample size I can report, few kids noticed that the answers were on the back of the paper.
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Jonathan Powell
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« Reply #7 on: 16:52:09, 30-05-2008 »
I remember having had a little insight into this business quite a while ago. I had a piano student who was taking this GCSE ("give children simple exams"??) and he asked me if we might look over a paper together. And I was most amused by one question that has stuck in my memory. The candidates were given a snatch of music to listen to (probably a minute's worth or so) and then had to answer a multiple choice question (most of the exam falls into this category as far as I could tell) which - quite honestly - ran as follows:

Is this music:

a) raga
b) serial or 12-tone
c) reggae
d) baroque?

Need we say much more?

Or perhaps we have missed a great opportunity for another commercially succesful hybrid (incorporating all four, even) along the baroque-minimalist-pop well known from Mr Nyman?
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autoharp
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« Reply #8 on: 19:58:31, 30-05-2008 »
Now there's a real compositional challenge! I'll try + persuade Mr. White.
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increpatio
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« Reply #9 on: 21:07:30, 30-05-2008 »
Quote from: Jonathan Powell on 16:52:09, 30-05-2008
I remember having had a little insight into this business quite a while ago. I had a piano student who was taking this GCSE ("give children simple exams"??) and he asked me if we might look over a paper together. And I was most amused by one question that has stuck in my memory. The candidates were given a snatch of music to listen to (probably a minute's worth or so) and then had to answer a multiple choice question (most of the exam falls into this category as far as I could tell) which - quite honestly - ran as follows:

Is this music:

a) raga
b) serial or 12-tone
c) reggae
d) baroque?

Need we say much more?
A little bit maybe.  Being able to discern music of different genres is a rather basic skill, but not so basic that people will have been 'tested' on it before.  That said, you say that they all were more or less in this category , so  Undecided
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