Rockschool exams

roundthebend

My son is learning to drum and following the Rockschool courses. We've just applied for his first exam but it's a weird setup.

They have exam periods A-C, each one is only 2 months long. And they have cut off dates for applications for each of the periods.

Further to that, our most local exam centre is only offering one date in that 2 month period for exams. And is of that isn't weird enough, you have to submit payment details to front and then they contact you to arrange a date....which is when we found out that only 1 date is on offer. Oh, they even ask you which days are not convenient, but that's ignored.

Why would this be?

My son doesn't really need to do the exams but he would quite like to so we're happy to encourage him along.

Danny1969

Yeah it's a weird setup and pretty sloppy. The so called exam centre in my area is a run down shack with no heating. Not impressed with what I've seen

Tom_Brookes

Where abouts in the country are you? Having done all of my grades as a youngster and now teaching guitar full time and training as an examiner, I'm reasonably up to date on exam goings on.....

The 3 periods per year and payment upfront thing is how it has always been and will always be for every exam board that I've ever heard of. There's not exactly huge numbers of students doing these exams so they need to get numbers up in order to provide a full day of work to an examiner. Having 3 exam periods allows time in between to sort entries etc The 3 periods roughly tie in with school terms, as a large percentage of entries will come from schools.

roundthebend

Suppose it makes some sense in that case. I didn't think of the schools angle.

We're in Peterborough, Cambs. Will end up going to Cambridge for the exam.