violin lessons: group in school vs. private?

Hi I learnt the violin in a group session in school and stayed with the local service for many years until i went to the local music college privately (when i reached A level standard). I did get the opportunity to audition for music college but turned it down (for other reasons)

From experience i think local serivces are good as a grounding (but bear in mind my experience is now a good few years back) but I found that the group held me back when i was ready to progress.

If DD showed real promise and talent then i would probably recommend private lessons you get more personal and focused tution.

HTH

My two were lucky enough to have group string lessons in year 4 at school. It was intended as a taster and they didn't really make much progress at all. They both continued with individual lessons in years 5 and 6 and were grade 4 and 2 at senior school music audition time, but I think that rate of progress depends a lot on both natural ability and how much you practice.

If your dd has talent and practices she will outstrip her friends in a group setting very quickly, so if you have a music award in mind I would recommend sticking with the private lessons.

I was going to say that I'd go for the idea of doing the group in the school and maybe top ups in the holidays etc with 1:1 if you really wanted to.
But then I do think the main thing with music is that you enjoy it.

Yes, you would expect a private student to move through the grades faster. How long are the school lessons and how many in a group.

As a comparison dd does LAMDA exams and enters the local speech & drama festival. Her friends have group lessons at school half an hour per week in a group of 4-5. They do 1 exam a year and also enter the festival and have lessons from September until July.

Dd does hers privately at Stagecoach as it works out cheaper. She has 6 half an hour lessons in the Spring Term only (alternate weeks) and achieves the same result (distinctions so far and last week she won her age group in the festival.

Be aware that many private teachers take a break over the summer themselves. I rarely had piano lessons over the school holidays and dh massively scales down his private teaching then too.

I learned with the Suzuki method and although it was good for teaching listening and getting quite impressive results very young, there were massive great gaps in my knowledge wrt sight reading, music theory etc and in the end my parents pulled me out at about age 11 and sent me to a normal teacher and private music theory lessons as well.

My dh and several friends are peripatetic teachers in schools (not violin but I can counf flute/clarinet/brass/voice amongst my aquantances) and they all say how hard it is to teach group lessons in schools effectively.

Something like Suzuki is different as there is massive parental involvment a structure and the time available but as badkitten says 20 mins or so shared lesson doesn't go far. If the shared lesson is 1 hour long then I would maybe consider the school ones however.

IF she wants to learn at school, how about letting her do that during term time, then getting some private lessons during the holidays so she keeps up her skills/can learn some new tricks to impress her friends etc?

I'd have thought having her WANT to do the lessons would be half the battle tbh.

She will almost certainly make better progress learning 1:1. The violin is one of the hardest instruments for children to learn, and in a group of 4, she will have to learn at the speed of the least musically-able child. If she is making good progress with her current teacher I would suggest staying with that arrangement.

I can sympathize with the fact that learning at school would be much easier in practical terms, but from my own experience I cannot see how any violin teacher could give the same quality of teaching to four children as to one.

We have swapped from school group lessons to private lessons recently. The difference is astounding, she sounds much better now. She was top of the group before and because they had kids of different abilities it was difficult. 20 mins shared between children doesnt go very far for correcting things. She loves her violin and practises every day so it is really nice to see that paying off.

We also swapped because school don't do grade exams and dd would like to do them.