Anyone else hacked off with ABRSM delays and bad communication

[roguedad]

I had two kids go through music exams this period. One got his result pretty quickly, but the younger one is still waiting two weeks after the end of the ABRSM's own published window for her week. So that's five and a half weeks waiting so far. The teacher in charge said the board said the results were not being held back for moderation.

ABRSM has descended into new depths of unhelpfulness by hiding behind GDPR! They used to be able to confirm over the phone if the result had come out or gone into the extra moderation procedure (but not actual results of course), thereby minimising bugging the poor teacher. Now they won't even help on that.

I have all but given up with AB - all but one of my students (who had already started working on the pieces & needs to get it done) will be doing Trinity with me next year. I know many other teachers who have already switched for the same reasons as you are stating!

Thanks for that. Aways good to know "it's not just me". Still no results. Last year my older child had a rogue AB examiner who marked most candidates down 10-20 points from what their teachers expected. Many of those teachers had a lot of experience including substantive AB examining. The average of a large typical cohort was way down. I think there's a case for recording the things as well so proper appeals can be made. Right now we will just be grateful for some results!

Yep. We gave dates we could not do and they chose those dates stating they don’t take into account those amyway. An hour and a half hanging on the phone three days in a row to rearrange to the point I took a half day leave from work to finally sort out, then got a message it had been randomly cancelled two days before the test and I had already rebooked the pianist and was fuming and was again on the phone for ages to find out what had happened. Eventually sorted to finally get the test rebooked in the slot after DD’s, to turn up on the day and find out she could go in early as no one was in the (cancelled) slot before her! It put DD off so much she will be doing her Grade 6 with a different board.

Yes! Had some results through on Friday for exams taken the last week of June. Still waiting for exam results from the 30th June. I have fairly extensive experience of entering students for exams and I am still baffled by the lack of consistency in the marking. I have had students scrape through when I deemed their performances merit-worthy at least, and conversely a 140+ for an unremarkable lower grade exam. With the need for examiners to be competent pianists, it seems that they are all either first study pianists or singers and don't seem to know how to mark 'other' instruments. Sorry rant over!

Still no joy 3 1/2 weeks after the end of the official results window. Spoke to two jobsworths at ABRSM on the phone today. Jobsworth 1 peddled the same stuff that they cannot even confirm whether results have been released. I then spoke to the boss of Jobsworth 1 who said that for reasons of privacy connected with the contract with the applicant they cannot give out any information whatsoever in relation to the results. I explained again that I had a distraught daughter, an incommunicado music teacher etc, but they would not even tell me if results had been released. They could not even give me an example of what issues of privacy were raised by telling me whether results had been released or held back for further checking. So now I am forced to bug the school again. I can't deal with people half this dumb!

I hate entering pupils this time of year for ABRSM exams as inevitably the results don’t one through until the summer holidays and then I have to wait/hope exams person is working over the summer (frequently not until near GCSE result time though) before getting the results and telling parents/pupils. That also means I end up having to check my work email when I’m desperately in need of some down time. However I do warn parents of this, that results are likely to not come through until end of the holidays.
You get rogue examiners with Trinity too. However you do get the mark sheets back much more quickly as they leave them behind and they have been much more helpful with scheduling. ABRSM are a pain in the rear end, when it comes to trying to move a day/time, you would have thought in this day and age they would have a better system.

Thanks - though I need to figure out what that means for future use! We finally got the results we were waiting for, and it was good news, if hideously delayed.