Doing more than one grade a year?

[eliphant]

DD's taking her violin G1 exam next week. Her teacher has asked me what my plans are for her. At first I didn't know what he meant by that, then he explained that many of his students' parents want their kids to just go through grade after grade (so sometimes it leads to doing like 2 grades a year or so), rather than spend a couple of months not preparing for exams and just playing for fun, before preparing for another exam.

I never knew any other way. When I was a child, I'd only do a grade exam a year, and spend a couple of months between exams not even preparing for exams and just playing other songs.

I didn't know it was as common as he made it sound to do more than a grade a year. I grew up in another country and never was given the option of doing more than one grade a year. DH, who is always keeping an eye on the finances, thinks it is a good idea to just rush through the grades. I'm not sure about that, partly because I'm not used to this plus I think I would be quite stressed out myself if I had to do it this way when I was young.

Any thoughts on this?

DD is doing currently learning on two instruments with two tutors (her own choice!) - piano and violin - although I suspect her violin teacher doesn't know she is actually serious on the piano and not just playing for fun. Perhaps I'll make a mention of that. I do find that piano complements the violin really well especially in terms of music theory. I'm thinking now back to when I was young and I did skip grades at times. I skipped G2 practical (but that was the only practical grade I'd ever skipped), and only did Theory exams for G4 to G7.

My DS2 skipped straight to G5 theory. Some people choose to do an earlier grade though. My older DC did Trinity exams after G5, although they have done a lot of theory they didn't want to do the exam.

I honestly can't think of a single good reason for doing all the practical exams. And we would be even more broke than we are any way. DS2 has just done G6 piano, he has done 1, 4, 5 and 6. On clarinet he has done G4 and on trombone G3. He is is G5 plus on both these. That would be 16 practical exams plus 5 theory exams, (plus the prep tests but no-one does those round here).

He is currently working towards a Jazz Clarinet exam, but has chosen not to do exams on trombone, at least next year.

Its difficult enough fitting in the exams he does do.