Is your child ready for a piano exam?

Colourful Keys is primarily a blog for music teachers. However, this article is part of a series for PARENTS of music students. If you’re a music parent, read on for help deciding whether your child is ready to take a piano exam. If you’re a teacher, feel free to pass the link to this article on to parents in your studio.

If your child’s been taking piano lessons for a while, you may think it’s time for them to take a piano exam. In this article, I’ll give you some key criteria to help you figure out if that’s a good idea.

Every teacher uses piano exams a bit differently. This post is meant to provide general guidance for parents, but you should always discuss with your teacher, and trust their expertise to guide your child in their music studies.

For instance, in my own studio:

No student takes a piano exam before finishing at least 3 years of study.
Transfer students (those who took lessons with another teacher first) never take an exam until after their first 2 years (or more) with us.

Generalisations aside, here are some good rules of thumb when it comes to readiness for piano exams.

Reason 1: They Have a Good Practice Routine

Your child should only consider doing an exam if they already have steady practice habits.

I know it’s tempting to try to use an exam as motivation to “fix” the no-practice issue. But please take it from someone who’s been there many times with students: This never works.

If your child starts the exam preparation journey without a solid practice routine in place, it almost always causes frustration for you, them and their teacher. There’s no benefit to causing that kind of stress to everyone involved.

Focus on fixing the practice problem instead.

Even in the rare case where the student does start practising once an exam is on the table, this never lasts once the exam is over. On the contrary, they learn that they only need to practise when they’re under this kind of pressure. Their after-exam practice usually ends up being worse than it was before they started the piano exam preparation.

If your child already practises 4 – 5 days almost every week, without any nagging, keep reading. 🙂

Reason 2: They’re Ready for a Challenge

A piano exam is meant to be challenging. We need to prepare pieces (typically 3 for most exam boards), scales and other exercises to a high level of polish. It takes a lot of effort and focus to get all these things ready at the same time.

If your child really finds it hard to stick at things when they get difficult, or to follow specific practice instructions, you might like to start with a smaller project first.

If, however, they tend to rise to a challenge, a piano exam could be a great fit.

Reason 3: You’re Ready to Support Them

Let’s be real for a moment. Hopefully, your child’s piano exam will go smoothly without any hiccups. But as their parent, you do need to be ready for difficulties that may arise during the piano exam process, like:

Your child has doubts somewhere along the process and they think they can’t do it.
They may have frustrating practice sessions and need some talking down.
Your kiddo may get really nervous on the exam day and be cross with themselves for making mistakes.
They may disagree with or be unhappy with their results.

If you’re ready to help your child weather the storms, practise regularly and overcome challenges, then they may be ready to start preparing for a piano exam.

Non-Reasons to Take a Piano Exam

Finally, let’s just do some rapid-fire poor reasons to take piano exams. 🙃

Their friend just took a piano exam
They took an exam last year
To push them to practise
To make them learn scales
For their CV

If any of these are your primary reason for wanting your child to take a piano exam, I suggest you think again.

Got questions about piano exams?

Feel free to comment below, and we’ll do our best to help.

For more like this, check out other articles from our “music parent” series: