Planning for Performance at GCSE

In the first of a series of blogs on KS4 Music, Dan Francis takes us through the requirements for Performance at GCSE, including the instrumental skills and experience required, how to choose appropriate repertoire that fits the solo and ensemble requirements, and when and how instrumental teachers can support delivery.

Standards and Difficulty Levels

Firstly and most importantly, let’s bust a persistent myth: according to Ofqual regulations there can be no pre-requisites for any GCSE qualification. This means that you can’t and shouldn’t state that only students who have instrumental lessons can opt for GCSE music. Your general music lessons at KS3 should provide a good enough foundation in performing on which to build at KS4.

It’s true, however, that there’s a Level of Difficulty required to achieve a ‘standard’ level, and that students might not be able to achieve full marks if they don’t play something that is sufficiently challenging. With Edexcel, marks are taken off if the difficulty is below Grade 4 equivalent standard and AQA and Eduqas/WJEC do this for anything below Grade 3 equivalent. OCR have a separate mark band for difficulty and don’t relate anything to an equivalent instrumental grade. The word ‘equivalent’ is used very carefully by the exam boards. These are in the specifications as guidelines to help teachers choose appropriate repertoire. They’re not strict rules. The assessment is different too. Instrumental exams are designed to help students become increasingly specialised on their instrument so there’s more of a focus on technical accuracy than you’ll find in the GCSE specification. All of this means a student could perform a Grade 2 piece with a whole load of style and get a good grade while another could perform a grade 4 piece really accurately but still not get top marks.

It’s important to remember that these standards of difficulty are what students are aiming for by the time they submit their performance to the exam board in May of Year 11. It’s not the minimum standard they need to be allowed access to the course. We should also remember that not all students are aiming for full marks; for some getting a grade 1-4 for their Performing at GCSE would be a great achievement.

Solo and Ensemble

All four exam boards require students to perform two pieces. A minimum of 1 minute must be as an ensemble and there must be a total minimum of 4 minutes. There is no requirement for any student to perform as a soloist. This opens up a lot of opportunities to develop performing skills in groups both in and outside lessons. It may also be a more authentic and appropriate route through the course for musicians for whom solo performing will never be ‘a thing’.

It’s possible to tie yourself in knots trying to decipher what each of the exam boards defines as an ‘Ensemble’. In a nutshell, the student needs to be doing something that demonstrates they can fulfil an accompanying or backing role within a group AND hold their own independent line. So: they can’t be the soloist all the way through and they can’t have their line doubled by another instrument. Essentially, if they were walk into a recording studio or onto a stage, would they be regarded as the soloist, part of a duo/trio/quartet or part of the ensemble? Two out of these three would be fine!

Choosing the Music:

Anyone organising a performance event has to consider their audience. The audience at GCSE is you, the teacher and an external moderator. Your students need to consider this when working with you to choose their performance pieces. If you feel the lyrics are inappropriate, then select a different song. If they can’t find a notated score, tab or lead sheet for the piece they want to do, select a different song where one is available. If they’re performing music that is still fully taught in the aural tradition (English folk, Indian Raga, West African Drumming), then make sure there is a source recording available.

Music is an aural-first, notation-second tradition and arguably more students are learning music from online video tutorials and by ear with different visual cues (including traditional notation) used as an aide-memoire. This should be embraced as an authentic means of learning. Make sure they have both the source they’re learning from and the score they’re submitting with them all the time they’re rehearsing. Discuss with them how what they’re playing might be different from what’s written on the score and annotate these differences. Adopt the same principle as the ‘traditional’ musician annotating their part during a rehearsal to indicate specific bespoke performance directions. These differences could be fairly significant where they might change significantly vocal melismas, chord voicings or phrasing and notes in solos. When marking against criteria, you will want to know whether what they’ve done differently from the score was a mistake or a deliberate creative decision, and will want to decide whether this creative decision has reduced, increased or kept the same the technical difficulty of the piece.

Remember that when students start their GCSEs, they are Year 9 + 1 day and have 5 terms to prepare, so decide on repertoire early and keep monitoring their progress; there’s every chance that you’ll need to help them choose more advanced pieces as they progress through the course.

Performance Using Technology

Significant numbers of aspiring creative professionals will have a digital instrument as their instrument of choice. Enable your students to produce live performance using the options involving sequencing or DJ equipment. You may feel about as expert at doing this as you would trying to teach bassoon but all the things I’ve said above still apply!

Use of Instrumental Teachers

It’s a glorious thing to be able to work in a department where highly-trained professionals regularly coach and train students as part of their portfolio. Where they have capacity and it’s relevant for the student, liaising with them to select appropriate exam pieces for use at GCSE is obviously really helpful. They might also have expertise working with equipment, genres or groups which will enhance the experience for your GCSE students. It can feel like a good solution to hand over a good chunk of the Performance Component to instrumental tutors and this can work if you’ve got good mechanisms for ensuring everyone understands the assessment criteria, course parameters and you can regularly hear and feedback on their performance work. You’ll also need to check their contractual relationship with you and whoever is paying for their time; after all, there’s a difference between them being paid to deliver 15 – 30% of the KS4 curriculum as opposed to delivering extra-curricular instrumental or vocal tuition.

Further information and support:

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