Friday, April 3, 2020 | Exams

Rockschool have made a new exam option available for students over the next year due to the issues caused by Covid-19 and not being able to attend exam centres. This option allows the student to video their ‘exam’ at home and submit this for assessment.

I have a few questions on the detail of this and I am waiting for an answer from Rockschool. In the meantime, here is the email I received from them ....

Hi,

At RSL Awards, we are very conscious of the impact that Covid-19 will have been having on you and your students and are keen to do all we can to support you during these unprecedented times. We have recently produced guidance on How to Teach Online and are now very excited to announce that we are also able to offer online video exams so that your students can still gain their nationally-recognised exam through Rockschool. These exams can be taken by uploading a continuous and unedited video recording to a secure portal and there are two types of exam available:

- Performance Certificate – Five pieces: no Technical Studies or unseen tests
- Graded Certificate – Three pieces and all the Technical Studies from the published grade book. The Graded Certificate exam is available for candidates entering at Debut - Grade 5 only.

These can be taken at a time and place that suits your students simply by recording a continuous and unedited video performance of all the appropriate prepared elements in a similar way to a standard face-to-face exam. The same exam criteria will be applied but they will not be assessed on the Unseen Tests.
- For the Performance Certificate, they will be required to perform five pieces.

- For the Graded Certificate, they will be expected to submit a performance ofallTechnical Studies from Groups A – D rather than being asked to play a selection by an examiner.
The Graded Certificate exam will be available for a period of twelve months and has been put in place to cater for those students who have been unable to do an exam due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Candidates will be marked by an official RSL Awards examiner in exactly the same way that they would be in a face to face exam. Additionally, the examiner will record a short video message to candidates that delivers feedback on the exam performance.

We are committed to making sure this is an academically-rigorous, high quality and authentic experience so all the Technical Guidance related to your instrument and how to prepare, record and enter for your exam can be found on our website hereand you can get in touch with us viainfo@rslawards.comfor further advice and guidance.

As a teacher who has entered for a Rockschool exam over the last twelve months, we hope that this is something of real interest and so we would encourage you to either:
1. Enter your students for a face-to-face exam as normal using our online entry system. The deadline is 3rd April and we will schedule these exams as soon as we are able
2. or Enter your students for a video exam by clicking here 

We are really excited about this development and hope that you are keen to support your students towards an exam with Rockschool during these unprecedented times.

Yours,

The RSL Team

Office+44 (0)345 460 4747Webwww.rslawards.com

Harlequin House,7 High Street, Teddington, TW11 8EE