Trinity College London, the 144-year-old music and drama exam board charity, has announced that all candidates and teachers will now be able to take their exams and attain their qualifications online.
Precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic, the online structure of Trinity’s offering has been completely rebuilt to allow applicants to record their performances and technical work from home and submit them in their own time.
This is supported by an evolving library of digital resources to help candidates and tutors to navigate the digital system. Digital grades examinees attain the same Ofqual certification and UCAS points as the traditional, face-to-face exams. Diploma students can attain ATCL and LTCL levels.
Francesca Christmas, Associate Director of Music at Trinity College London, helped design the new exams. In her blog she said, ‘It’s exciting to think that candidates all over the world will be able to continue with their learning and progression, no matter what the world throws at us in terms of lockdowns and social distancing restrictions.’
The assessments of music grades will follow similar criteria to the face-to-face ones giving equal priority to performance delivery and focus, and musical awareness. This allows teachers to maintain the methods they are used to, avoids reliance on technology that might fail due to slower broadband speeds and removes time zone constraints for students in other parts of the world.
As Francesca Christmas says, ‘ We have spent some time testing the approach to ensure that the new criteria will provide a result that would be directly comparable to the result of the face-to-face graded exam. We have worked with examiners and teachers to refine the criteria and ensure that it will enable not only a reliable, but enjoyable experience for our candidates. And, as always, we have carefully thought through the adjustments we will make to the marking of the new criteria for candidates with additional needs.’
Further details of the Trinity College London digital grades and diplomas can be found here.
