I’ve been thinking a lot about progress again recently. Despite the best intentions of ‘assessment without levels’, progress is still firmly one of the things being looked at.
I was thinking about progress whilst having a coffee in the sitting room, where we have a piano, and idly playing five-finger exercises in my mind (where I am much better at them). It then occurred to me that one of the problems that schools have with progress is that they treat it like progress occurs in semitones. Bear with me…
On the piano, the distance from C to C# is a semitone, the distance from E to F is a semitone, and the distance from Abb to Ab is a semitone. We all know and understand this. Likewise we can construct intervals of great complexity, like a diminished 32nd, or something, and work out a couple of examples, using real notes. This is because all the semitones have the same interval, the same distance between them.
Now I know this is no great shock horror, and I also know that it only works in equal temperament, and I know too that it is a western classical construct, although guitar frets are built on the same idea. But in assessment, especially in progression, what we have often is mistaking progression for semitones. Let me explain.
Simple example is back in the days of National Curriculum levels. We assumed that going from a 4c to a 4b was ‘one sub-level of progress’, and was the same as going from 6b to 6a. But was it? Were our assessments so finely-calibrated that we could be certain of that?
Today, without levels, I worry that flightpaths are forcing the same problems on us. Some kids might make a minor 3rd of progress, some might make a perfect 4th, and some might only make a perfect unison, ie appear to make no progress, but that unison is now in tune, so maybe they have got better!
We also have the issue that only rising intervals have been permitted, but that’s the subject of another post!
I think I need to think more about this, and what the implications are, but with talk of grade boundaries I am concerned that we are assuming equal temperament where it doesn’t exist, and assuming one ‘semitone’ of progress is equal to all other semitones of progress, when maybe it isn’t!
drfautley 
Before observing (NB not ‘measuring’) progress you need to achieve real learning. In music that means slow, rigorous work over long time scales. We have one-fifth of the timetable allocated to English. And most of their work is individual, on paper or on-line, easy to mark. We teach 500 students a week, excluding band, choir etc. – they maybe 100. Students will achieve real learning in Music well over 5 times as slowly as in English. So – subdivisions of Levels are meaningless, even Levelled objectives need to be very few and simple.
I agree with John Finney that ‘auralising’ – being able to imagine sounds, work with them in your mind – is essential to real learning in music How quickly can a young person who does no music outside the weekly class lesson progress in that?