Exams & Results

Taking exams is a wonderful experience for the children! Ask any of our pupils how they found taking a ballet exam, or their parents - it is a universally positive experience. Children get a course of 5-6 semi-private lessons in the lead up to exam day, which prepares them very well. Oonagh will only suggest a child takes an exam if she is 100% certain that she will pass. We have never had a child fail, yet. An examiner from the ISTD comes to our venue here, so that the children take the exam in a room they are familiar with, where they have had practises already with Oonagh. the children go into the exam in groups of 3-4 at a time, and show the work that they have been preparing. It’s an exciting day, and any nerves only help with their performance! The results are sent through from the ISTD around one month after the exam, and the children receive a report sheet and certificate, a percentage mark and grade.

There are two ISTD exam syllabi for ballet - the GRADE syllabus, and the CLASS EXAMS, (also known as ’STANDARDS’). The Grade syllabus is updated regularly, but has been around for about a hundred years! The Class Exams were introduced about thirty years ago, ’to cater to the child attending ballet class once a week’. This simpler syllabus is creative and musical, but a lower technical level is expected of the students. Bringing this in as an alternative, allowed the ISTD Grade syllabus to remain a very high technical standard, for those who want to learn ballet seriously, and practise hard, and for teachers who are able to get their pupils to this high level.

Bourn to Dance enter children for the Grade syllabus - the original, high technical standard exams. That said, we are considering changing to the Class Exams in the later grades - or offering these an alternative, as Grades 6 and above are really aimed at vocational students. In fact, you may be interested to know that for Grade 6 onwards, the exams carry UCAS tariff points, so can help your child in university entrance. In fact, the ISTD Intermediate exam, which comes after Grade 6, with Distinction grade, carries the equivalent number of UCAS points as an A level grade C. For more, see the ISTD website page here: https://www.istd.org/teach/teaching-qualifications/ucas-points-and-glossary-of-terms/

We enter children for exams, on average, every two years. Children have to be at least 6 years of age to enter the first one - Primary Grade - and in fact children are often already 7 when they take the exam.

Modern Exams

The ISTD Modern Dance syllabus is highly respected as a training to prepare students for many other dance forms they may want to take up in their teens and beyond. It teaches the type of dance you will see in Musical Theatre on the West End stage, without too strong a ‘commercial’ style. The first exam can be taken as young as 5 years old!

Our last exam session was in Summer 2023. This current year has been focussed on preparing for our upcoming Show at Cambridge Junction in June 2024. Our next exams will be in Spring 2025.