Evaluation of musical skills at the beginning of professional-grade music in Catalonia (Spain)

This paper focuses on the entrance exam to first-year professional-grade music education taught in the conservatories and authorized centres of Catalonia (Spain). Passing this test, which is structured in Music Theory and Instrument, is an essential requirement for conducting musical studies at this stage. It is prepared and given annually by the Educative Administration in collaboration with the Associació de Conservatoris de Catalunya.

The educational evaluation is considered to be ‘the motor of learning’ (Sanmartí, 2007, p. 19). It is also a crucial instrument inherent in the area of learning which reveals educational changes and provides important information that allows to enrich, renew and promote training processes (Castro, 2010); and it is essential in making decisions and implementing improvement in teachers’ actions (Navarro, 2013).

This research has two areas of study:

1. Validation of the Music Theory section (Godall, Godoy, Ponsatí, Miranda, & Amador, 2015; Godall, Andreu, Ponsatí, Miranda, Amador, Godoy, & Morcillo, 2016).
2. Analysis of the scores obtained by students (Ponsatí, Andreu, Godall, Miranda, Amador, & Morcillo, 2018a; Ponsatí, Godall, Andreu, Amador, Miranda, & Morcillo, 2018b; Ponsatí, Godall, Andreu, Amador, Morcillo, Miranda, & Godoy, 2017).

In one part, questionnaires were sent to the Music Theory teachers and later a discussion group was made. In the other part, through the elaboration of a template, the scores obtained by the students in each of the exercises were collected. The results allowed us to conclude that the test was suitable to meet the proposed goal since a high percentage of teachers considered all the exercises adequate. Modification proposals were suggested in only musical content, scoring criteria and psychopedagogical aspects.

This review leads us to consider improvement proposals which incorporate new categories related to various psychopedagogical aspects that allow us to define different student profiles. Among others, variables such as the instrumental specialty of the student or certain observable abilities related to the different modalities of hearing are considered (Laucirica, 2005). We consider it important that the evaluation exercises contemplate the diversity of the students.