Many parents ask me this question: "Should my child take a piano exam every year?" My short answer is "Taking an exam every few years is fine, but taking it every year can have notable undesirable side effects". My long answer is as follows:
Taking piano exams have pros and cons. The exams provide objective certification that your child's playing has reached a certain level. These certifications may also enhance a college application. However, they usually make the student study very few pieces of music for an extended period of time. This gives the student an impoverished diet of literature and very limited exposure to technique. In addition, the limited opportunity to learn new music weakens the student's sight-reading ability. Perhaps the biggest undesirable effect of playing the same few pieces of music for a long time is that it leads to boredom, and can significantly dampen the interest of the student. I've heard many stories about students who passed many exams, only to never touch the piano again after high school, or to quit playing abruptly. For this reason, I recommend taking piano exams not more frequently than every 2 to 3 years. There is no harm in this because most exam systems allow students to test at their current level without lower level certification, except for music theory certification. I generally require my students to take an intermediate level music theory exam, which is crucial for preparing them to play intermediate to advanced level pieces.
At the end of the day, however, I always contextualize it with specific needs for each student. For students who are actually motivated by taking these exams, I will let them take the exams more frequently, as long as the negatives don't outweigh the positives.
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