At ABRSM it’s our mission to inspire musical achievement. We do everything we can to support students’ progression and success in music, whatever their needs and musical destinations. We believe that learning music theory gives students the tools they need to get the most from their musical activities. Our commitment to the teaching and learning of core musical skills, knowledge, and understanding is unwavering. And we back this up by continuously developing new print and digital resources supporting the varied needs of students and teachers. We also have a longstanding requirement that candidates must pass Grade 5 (or above) in Music Theory, Jazz or Practical Musicianship before they can enter for a practical exam at Grade 6, 7 or 8. As part of our responsibility to teachers and students, we review and refresh all our assessments on an on-going basis. To do this we consult with customers and education experts, including teaching staff from our Royal Schools of Music partners. The revised exam papers are based on our existing Music Theory syllabus and will continue to assess the same broad areas of music theory. Although we’ve made some small changes to the papers, the underlying knowledge you need remains the same. Our panel of expert Theory Examiners will continue to mark all our exam papers to the same rigorous standards as now. When making these changes, we took into account best practice in assessment and question design. As a result we’ve introduced Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) for one element of the exam. MCQs are an accessible, reliable and proven way of assessing certain aspects of knowledge. They are an existing and accepted element of school exams and the vast majority of candidates will be familiar with them. 11 August 2017 Further information:

• Improving our Music Theory exams blog post
• Sample papers for Grades 1 to 5 (2 sets) to view, download and print
• Multiple choice quiz for musical terms and signs
• To find out more about the changes, please visit www.abrsm.org/theory2018