EPQ Piano tutors
1 UK tutor who teach Piano at EPQ.
Piano is the most widely taught instrument in UK private tuition, with three main graded-exam boards: ABRSM (dominant), Trinity College London (Classical and Jazz streams), and LCME (London College of Music Examinations, awarded by the University of West London). The ladder runs Initial / Prep Test through Grades 1-8 and into diplomas (ARSM, DipABRSM and beyond at ABRSM; ATCL through FTCL at Trinity). ABRSM Grade 5 Music Theory (or Practical Musicianship Grade 5, or Grade 5 Jazz) is a hard prerequisite to book either Practical or Performance Grades 6-8 (still active for 2026), and it surprises many parents at the Grade 5 transition. Performance Grades are video-submission (four pieces plus a 'performance as a whole' mark, no scales or sight-reading); Practical Grades are in-person and include scales, arpeggios, sight-reading and aural. Tutoring helps most with the Grade 4-5 plateau (hands-independence, scale workload), with the Grade 5 theory bottleneck, and with repertoire choice across the period requirement at each grade. Look for tutors familiar with the board the student will sit: ABRSM, Trinity and LCME have meaningfully different exam culture.
The Extended Project Qualification is a Level 3 standalone qualification taken alongside A-levels (typically in Year 12 or Year 13) and is worth half an A-level (up to 28 UCAS points at A*). Students choose their own topic and produce either a 5,000-word dissertation, or an artefact / performance accompanied by a 1,000-word report, plus a production log and a viva-style presentation. AQA's spec (7993) is the largest by a wide margin (~40,000 entries/year in England); Pearson Edexcel (Dissertation P301, Investigation P302, Performance P303, Artefact P304), OCR (H856) and WJEC / Eduqas also offer it. Tutoring on EPQ is closer to academic-research mentoring than subject teaching: research-question scoping, source evaluation and citation discipline, dissertation structure, statistical analysis where relevant, and viva preparation. Look for tutors with degree-level research experience in the project's topic area; subject-specialist A-level tutors don't always cover the dissertation craft well.
Read up before you book
Plain-English guides
About EPQ
Year groups, exam timing, and how EPQ fits into the UK qualification ladder.
Exam boards
AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, CCEA, SQA (now Qualifications Scotland) and Cambridge International: what each is known for.
Parent guides
Cost benchmarks, online vs in-person, when to start, choosing a tutor, and knowing if it's working.
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