Your questions answered about the Music Aptitude Test

Good morning

I am considering applying for music places at 2-3 schools locally (W12) for Sep 2025 entry and came across your website.

I had a few questions:
Is the £190 for 2 sessions fee the same for online or in person? Is there any option for an in person in west London somewhere, do you ever travel?
When is it most beneficial to have the lessons, should I book them for closer to the time of tests and ideally 2-3 months before? Earlier? Later? Obviously I don’t want my daughter to do them too far in advance of the actual tests…

Thank you very much for any guidance you can offer.

—

Lorraine writes:

Let’s break this down as this is indeed a lot of questions! Do bear in mind that we do have a very extensive FAQ page (where these answers also appear) so that is always your first port of call when you have a lot of questions. We are two tutors that have a busy workload of music students during the week so our time to answer questions is extremely limited. However by keeping the FAQ page updated, you will find answers to pretty much all of your questions by checking there first. Individual emails are difficult for us to answer, especially when they contain so many individual questions.

I will assume that as you live in London W12 that you are more than likely applying to the West London Free School and Twyford. Click on the links to read more about those schools.

Is the £190 for 2 sessions fee the same for online or in person?
We only offer online tutoring. There is no option for tutoring in person. We have made this decision as we are located in a corner of South-East London that is not particularly well served by public transport and we found that a lot of students travelling by car would often be late for their lessons and would not receive the full hour as we had many students booked in back to back after them. For convenience we now only tutor on Zoom and it is a platform that is familiar with everyone since lockdown. You can also opt for FaceTime if you prefer. Online tutoring allows us to prepare students from all over the UK for their chosen secondary schools and does not limit us preparing students that live in North London or further afield.

With regards to the fees, please see details of our Specialist Music Aptitude Test tutoring package here: https://musicaptitudetest.wordpress.com/2024/02/08/music-aptitude-test-tutoring-package-for-2025-secondary-school-admissions/

Is there any option for an in person in west London somewhere, do you ever travel?
We do not travel. Travelling in London with the frequent train and tube strikes is fraught with problems and we can work from home or our music school which allows us to maximise our tutoring hours by not wasting time travelling. My mum lives in Ealing and it takes me at least 90 minutes to 2 hours ONE WAY just to get to her. To expect a tutor to incur 3 to 4 hours’ travel time just for an hour’s tuition session is not reasonable, nor would we expect you to travel that same distance to us.

When is it most beneficial to have the lessons, should I book them for closer to the time of tests and ideally 2-3 months before? Earlier? Later? Obviously I don’t want my daughter to do them too far in advance of the actual tests…
We have answered this above but you can also read more in-depth about that here. A capable and competent musician should not be worried about preparing well in advance. I always recommend one session around January to assess where your level of playing and musical awareness is, and then you may choose to come for another session in the Easter holidays, one more in the Summer holidays and if you pass the first round test, then a lesson to focus just on the audition is always useful. However this is just a guideline and some students will require more intensive tutoring, others will only require one lesson and they are good to go!

https://www.se22piano.co.uk/when-should-i-start-preparing-for-the-music-aptitude-test