A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Picking the right music teacher can be a difficult process and forming a successful teacher/student pair can be very dependent and even down to things like personality and interests. We take the headache out of this process by reassessing the effectiveness of our teachers two months after a student has begun to learn and can switch tutors for you if things aren’t quite working right. In other words – let us go through the hassle of making sure you have the right teacher.
As a school, we can offer more than a private teacher individually is able to. In addition to your regular tutor, the student will also have the experienced school director monitoring their progress to offer further assistance in their progress. We organize live/recorded concerts in order to showcase our students and get them actively involved with the most fun aspect of learning piano: performing!
Advantages of learning with GPS versus learning at school
Guildford Piano School tuition takes after school or at weekends so your child doesn’t get behind on curricular subjects like maths or English.
A small amount of regular contact between the parent and the teacher has been shown to improve students’ attitude.
We can also be more flexible than a school in the length of lesson we can offer. Suitable students that show excellent potential are recommended to have longer lessons in order to fast-track their progress.
Some of our teachers currently work at schools in the area. We have students attending most of the schools in the area including RGS, George Abbott, Guildford High, Tormead, Lanesborough, Boxgrove, Bushy Hill and St Catherine’s.
What Other Advantages Are There Of Having Lessons At Home?
Travelling to a teacher outside of school reaps these benefits but having lessons at home negates the need to wait whilst your child has their lesson.
Some students have a problem where they can play on their home instrument but then struggle to play on a unfamiliar piano.
Teachers can identify problems in the environment that the student practises in. For example, a younger child who never wanted to practise for more than 5 minutes was actually not very comfortable sitting on their piano stool at home. Using a footstool enabled the student to play for much longer.
Why Have One-to-One Lessons?
Having group lessons is a cost-effective way to keep a child entertained for a while but is often a false economy in terms of music education. The rate at which someone learns can vary hugely depending on how much practice a student does in addition to their natural aptitude. Very able students are held back by the rest of the group and at worst, weaker students can fall behind so as to render the lessons entirely useless for them.
Group lessons can teach bad habits that can be spotted easily and corrected with individual lessons.
Group lessons can be useful for the first couple of hours of instrumental tuition, for training aural skills and for advanced lecture-style seminars but yield diminishing returns in the long-term for standard instrumental tuition.
One-to-one lessons allow students to have a say in the direction the lessons take. At GPS, it is one of our founding principles to empower the student in this way.