Your child liked the idea of it. You sorted lessons, probably bought something to practise on, cleared space somewhere. By month three they were dragging their feet to every session and you weren’t sure whether to push through or call it.
That first failed attempt changes how parents approach the second one. The questions are completely different.
Why the first school often doesn’t work out
Not every London music school is set up for children who are actually children — impatient, easily bored, sensitive to feeling stupid in front of other people. A lot of provision in London is built around adult learners or exam-focused teens, and younger children get squeezed into structures that don’t really fit them.
The group size problem is one parents rarely anticipate. A class of twelve sounds social and fun; in practice it means your seven-year-old gets three minutes of direct feedback per lesson and spends the rest of the time waiting their turn or losing focus. Small groups — four to six, at the outside — change the dynamic completely. Children actually hear themselves, hear each other, and get corrected in the moment rather than taking home a bad habit for the next two weeks.
The teacher-child fit matters in a way that’s hard to explain until you’ve seen it go wrong. A technically brilliant pianist isn’t automatically good at explaining a rhythm to a five-year-old, or holding the attention of a distracted nine-year-old on a Thursday evening after school. Teaching children music well is its own thing, and formal qualifications don’t always capture it.
What happens between Grade 1 and Grade 5
A lot of children start well, pass Grade 1 with enthusiasm, and then quietly stall somewhere around Grade 3. Parents feel it before the teacher says anything — the child who used to run to the piano starts finding reasons to avoid it. The pieces feel harder, the novelty has worn off, and nobody’s told them that this is completely normal, that almost every student goes through a flat patch around this stage, and that coming out the other side of it is mostly a question of the right repertoire at the right moment.
ABRSM exams are useful for the right child. Some kids thrive on having something concrete to work towards and the external mark of a passed grade genuinely motivates them. Others don’t — and a school that runs every student through the same exam schedule regardless of whether it suits them tends to produce children who can play the required pieces and have quietly stopped caring about music. The exam is a means. Plenty of schools treat it as the end.
Music classes for children at Excelsis run from the earliest stages through to Grade 8 and beyond, with exam preparation available for children who want it — alongside performance opportunities and ensemble work for those who’d rather measure their progress differently. Not everything has to end in a certificate.
How Kodály actually changes the experience
Most parents haven’t heard of Kodály or Dalcroze. They’re approaches to music education that put listening and musical understanding first — before notation, before formal technique. Children learn to hear intervals, internalise rhythm, and respond physically to music before they’re asked to read it off a page. What that produces, in practice, is children who understand what they’re playing. Not children who’ve memorised fingering patterns they can reproduce in calm conditions but fall apart under any pressure.
It’s the difference between a child who freezes when a finger lands wrong in the exam, and a child who knows the music well enough to find their way back. Same hours practised. Completely different relationship with the material.
Excelsis uses both methods across its children’s programmes, particularly with younger learners. The Budding Musicians Programme introduces children to music through movement and ear training before an instrument is introduced at all. For a lot of children, especially those who haven’t had much musical exposure at home, that foundation makes everything that follows considerably easier.
The continuity problem in North London
Finding a good music teacher isn’t the hard part. Finding a school that can take your child from a baby music class at age one through to Grade 7 piano at age fifteen, with continuity of approach and teachers who know your child’s history, is much harder than it should be.
North London’s provision is patchy. There are good private teachers dotted across Barnet, Enfield, Palmers Green, and Winchmore Hill, but most of them teach one instrument, one age group, and can’t follow a child as they grow and develop. Parents end up stitching together different teachers for different stages, and the child loses the thread somewhere along the way.
The Excelsis School of Music in Southgate, N14, runs programmes from babies and toddlers right through to adults — piano, violin, guitar, singing, flute, music theory. The same school, the same ethos, at every stage. For families in Palmers Green, Arnos Grove, Winchmore Hill, or coming down on the Piccadilly line, the journey is straightforward enough to hold up across a full term of twice-weekly sessions, which is the thing that actually matters.
What a trial lesson actually shows you
Reading about a music school tells you very little about whether it’s the right one for your child. The teacher, the room, whether your child feels at ease or twitchy and quiet — none of that comes through on a website.
A free trial lesson at Excelsis is a proper session, not a walk-around. Your child meets the teacher, plays something, and you get a real sense of whether this is going to work — before you’ve committed to a full term, bought a new instrument, or told your child this one will be different. Parents who’ve already tried somewhere else tend to know what they’re looking for by the time they walk in. The trial is where they find out whether they’ve found it.
If it clicks, it’s usually obvious quickly.
The Excelsis School of Music Southgate, North London N14 020 8115 0413 Contact Excelsis
