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Re: New Grading System

John Todd wrote:

> My personal preference would be that all bands could attend as many
contests as
> they like during the contesting year (which up here starts after the AGM
in
> October), with their best three results (including the regional) counting
> towards some kind of grading table. That means bands would need to contest
at
> the regional, plus another two contests in the year, which I think every
> Scottish band does anyway. I would be inclined to promote the winner of
each
> section from the regional, with the second promotion place, and the two
> relegation placed, based over the year.

Great idea.  I think that this is the most positive suggestion I've seen to
date on this difficult issue and I hope that John and his team are able to
persuade the Scottish Regional Committee of its merits.  The idea of
including two or three other contests to arrive at an aggregate will produce
a number of clear benefits:

1) it will encourage bands to support their local association contests.

2) it will possibly help to even out the perceived unevenness of standards
between regions since bands might be able to compete in events over a wider
geographical area.

3) it would reward consistency and penalise those bands who only 'get their
act together' once each year in March.

4) it would encourage a greater range of musical activity (by including own
choice and entertainment contests in the business of promotion and
relegation).

5) it would provide a more accurate measure of the worth of each band,
rather than basing important decisions about a band's future on the basis of
a single contest result (emphais on result rather than performance!).

6) it could speed up the process of promotion and relegation.

There would be a number of potential problem areas but nothing
insurmountable:

1) Why restrict promotions to just two bands, if there are three or four
worthy candidates?  This only produces bottlenecks.  In a number of this
year's Area Contests a section has been won by newly promoted bands - in
Scotland and the North of England this was especially pronounced.  Surely
this means that the promotion system is too slow to respond to bands who are
improving quickly.  In this year's Scottish Championships there was a ten
point gap between fourth place and fifth place bands, but only two of those
outstanding top four will be promoted.(A similar problem exists in respect
of relegation: I heard a couple of bands who were well out of their depth
and finished low down in this year's contests, but they won't be relegated
owing to other bands having a lower three year average).

2) There must be some sort of quality control on contests, adjudicators and
the number of bands competing if it is to count towards grading.  Coming
first (or last) out of two bands is not a good indicator!

3)  There must be a safeguard so as not to penalise those bands who for
reasons of distance cannot travel to more than one contest each year.  Bands
from the Isle of Man or the Channel Isles would suffer if this system was to
be used nationally.

4) If this system was adopted I would personally like to see a limit on the
number of times a single test piece or entertainments programme can count
towards grading.

But these are minor points which certainly don't conceal the strength of the
ideas John proposes.

And its great to see the secretary of a Championship Section band so
concerned about promotion - is there no limit to your ambition John?

Cheers

David




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