The accomplishment of excellence in performance has been the unequivocal goal and most highly valued measure of success in conservatoires. The master/apprentice model of teaching has traditionally been regarded as the sole way of achieving this. More recently however there has been much debate about the need to consider more innovative pedagogy in order to provide students with a diverse range of skills that will enable them to build a portfolio career. This paper reports on recent data from surveys about the prior learning of first year conservatoire students in Australia and England. It opens up issues around the prior learning experiences of a generation of young people and seeks to understand how student expectations and dispositions to learning in conservatoires are shaped at least in part by the pedagogical culture they have experienced prior to entering tertiary music institutions.