Different towns have different ways of setting up their Suzuki, so I won't speak for everyone here. But in our area Suzuki is not primarily a group experience. For us, Suzuki has been weekly individual lessons and a monthly group lesson. The group lesson includes children of all levels including people who are in high school and even college and been playing for 10 or more years. So there is hardly any screeching at the group lesson. In fact, hearing the older kids play has been really inspiriational to DS.