24% get A grades at A level

[the B]

I saw that 'That will teach them.' program the other month where they put A* pupils through a 1950's grammer school. They said on there that you could get a C grade in GCSE maths with a score of 16% 20 years ago a C grade at O' level required a minimum of 65%.

Back then, there was only one exam paper.

Now, there are different ones at GCSE. The higher exam paper provides the possiblity of getting A and A* grades.

 

[trashpony]

Getting AAA is still pretty tricky. Top unis often interview and many have aptitude tests. Shortly, UCAS will be able to offer unis the chance of making offers dependent on getting A grades in say 5 out of 6 modules to better define the 'quality of the A grade'.

Advanced Extension Awards are pretty widespread now and have been growing in popularity. They have a 50% failure rate and are designed for those on the A grade in the A level. (believe it is then 30% pass, 10% merit, 10% distinction)


And exams such as Physics, Maths and Chemistry are dragging up the average A rate because people will only complete the A level if they are good at it.

At the 'sharp end' of employment and so forth, there are still very definitely ways for employers to distinguish between those who are cut out for things and those who aren't.

Why should you have to do another exam to prove that you got a good A grade rather than a crap one though? Surely that means the A levels themselves aren't actually doing the job they're supposed to do. Don't you think that's a rubbish system? What a bloody waste of everyone's time!

And yes - of course science subjects are to a degree self-selecting - but a 30% A grade rate is extraordinarily high. The difference now is that most of examinees get As in science, whereas when I was at school it was about 5% (possibly higher for maths).

 

[Giles]

Because students are getting cleverer and cleverer each year...

I agree with this totally. Compared with us older people, the teenagers of today are all obviously at near-genius levels of intelligence.

Anyone who says otherwise is just resentful because they can never hope to match the sheer intellectual brilliance of today's youth. They are just neanderthals in comparison.

And it goes on getting better: by 2100, everyone will be getting 5 "A"'s at A-level when they are 12, and everyone will have a degree as well.

I don't know why everyone worries about this every year.

Everything's brilliant!

Giles..

 

[Agent Sparrow]

As a matter of interest are degree results also increasing or are they staying stable?

I remember when I got my grades being a bit defensive about it because you don't obviously like being told that the main reason you've done well is because they're getting easier, but tbh I'm sure my A-levels were different to the ones sat 10 years before, and likewise are different to the ones set this year 9 years later. Something surely must be up though.

I do remember feeling that in comparison to degree level, A-level students are completely spoon fed.

Don't know if people should retake at A-level unless they've got a bloody good reason btw (i.e. illness, crisis etc)

 

[WouldBe]

Back then, there was only one exam paper.

Now, there are different ones at GCSE. The higher exam paper provides the possiblity of getting A and A* grades.

That doesn't explain how you can get a C grade at GCSE with only a 16% score.

 

[WouldBe]

And it goes on getting better: by 2100, everyone will be getting 5 "A"'s at A-level when they are 12, and everyone will have a degree as well.

Give A ' levels away in packets of coco pops. Would save a fortune in tax-payers money.

 

[trashpony]

As a matter of interest are degree results also increasing or are they staying stable?

I remember when I got my grades being a bit defensive about it because you don't obviously like being told that the main reason you've done well is because they're getting easier, but tbh I'm sure my A-levels were different to the ones sat 10 years before, and likewise are different to the ones set this year 9 years later. Something surely must be up though.

I do remember feeling that in comparison to degree level, A-level students are completely spoon fed.

Don't know if people should retake at A-level unless they've got a bloody good reason btw (i.e. illness, crisis etc)

I'd be really pissed off if it were me taking my exams now. Seriously though, I actually think it's dead insulting if you've worked your socks off to get an A but actually the minimum required % to get one is 50% (for example - I don't know if that's true). At least I knew that when I got my grades, I'd worked bloody hard and that everyone else that got the same grade as me had also worked bloody hard.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

That doesn't explain how you can get a C grade at GCSE with only a 16% score.

It does actually. I'm not a teacher but from remembering sitting GCSEs I think it goes something like this.

Say you've got 3 different papers for maths, one top, one middle, one bottom. They're rated in difficulty depending on what level they are (and syllabus covered is different too) and they're graded so, for example, top paper you might need over 60% for an A (because it's a hard paper), over 90% for middle, and you can't get an A if you take the bottom paper. So it's perfectly possible that for the top paper you could get a C with 16%. However, relative to the syllabus across the whole year, it's not equivilant to 16%. Does that explain things?

 

[Agent Sparrow]

I'd be really pissed off if it were me taking my exams now. Seriously though, I actually think it's dead insulting if you've worked your socks off to get an A but actually the minimum required % to get one is 50% (for example - I don't know if that's true). At least I knew that when I got my grades, I'd worked bloody hard and that everyone else that got the same grade as me had also worked bloody hard.

And honestly, while I did work fairly hard, I could have worked a lot harder, which is why my first year at uni was a complete shock - went from getting As and Bs to getting a third in one of my stats modules because I put in about the same amount of work!

As I said, the main difference I noticed 9 years ago is that A-level teachers just drum things into you repetively. At degree you learn it all once and then have to make sure you revise properly. Perhaps that's just happening more and more? Also I reckon the increasing emphasis on modules and coursework might account for some of it.

 

[WouldBe]

for example, top paper you might need over 60% for an A (because it's a hard paper)

60 % would have been a grade D (fail) at O' level not an A grade.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

A levels are too easy at the moment, if the student of the day is being taught better then the exams should be made harder to compensate. A levels are not needed or used as an absolute measure, they are used as a way of comparing students or applicants. As such they fail to suffice.

I speak as someone who got very good grades at A level that i wouldn't have gotten with harsher exams.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

60 % would have been a grade D (fail) at O' level not an A grade.

Yep, but then that whole top paper is not equivilant to the whole years syllabus (sorry if I'm not explaining this well). Bascially as it's a much harder paper than the other ones, the grade boundaries are different.

When I sat my GCSEs there were 6 papers, the kids deemed brightest by the school took 5 and 6, those in the middle took 3 and 4, and those in the bottom streams took 1 and 2. Paper 1 and paper 6 would have not have had anything the same on them. Each paper had different grade boundaries relative to how difficult it was thought to be.

 

[WouldBe]

Yep, but then that whole top paper is not equivilant to the whole years syllabus (sorry if I'm not explaining this well). Bascially as it's a much harder paper than the other ones, the grade boundaries are different.

When I sat my GCSEs there were 6 papers, the kids deemed brightest by the school took 5 and 6, those in the middle took 3 and 4, and those in the bottom streams took 1 and 2. Paper 1 and paper 6 would have not have had anything the same on them.

You probably are explaining it well. It's just me being a bit thick.

We had separate exams for GSE and CSE with a CSE grade 1 being equivalent to a GSE grade C. I can't remember wether we took 1 or 2 papers in the maths exam but to get a grade C you had to get 65% on both papers. Fail 1 paper you fail the whole exam.

 

[Dowie]

Rest assured that Maths, Chemistry, Physics etc. are still incredibly difficult. The fact that so few students take them anymore in favour of new easy courses pushes up pass statistics and leads to the misguided notion that exams are getting easier.

from BBC website:

SUBJECT ENTRIES
last year's position in brackets
1 (1) English 86,640
2 (2) General Studies 58,967
3 (4) Mathematics 55,982

I wouldn't say that being the 3rd most popular subject means that 'so few students' are taking it - though I do take your point ref psychology (it is no 4 btw...)

btw i did my maths A-level back in 1999 & we used an old O-Level book to cover most of the pure maths content - if it was easy back then I'd hate to think what it is like now - standards have definately slipped in mathematics - 17-18 year olds studying material that used to be covered by 16 year olds a few decades ago - how is that not a case of standards slipping.

IIRC the times published an example of an old O-level paper & a moderin GCSE paper a couple of years back - there was a huge difference - the older exams used to get students to actually solve problems & apply their knowledge - the new ones seem to guide students through problems & the skill in passing the exam isn't in being able to apply the knowledge learned to a particualr situation but learn the set types of questions that now come up & learn a set method for solving the certian types of questions that you'll be guided through in the paper.

(edited for spelling - i'm a bit dyslexic & would have probably failed O-Level english under the old system)

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Hmmm, would have kind of hoped "Mickey Mouse" course snobbery wouldn't still be so previlant.

There isn't just one type of intelligence you know - not being best at physics or maths doesn't make you inferior to everyone else. I always find it a bit pathetic tbh when maths or hard science students make such a big song and dance about them having taken "proper" subjects unlike all those arty types/social scientists. And IME, all the really bright scientists I've known have been the ones who never felt the need to put down the courses of other people. *

The popularity of General Studies surprises me though, when I was taking A-levels that really was looked down upon, where obviously now it's really popular. Do people mostly take it as a fourth or fifth one?

Anyway, not that my mum did A-levels, but one thing she's always said comparing my school education with her own is that while we weren't so technical, she thinks I was encouraged to think more for myself than she was. What do people think about that?

Wouldbe, do you think you get the maths exam grades now or do you want graphs.

*E2A: and of course many don't stay clear of the more traditional subjects because they can't do them, just because they want to do something new/something that interests them more. Which is fair enough I think. Why think someone is less intelligent because they chose to do less traditional subjects if they genuinely chose them because they sounded interesting?

 

[Sean]

It's depressingly Daily Mail-like a lot of this discussion.

I'm an A Level examiner (have been for a while) and I don't honestly think the exams are getting easier, but they certainly assess different types of knowledge and forms of learning than when I did my A Levels 17/18 years back.

A lot of my A Levels consisted of memorising chunks of texts and various quotations and writing interpretations that my teachers had given me; these days, you generally get to take texts in to exams, select comparative texts to relate them to and look at critical contexts to literature - historical background/ critical responses at the time and now/ theoretical interpretations - loads more than we did before.

In the subject I examine in, there are many different skills assessed and I know that I would have found it really tough when I was 16 or 17.

Re-sits are defiitely helping push A Level grades up, but that's only fair in a modular system, and the grade boundaries are no longer pegged to quotas of As and Bs but based on what candidates achieve; mark schemes and assessment objectives are more transparent too.

It's not all sweetness and light - there are lot of issues that need to be sorted - but it pisses me off to hear otherwise sensible Urbanites getting all Melanie Philips/ Chris Cockhead about what A Level students are doing now.

 

[snoogles]

and people aren't coached for SATs?

try "sat coaching" in google

yes, point taken about the SATs, though I suppose what I was really thinking of were the kind of tests that Cambridge is using which are supposed to be coach-proof - 'American-style' referring to the universal practice of testing students for aptitude as well as looking at their high school grades.

The popularity of General Studies surprises me though, when I was taking A-levels that really was looked down upon, where obviously now it's really popular. Do people mostly take it as a fourth or fifth one?

It's still looked down upon but a growing number of schools are making it compulsory because it's so easy to get a high grade and this boosts the schools' % A-C grades (one of the measures that the government uses to grade schools). Its frankly ridiculous; decent universities make offers that exclude grades for General Studies, so there is no real point in students studying it. There are a lot of frustrated students being forced to waste time doing General Studies when they would rather be taking another subject allied to their interests.

 

[trashpony]

It's depressingly Daily Mail-like a lot of this discussion.

I'm an A Level examiner (have been for a while) and I don't honestly think the exams are getting easier, but they certainly assess different types of knowledge and forms of learning than when I did my A Levels 17/18 years back.

A lot of my A Levels consisted of memorising chunks of texts and various quotations and writing interpretations that my teachers had given me; these days, you generally get to take texts in to exams, select comparative texts to relate them to and look at critical contexts to literature - historical background/ critical responses at the time and now/ theoretical interpretations - loads more than we did before.

In the subject I examine in, there are many different skills assessed and I know that I would have found it really tough when I was 16 or 17.

Re-sits are defiitely helping push A Level grades up, but that's only fair in a modular system, and the grade boundaries are no longer pegged to quotas of As and Bs but based on what candidates achieve; mark schemes and assessment objectives are more transparent too.

It's not all sweetness and light - there are lot of issues that need to be sorted - but it pisses me off to hear otherwise sensible Urbanites getting all Melanie Philips/ Chris Cockhead about what A Level students are doing now.

So how do you account for a 24% average A grade? And the fact that they are inventing additional tests to assess ability?

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Sean, do you know if degree grades are improving or if it's just A-level/GCSE?

I do totally agree with what you've said about the types of skill changing, I've said that sort of stuff before on other threads and I touched upon it in my last post. But still, almost a quarter at A grade does I think mean that the idea of what an A is might have changed a bit. Isn't an A meant to be a degree of excellence rather than just above average? I don't think anyone's saying students are getting less skilled (although those skills may be in different areas), just that perhaps a system where 24% of grades are As is no longer working.

 

[snoogles]

Sean, a close friend of mine who took his exams about 7 years ago had his entire Physics A Level taught to him from an old O-Level textbook. I mean, the whole thing. He got an A as well. Up until recently I tutored A Level physics and a lot of topics weren't even on a par with the Irish Leaving Certificate in difficulty (Higher level Leaving Cert. Physics is supposed to be to a standard that is 2/3 of an A Level). Could you give us some examples illustrating why you think the difficulty hasn't changed, because in my experience it certainly seems to have done so?

On average, in Ireland, less than 5% of candidates get the top grade in any given higher level paper (a similar percentage of young people take higher papers in Ireland as take A levels in the UK). You also have to do at least 6 subjects for university entry, not 3. The proportion getting top grades (over 90%) in 6 subjects is about 0.3%. Why not introduce a similar grading system here? 24% getting an A grade in any given subject and 8% getting 3 As is ridiculous in comparison. 8% versus 0.3%? Really...

 

[lyra_k]

It pisses me off from a purely selfish point of view, because my own 'A' level grades from 1989 (ACDD) make me sound like a complete dunce, whereas at the time they were actually rather good.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

On average, in Ireland, less than 5% of candidates get the top grade in any given higher level paper (a similar percentage of young people take higher papers in Ireland as take A levels in the UK). You also have to do at least 6 subjects for university entry, not 3. The proportion getting top grades (over 90%) in 6 subjects is about 0.3%. Why not introduce a similar grading system here? 24% getting an A grade in any given subject and 8% getting 3 As is ridiculous in comparison. 8% versus 0.3%? Really...

Well, obviously Irish people are stupid snoogles....

















And just incase it was missed the first time,

 

[lyra_k]

to those who know - is getting a bachelors degree in some subjects becoming almost as impossible to fail as 'A' levels?

In the USA "going to college" is a bit of a joke in all but a few academic subjects, it's more of a test of whether you can afford to go, than of your intelligence. As long as you keep turning work in and you don't just disappear, you will not fail most bachelors courses

 

[snoogles]

Well, obviously Irish people are stupid snoogles....

Yeah - you're right, they should have taken A Levels instead and had a way easier time of it

 

[Agent Sparrow]

to those who know - is getting a bachelors degree in some subjects becoming almost as impossible to fail as 'A' levels?

In the USA "going to college" is a bit of a joke in all but a few academic subjects, it's more of a test of whether you can afford to go, than of your intelligence. As long as you keep turning work in and you don't just disappear, you will not fail most bachelors courses

Hmmm, can't answer you definately as I don't work in education, but from my experience of knowing students, I know that some doss pretty badly and can still pass with lower 2s or 3rds.

On the other hand I used to know some mechanical engineer students from the less prestigous university (the old poly) and they only had to get two Es to get onto the course because it wasn't popular. Because of that some of them were really struggling, so obviously there were still standards they had to meet.

I think there were a few fails on my course, and there were 4 firsts out of a fairly large group (100 students?) but this was 6 years ago.

 

[jæd]

It does actually. I'm not a teacher but from remembering sitting GCSEs I think it goes something like this.

Say you've got 3 different papers for maths, one top, one middle, one bottom. They're rated in difficulty depending on what level they are (and syllabus covered is different too) and they're graded so, for example, top paper you might need over 60% for an A (because it's a hard paper), over 90% for middle, and you can't get an A if you take the bottom paper. So it's perfectly possible that for the top paper you could get a C with 16%. However, relative to the syllabus across the whole year, it's not equivilant to 16%. Does that explain things?

In my day the different papers were graded at set marks... I went for the top Maths paper after I really pushed for it. My teachers were unwilling to let me sit at as I could only get an "A", "B" or "C" grade... Anything less was a fail. Luckily I got a "B"...

 

[Giles]

The change from norm-referenced to criterion-referenced marking sparked the biggest single jump in grades, obviously.

Politicians did not like norm-referencing because it effectively meant you could never crow over "best results EVER", but then again, you could never have this pointless annual debate about exams getting easier.

When I did my exams, the marks were norm-referenced.

The top-scoring n% got As, then the next so-many got Bs, etc.

At least it meant that even if the maths paper one year was "easy", you didn't suddenly get loads of people with top grades.

Giles..

 

[Sean]

What Giles points out here is what I think is the main reason for apparent "grade inflation" and I think criterion-referencing is the only fair way to award marks and subsequently grades.

What this essentially means is that if you learn how to do certain things (so in my subject area, you'd need to be able to use linguistic frameworks, identify grammatical elements and word classes, for example on one paper) you'd generally get same marks as a candidate the year before, all other things being equal. This means that teachers know what they need to teach to get their students particular grades, and students kow what they need to do. Couple this with re-sits of AS modules, and you can get some very high grades if you put the work in. One of my own students did this yesterday, scroring a perfect UMS mark on a re-sit paper and securing a B grade overall.

This doesn't mean that the exams are getting easier, but that they become less of a mystic, cryptic artform and more democratic...in theory.

There are clearly wider issues involved in this - whether it's a good idea to have so much assessment, particular types of assessment, such narrow specifications in some subject areas etc. - and you could also look at the roles GCSEs and University selection play in the A Level results.

Personally, I think many universities are to blame for this depressing display of bleating each year. If they did their jobs properly, they'd be able to select the best students, but they hardly interview any more and don't really understand the "new" A Levels six years on from their first examination.

If uni application happened after results, the system would be much fairer and I'm sure there would be less outcry over grade inflation/ slipping standards.

 

[WouldBe]

Sean, a close friend of mine who took his exams about 7 years ago had his entire Physics A Level taught to him from an old O-Level textbook.

Nice to know I've effectively got an A' level in physics.

O' level physics taken in 1979 grade A
A' level physics taken in 1981 grade O

 

[lobster]

Its not been mentioned yet, the big "E" word.
Employment is becomming increasing difficult now and i suspect harder in the future without some sort of formal qualification.
Jobs that a few decades ago needed nothng , today need a degree

The better solution would be too lower the employment requirements but instead the qualifications are lowered in the hope that , "whatever the job seeker learnt from eduction, at least its something"

Don't get me wrong , some employers can tell the difference between a genuine graduate and one who is not.

The lowered qualifications will show in the long run sadly ...
Look at the way the airports were ran for example since the delays, its been a joke, i wonder what management courses teach or not teach these days?
Then when it rains after a hot summer , we have floods that you think a "wealthy developed country" should be able to cope with ?? but no....
Same can be said for the snow periods we have had....

I could talk about technology too, the crappy products usually come down to " lets not make a great product that works and does not need improvement, the ipod batteries better not last too long or we cannot sell them a new improved ipod" rather than uneducated engineers.

iirc the standard of education in india and the whole middleast is a lot lot higher.
Very few goto university , getting a math degree in iran would be the equivalent of maths degree at oxford/cambridge. There is no lower level maths degree there.

What i have said is fairly genereal, as a lot of people in there field do work very hard or create nice working products...