weltweit
Well-Known Member
I was never even told to time my time spent on answers according to the marks available. It may have been common sense but I never realised the importance till this guy spelled it out for me.
A Level results improve for 27th year in a row!
- Thread starter weltweit
- Start date
I was never even told to time my time spent on answers according to the marks available. It may have been common sense but I never realised the importance till this guy spelled it out for me.
catinthehat
Failed VK = Replicant
I have been a setter for A levels and more recently Highers (ie I write and mark exams). I dont think the exams have got easier at all - different in some cases, but we go to a lot of trouble to keep the standard the same. What has changed is the structure of A levels with the AS and A2, and the chance to sit more than once and take the highest grade. Add to that the weeding out of candidates unlikely to get above a C - this is due to League tables. Then add the fact that because of tables and the constant whipping of teachers for results students are taught to the test. We teach them to pass the exam in the subject rather than the subject - which I constantly rail against. When I did my exams the first time I ever saw a paper was on the day of the exam - however, my students will look at and deconstuct paper after paper and spend ages on exam technique. If I didnt do this the results would go down and they would cut the course.
Norm referencing is also used.;
Norm referencing is also used.;
1927
Funnier than he thinks he is.
Exactly. I did my A's in '83 too. An A grade has now become meaningless as everyone gets them. Employers know this too, so I am sure they aren't impressed by people with loads of As these days. In 20 years time a degree wont be worth as much as my O levels!!
scifisam
deleted
Yup.
So it's a combination of:
Teaching to the test
Not entering students who'd be likely to fail the exam (they'll probably do a different qualification instead - and those who don't do well at AS level are less likely to carry on to A2 level)
and
Modular exams enabling students to increase their grades
The exams aren't actually easier, but it is easier to get an A. It is ridiculous that a quarter of students now get those grades - they should be proud of their achievement, and instead they just got the same as 1 in 4 of their classmates.
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
I looked after some friends kids recently and was exposed to this for the first time. I was a little shocked at how conditioned they were. It was impressive from the pov of going for the jugular – answering the specific questions, but they ended up understanding nothing.
They didn’t care – they got the answers right, but it was fucking clinical. They were 8 and 10-year olds.
Whoa.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
That makes some sense.
Back in my day, at O-level I hardly saw a paper before the exam and consequently was quite dazed by the actual exam paper.
When I got to A-level I did sit at least one mock but that was about the extent of the prior knowledge we had of what the A-level would be like.
Norm referencing? que?
Ruby_Slippers
Amanacledkisstwitmop
Yes, in a lot of subjects now, the student gets most of the final grade established through coursework.. I would argue that teachers doing the marking can't really help being biased.. They build up relationships & its difficult to be objective . . . Something else is that when a student is clearly dim, they may get a 'sympathy' a-level, as the tutor may have seen them slog their guts out to try and scrape through.. I don't remember getting extra marks for effort.. but is it actually possible to FAIL an A-level these days
When i was doing mine (in the olden days) - a fellow student was clearly out of her depth and yet they let her waste 2 years studying, towards inevitable failure 
.. she'd probably pass if she were to take them now. 
There must be wannabe a-level students who just are not 'clever'.. but it seems this is an unacceptable thing to say - which is odd as the average IQ level in Uk is about 80, and you'd need about 120+ to pass A-levels... let alone achieve 'A' grades!! Rant over.
scifisam
deleted
Yes, in a lot of subjects now, the student gets most of the final grade established through coursework.. I would argue that teachers doing the marking can't really help being biased.. They build up relationships & its difficult to be objective . . . Something else is that when a student is clearly dim, they may get a 'sympathy' a-level, as the tutor may have seen them slog their guts out to try and scrape through.. I don't remember getting extra marks for effort.. but is it actually possible to FAIL an A-level these days
No it's not!
And teachers can't just mark any old how when they mark coursework, you know. They have the same marking scheme as exams, and they get checked.
Erm, most people still don't take A-levels afaik.Yes, in a lot of subjects now, the student gets most of the final grade established through coursework.. I would argue that teachers doing the marking can't really help being biased.. They build up relationships & its difficult to be objective . . . Something else is that when a student is clearly dim, they may get a 'sympathy' a-level, as the tutor may have seen them slog their guts out to try and scrape through.. I don't remember getting extra marks for effort.. but is it actually possible to FAIL an A-level these days
It always annoyed me when I was doing exams that no matter how well I did, my achievement would be undermined by people constantly harping on how allegedly easy the exams were, when the synoptic unit of my English A-level was harder than my degree finals, and I worked very hard to do well. I'd guess that quite a lot of the improvement is due to the exam treadmill these days - for example, when I was in education, I had proper, full-on exams at least once a year every year between the ages of 10 and 20, as well as countless mock papers. By the time A-levels came around, I had seen literally hundreds of exam papers and so was entirely unfazed by them. Add to that teachers teaching to the test and the end of fixed proportions of candidates getting certain grades, and it goes quite a long way to explaining things.
girasol
Addicted to handstands!
I don't know about a-levels, but I do know that at the age of 10 my son knows a lot more about everything than I did at that age, and I mean a lot... Not just the general stuff we used to learn, but more on top: more information on TV, the internet. He can use a computer proficiently, and he can learn how to play a computer game a lot faster, and a lot better than either of us adults at home.
Kids are bombarded with information from every direction from an early age - perhaps they can assimilate more than we could?
Of course, the only way to answer this is for older people to sit through a modern a-level exam... (why do they always suggest it be the other way around?)
And remember, the skills needed today are different from what was needed 20/30 years ago.
So leave the kids alone and be proud of them!
Kids are bombarded with information from every direction from an early age - perhaps they can assimilate more than we could?
Of course, the only way to answer this is for older people to sit through a modern a-level exam... (why do they always suggest it be the other way around?)
And remember, the skills needed today are different from what was needed 20/30 years ago.
So leave the kids alone and be proud of them!
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
No it's not. For future reference, IQ scores are based on normal distribution and are standardised - basically the mean average is set by definition to be 100, and the population's scores are distributed like the diagram below. And 15 points either way is one standard deviation from the mean - below that's 85. From looking at the normal distribution graph, approx 84% of people have an IQ higher than 85.Yes, in a lot of subjects now, the student gets most of the final grade established through coursework.. I would argue that teachers doing the marking can't really help being biased.. They build up relationships & its difficult to be objective . . . Something else is that when a student is clearly dim, they may get a 'sympathy' a-level, as the tutor may have seen them slog their guts out to try and scrape through.. I don't remember getting extra marks for effort.. but is it actually possible to FAIL an A-level these days
Also, I would have thought some coursework is sent off to external examiners and moderated...
catinthehat
Failed VK = Replicant
Yes it is (sent to externals) - anything that is done at the centre delivering will be sampled - anyone who over or undermarks should be picked up and its not in any teachers interest to stray from the marking schemes.
Having become a parent of a 15 year old doing her GCSEs and then A-levels, this rings true. When I was doing Physics A-level (1981), I was learning basic principles of things that were applicable across the board; what seems to be learned now is a kind of problem-solving approach based purely around exam questions - lots of the "trick" questions they used to ask where it looked like you were being asked to solve one problem but was actually about a slightly different problem would leave today's A-level students stumped.
And the teaching to the exam thing is blatant - there were always urban myths going around when I was at school - "they haven't done differentiation for 3 years, so there's going to be a differentiation question this time" - was complete bollocks, but now it seems to be a question of "there'll be a specific heat question, and there'll be a Newtonian laws-of-motion question, etc..., yada" (hypothetical examples!), and it's the teacher saying it!
pennimania
still dre and drooling
May I just say, as someone who has taught Art & Design for a very long time, A level Art has become increasingly demanding over the years. This certainly true for the EDEXCEL examination board.
Scottish Higher Art & Design,however, is in my opinion, a piece of piss, and I can't understand how they get away with it.
Scottish Higher Art & Design,however, is in my opinion, a piece of piss, and I can't understand how they get away with it.
Ruby_Slippers
Amanacledkisstwitmop
It is! (my psychology A-level tutor told me
) Plus, they check only a couple out of the whole class.
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
It is! (my psychology A-level tutor told me
The 80 IQ thing? No, it really, really isn't. Did you actually bother to read my post on the subject? Either your teacher was wrong, or (and this is what I suspect is more likely), you misunderstood.
E2A: sorry if that comes across as arsey. It's just that part of my training is in actually doing official IQ tests.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
I showed a Science Foundation GCSE (the easiest of all Science GCSE papers) to someone who was going on about how exams were easier than in his day and he couldn't do it! Oh how I pointed and laughed!
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
Yup, and there is always the possibility of random spot checks too.
I don't think it's as simplistic as "exams have got easier". I think it's much more subtle than that: my impression - and I freely accept that this is a subjective impression gained from observing and talking to people, rather than first-hand - is that the scope of examinations has become much narrower, with much less breadth of material being taught, and that the methods of teaching being used are now focused almost purely from Year 10 towards getting people to answer exam questions and do exam coursework.
What I think is missing is the fostering of a general spirit of enquiry around the subject - teaching is focused much more on the mad dash for the finish line and there isn't the scope for meandering around the backwaters of interesting - but often stimulating to motivated pupils - areas. One thing that clearly hasn't changed is the way in which children are endlessly told just how critically important these exams are - I got that, too, and on reflection I think it was a) not strictly true, b) not helpful. The exams should be a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As things stand, I think they've become more and more an end in themselves.
I know that teachers often react quite angrily when the validity of these exams is questioned, presumably because they feel that it is an implied criticism of their teaching skills. I don't agree with that - I think that teachers, in general, are doing just as fine a job as they were doing 30 years ago. But I think that they are being given a LOT less autonomy to be able to teach in their own style, and I think that this - especially for the good teachers - leaves both teacher and pupils the losers. Quite a few of the ex-teachers I've spoken to have given the constant focus on exam outcomes as a main part of the reason for leaving the profession.
And the bottom line here is that something isn't right. The GCSE system had to be tweaked to provide an A* grade, because grade inflation had left the A grade with such a wide margin that it wasn't very helpful in making decisions about A-level subjects or university entrance. Now the same problem afflicts the A levels, and universities are complaining that they are finding it harder to use A level grades to distinguish between candidates' abilities. It may well not be that exams are getting easier, but something is happening in the setting/marking/grading process to result in a disproportionate skew towards A grades - and whatever it is, whether it's in the teaching or the structure of the examination process, that means that the exams are failing in their task.
So we're teaching kids to pass exams - and do little else - which are themselves proving incapable of doing what they're supposed to do. Bit of a zero sum game all round, really...
What I think is missing is the fostering of a general spirit of enquiry around the subject - teaching is focused much more on the mad dash for the finish line and there isn't the scope for meandering around the backwaters of interesting - but often stimulating to motivated pupils - areas. One thing that clearly hasn't changed is the way in which children are endlessly told just how critically important these exams are - I got that, too, and on reflection I think it was a) not strictly true, b) not helpful. The exams should be a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As things stand, I think they've become more and more an end in themselves.
I know that teachers often react quite angrily when the validity of these exams is questioned, presumably because they feel that it is an implied criticism of their teaching skills. I don't agree with that - I think that teachers, in general, are doing just as fine a job as they were doing 30 years ago. But I think that they are being given a LOT less autonomy to be able to teach in their own style, and I think that this - especially for the good teachers - leaves both teacher and pupils the losers. Quite a few of the ex-teachers I've spoken to have given the constant focus on exam outcomes as a main part of the reason for leaving the profession.
And the bottom line here is that something isn't right. The GCSE system had to be tweaked to provide an A* grade, because grade inflation had left the A grade with such a wide margin that it wasn't very helpful in making decisions about A-level subjects or university entrance. Now the same problem afflicts the A levels, and universities are complaining that they are finding it harder to use A level grades to distinguish between candidates' abilities. It may well not be that exams are getting easier, but something is happening in the setting/marking/grading process to result in a disproportionate skew towards A grades - and whatever it is, whether it's in the teaching or the structure of the examination process, that means that the exams are failing in their task.
So we're teaching kids to pass exams - and do little else - which are themselves proving incapable of doing what they're supposed to do. Bit of a zero sum game all round, really...
catinthehat
Failed VK = Replicant
It is! (my psychology A-level tutor told me
They told you wrong then !
catinthehat
Failed VK = Replicant
It is a different level qualification. A higher is about AS level, whereas an A level consists of AS plus A2 - double the material with more of the higher level skills being tested at A2. You cant compare as its apples and oranges. In my subjects the full A level contains twice the material of a higher - the differences are reflected in UCAS points (fewer for a higher than a full A level).
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
I believe what your'e talking about is the practice of moderation where marks actually received on the paper are shoehorned into a marking distribution and allocated a percentage score based on where each student ranked relative to the others who took the paper. This has been happening since at least 2002, which was when I noticed it on one of my papers (getting 100% when I only answered 2 out of 3 questions).
I'm sure the examining board would defend this practice by saying that an unusual drop in scores across the board necessitates moderation, but this arse-about-tit approach completely undermines any use of exam scores as an objective measure of improvement in education.
catinthehat
Failed VK = Replicant
Thats the norm referencing I referred to earlier (but failed to explain because I thought I would tie myself up in knots !)
Similar threads
