Yet more record A level passes: it's bollocks, isn't it?

[extra dry]

Surely one way to prove if the tests are getting easier is to randomly select a previous year's paper. Say like A-Levels 1992 or something. Surely stuff like Maths, French and Science can't have changed that much since then?

think that a longer time scale say..1970-1975-1980-1985...2000-2005-2008

the A-level, in fact whole exam thing, is now about remembering the information and just having, what a mate of mine called, a 'mind dump' on the exam paper no actual thinking or creating a solution.

By 2015 it will be all computerized-mulitple choice and the students will know the results by the end of the day, text to their mobiles...with everyone getting 90% or better.

rant over...

 

[Combustible]

i don't think it is. I know it's 80% and over for an A. no idea what gets you an E.

But the raw marks from exam papers are converted into standardised (UMS) marks. So you always need 80% in terms of UMS marks for an A but this doesn't necessarily correspond to 80% on the exam paper. You can get full marks without necessarily getting 100% on the paper aswell.

It may be easier to get high A-level grades but still only a comparatively small number of courses require 3 A's. So clearly A-levels are capable discriminating between the vast majority of students.

 

[Jessiedog]

I think the UK exams have been getting easier, here's why.......

Read a report in the South China Morning Post a couple of years ago.


In Hong Kong, the examination system and marking is based entirely upon the old English "O" and "A" levels (or, at least the very earliest GCE/GCSE's or whatever they are called). The sytem is still based this way and has not been "updated" (unlike the English system) for at least 25 - 30 years.


Each year, there are a fair few hundred HK students who sit both the HK and the UK exams at both "O" and "A" level. Also, a few UK students also sit the HK exams.

For both the "O" and the "A" level results, across all subjects, those who sit both exams consistently score two grades higher in the UK exams than in the HK ones. i.e. a student who grades at "D" in a Hong Kong exam will grade at "B" when sitting the corresponding UK exam. This disparity is particularly pronounced in Maths and English.

N.B. the analysis showed that 25 years ago this effect was not exhibited but has emerged over the last few decades and the effect is increasing.

Ergo, the UK exams are getting easier while the HK exams are maintaining the same standard. Obviously there will be other factors at play in the equation, but it does provide at least some evidence to support the hypothesis.

Many parents in HK, when their kids fail their exams, will send them off to the UK to sit the UK exams in order to secure a "pass" in any particular subject.

Interestingly, all the international schools here, as well as the state-subsidised, semi-private, fee-paying schools (except for those doing the IB or some such,) sit their kids for the UK exams rather than the HK exams, the reason being that it is generally accepted that they are essentially "two grades easier" than the HK ones.

The poor kids stuck in Hong Kong's publically-funded school system are stuck with the (generally perceived as,) much more stringent examinations.





Woof

 

[DRINK?]

exams are getting easier....so is swimming

 

[untethered]

What I'd enthusiastically endorse is the increased percentage of passes. Provided someone has studied the course, what's the point of simply saying they have failed? Much more useful to give some indication of performance.

All Must Have Prizes? No thanks.

What this country needs is more failure. People need to learn where their limits are and to be encouraged to pursue activities where they possess a reasonable degree of skill, not to keep flogging a dead horse because no-one ever had the guts to tell them that they're genuinely no good.

The whole A-Level system (and the country as a whole) would be much better if exams at 16 weeded out the non-academic (which is at least half the population, if not three quarters) and forced people to take a more appropriate path than endless academic study validated by unfailable exams.

 

[_angel_]

.

What this country needs is more failure..

Is this going to be the Tories new election slogan?

 

[untethered]

Is this going to be the Tories new election slogan?

I think Mr Cameron was quite categorical that he wasn't going to shut down Liverpool.

On the other hand, he didn't rule out appointing Boris Johnson as communities secretary in a future Conservative government.

 

[Vintage Paw]

The first thing to remember is none of this is the kids' faults. I hear so many people lazily brandishing phrases like "bloody kids today don't know half of what we did in my day" and so on. Often accompanied by a "they don't even know the lineage of the royal family"

In the 3 years I've just been back at university, study skills lessons have been introduced as a fundamental part of the first year. When I did my first degree in 1996 we were given a booklet with referencing guidelines and hints on managing time etc. Now that has been expanded into taught lessons on grammar, punctuation, academic writing, how to construct an argument and not simply regurgitate facts, how to take notes etc. I was quite appalled that we had to have lessons, in the third year, on how to gather facts together when researching a dissertation. Surely it's common sense?

Anyway, if kids haven't been 'trained', or rather, encouraged, to think in these ways then it won't necessarily be something that comes naturally to them. If they are told "this is what will be on your exam paper, learn these facts, you'll have to write them down in this way to get an A" then there's no wonder once they get to university they don't really know what to do with the information they are given.

Even in my third year there was a tendency amongst the lecturers to give us as much information on the exams as they could get away with. Of course, it was great because it meant I could do 1 day of revision and get a first. However, I should have been made to work for it.*














*tbf, I'm a brainy arse-hole, and barely anyone else got those firsts as well

 

[bluestreak]

I can only speak of what I know:

In 1996, when I sat my English A-Levels, I was required to have a working knowledge of a number of texts, and for most of them I couldn't take the text into the exam.

When I was teaching A-Levels in 2003, you were allowed to take the books in with you. I didn't note much of a difficulty level difference though, but students of mine who were getting D and E grades in my classes were complaining because they were gettings As and Bs in other humanities subjects. these are students who, in at least one case, was barely literate. When I was sent on marking training, I found that during benchmarking i was marking at least a grade harsher than the exam board considered appropriate however.

What I did discover at this college was an archive of exam papers dating back thirty years, which I raided and may still have, and I can state categorically that A Level questions in Eng Lit from then were at a level that would be considered undergraduate knowledge now.

A year later, as a trainee teacher in a secondary school, I was shocked to discover that GCSE and A Level english was, as standard, no longer taught by complete text. Often a single lesson would be devoted to an overview of a novel or play, and another single lesson to watching a performance thereof, and the rest of the lesson time would be devoted to studying one or two key scenes. The kids would therefore be perfectly well trained to answer one or two exam questions, but may not have more than a basic knowledge of the true meaning of the piece. The resultant skewing of results that this policy leads to effectively undermined, IMO, the entire point of study and turns school not into an educational experience, but a result factory that leaves kids with decent results in Eng lit whilst lacking any wider knowledge of it.

What's worse is that they would then go to Uni and pay through the fucking nose to learn stuff that they should have learnt at school.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

What I did discover at this college was an archive of exam papers dating back thirty years, which I raided and may still have, and I can state categorically that A Level questions in Eng Lit from then were at a level that would be considered undergraduate knowledge now.

What other papers did you find? Curious to hear more

 

[extra dry]

it is just a cut and paste mentality then. study this scene from hamlet over two or three class lessons then walk into an exam and get the questions on that very scene from hamlet.....

 

[bluestreak]

What other papers did you find? Curious to hear more

Only A-Level, GCSE, and O-Level English and English Lit papers, dating back to the mid 70s. I'll have a look and see if I still have any of them (I threw most of my teaching resources out when I accepted that I wasn't likely to return to the classroom) and if I do I;ll scan a few in.

 

[Tokyo]

All Must Have Prizes? No thanks.

What this country needs is more failure. People need to learn where their limits are and to be encouraged to pursue activities where they possess a reasonable degree of skill, not to keep flogging a dead horse because no-one ever had the guts to tell them that they're genuinely no good.

The whole A-Level system (and the country as a whole) would be much better if exams at 16 weeded out the non-academic (which is at least half the population, if not three quarters) and forced people to take a more appropriate path than endless academic study validated by unfailable exams.

It's great that you are able to determine which students are academic and which aren't. However, in the real world, there's no sharp dividing line showing that some are not suited to academic study and others are. That's why, rather than setting an arbitrary point as the minimum pass, it's much better to simply grade everyone.

For example - if you dream of being a professor of mathematics, then you probably need an A grade at A level - not that the panel assessing you for the chair will care, but because any less suggests that you are unlikely to make it. But that doesn't mean that everyone who gets a B grade should give up mathematics. And if someone gets an E or an N in maths, they might still excel in the study of English.

With just the very occasional exception, people don't need to be told that they've failed in order to give up on something in which they aren't achieving. And the few who do persist probably won't be deterred just by receiving a failing grade. What they do need to know is how they've performed - well, averagely, poorly - and setting an arbitrary fail grade doesn't assist with that.

 

[Jessiedog]

it is just a cut and paste mentality then. study this scene from hamlet over two or three class lessons then walk into an exam and get the questions on that very scene from hamlet.....

Bingo!

When democracy means that governments need to spin, truth is lost.

Education is a hot potato.

It's unimaginable that any government facing a vote every few years would do anything other than make exams easier.

By hook or by crook.



Edit: That's why HK has been able, so far, to maintain a level standard over decades and mitigate any "grade inflation" - no democracy!



Woof

 

[LJo]

Just for the record: at no point have I suggested that kids don't work hard for their A levels.

Thank you.

Oh, I know that. It's just that I remember when I took my A-levels (1993, fucking hell, I'm old) this exact same debate was happening. And it made me feel really shit, that I hadn't actually done well, that my hard work was worthless. Not exactly the same as people saying I hadn't worked hard, but sort of similar. Excuse incoherence, glass of wine on empty stomach and not much sleep.

 

[Prince Rhyus]

This lass took the words right out of my mouth - http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...re-hard-ndash-in-the-wrong-places-897499.html

 

[Buds and Spawn]

Surely the measure of A levels is in what happens next?

Academics at universities are increasingly bemoaning the decline in basic literacy and numeracy skills of first year undergraduates. I work at a fairly high standing uni. as a librarian and attend many many meetings with academics. Falling standards from this perspective is a fact - and one that is becoming more problematic.

I also teach students information skills - a lot of students freely admit to having cut n' pasted at school. Access to information may be greater than ever before but you still need to distinguish the good from the bad, and know what to do with it...

Plagiarism is also a hot topic in HE at the moment. Many institutions are using Turnitin - software that aids detection of plagiarism and collusion, and in the process can help students improve their writing and citation.

 

[obanite]

Oh, I know that. It's just that I remember when I took my A-levels (1993, fucking hell, I'm old) this exact same debate was happening. And it made me feel really shit, that I hadn't actually done well, that my hard work was worthless. Not exactly the same as people saying I hadn't worked hard, but sort of similar. Excuse incoherence, glass of wine on empty stomach and not much sleep.

This. I remember the whole 'grade adjustment' thing going on when I was at uni too, and it was fucking shite for morale. In my 1st year I struggled a lot and almost dropped out - dealing with losing points because too many people did well in a particular subject made me feel like not bothering altogether.

Untethered - you want more failure? I thought the typical conservative attitude was that "people should pull themselves together and work hard to achieve the best they can instead of relying on hand outs". How are people supposed to do this if, when they do work bloody hard, we say to them "Actually, I'm afraid because the average results from 10 million other kids this year have gone up year on year, we're going to knock you down a few grades"?

University place rationing is all well and good, but maybe instead of punishing students we should like, build more universities?

Cer-razy idea, I know! We need to deny more people access to further education through statistical sleight-of-hand. Only the special few should be able to do a degree!

E2A: back to the OP - I had a quick look at some of the 03 and 07 pure maths papers, and couldn't see a huge difference between them and the exams I did in 97. I'd be interested to know how many people saying "it's bollocks" have actually compared past papers over the years?