caz963 | (no subject)

The A level results came out today amidst the usual accusations that they've been dumbed down and that the qualifications aren't worth the paper they're written on.

Sadly I think this isn't all that far off the mark - although I do feel sorry for all those kids who've worked hard for their exams only to hear all day long that the exams are much easier than they used to be.

Again - I think that's true, but it's not the students' fault, and they should be allowed to feel proud of their achievements.

The trouble is, of course, that universities and employers are now finding it difficult to distinguish between those who are well-educated and those who are well-schooled in the art of passing tests. As one commenter to one of the Times articles says, we need to distinguish between those pupils who work hard and A levels being hard - the kids do work hard, but they're just not expected to reach the same standards.

I don't want to sound like a moany old bag, but A levels today are easier than they were twenty years ago. For example - when I took mine in 1982, A grades were pretty rare. And to get three or more As, you had to be a very exceptional student. And the mark scheme was roughly akin to that used for degrees - to get an A or a first, you'd need about 70% overall, for a B or a 2,i, 60%, for a C or 2,ii about 50% etc.

A couple of years ago, before I went back to work, I decided to do A level English Literature - I love reading "the classics" and had wanted to do English at school, but wasn't able to because of a timetable clash with A level Maths. For me, now, the current "modular" system employed is ideal, because it meant I was able to study as and when I wanted and take the units in more or less whatever order suited me. I took a couple of papers at a time, and have done four of the six required - I don't know if I'll ever get around to completing it! But on the last two papers I took - neither of them incidentally texts with which I was familiar before I studied them (one was a restoration comedy, the other poetry by Philip Larkin) I achieved a mark of well over 90%. I was gobsmacked - so much so that I rang the exam board to check they hadn't made a mistake. Okay, so I was about twenty years older than the majority of the candidates and I can actually write and express myself properly, but "in my day", a mark like that was unheard of.

So on the one hand, we have headlines touting the soaring grades and trumpeting the fact that, for the first time in years, there are more kids taking Maths and Science - and on the other, we have reports telling us that A levels are to get tougher after another year of top results.

Um... if the A levels we have now are 'fit for purpose', as many in the first article claim - why do they need to be made harder?

To me, this looks like just another band-aid in yet another ridiculous attempt to fix something which requires major surgery. Until we get rid of all the unecessary testing we now have in the education system and start teaching kids things they need to know, and - more importantly - how to think for themselves, instead of just teaching them how to pass tests, this situation isn't going to improve. We'll continue to hear about falling standards, and the kids who have worked hard, nonetheless will continue to feel that they're being moaned at unfairly.

Round 2 next week when the GCSE results come out.

Threaded | Flat

On PM they had an item about how often pupils can retake their modules these days. One teacher said that the U6th pupils were so much more mature by the time they got to the second Christmas that they would get up to 20% higher marks if they retook their AS exams. This can bring their grades up from a D to B.

They interviewed a bunch of kids who all said they had retaken various modules 2 or 3 times and upped their grades from E to C or better.

We had one go. At the end of 2 years. Yes, you could go back and do retakes for a year, but it was still a single series of exams at the end, not individual modules. This is the bit that makes me think that although the current students may have put more sustained effort in over a longer period than the mad cramming a lot of us did, they wouldn't stand a chance in one off exams.

So, you can get any number of As at A level, but when you go on to university, or take professional accounting or medical or legal exams, do you have any idea how much effort it takes to pass on the first go? Accounting firms went through a phase of chucking juniors out if they failed exams at the first attempt. I wonder if they still do.

Another comment on PM was that A levels are just so completely different now than they were 10 years ago that it's really not possible to compare them. AFAIC, "It's like when they did that thing with the SAT scores and I got dumber twenty years after I went to college."

Hey. How the hell did you get told your percentage? Because I honestly thought you just got given a grade letter in your results?

I am so confused.

The British educational/grading system just flummoxes me.

But on the last two papers I took - neither of them incidentally texts with which I was familiar (one was a restoration comedy, the other poetry by Philip Larkin) I achieved a mark of well over 90%. I was gobsmacked - so much so that I rang the exam board to check they hadn't made a mistake. Okay, so I was about twenty years older than the majority of the candidates and I can actually write and express myself properly, but "in my day", a mark like that was unheard of.

These are essentially term papers? Essays on the books you read? (Not 'book reports', obviously, but true essays?)

I majored in English Lit, and I never had a problem earning grades in the 90's. Other students did, sure, but then....I know how to spell. :-P But seriously---it's not that it was 'easy', but it certainly wasn't so difficult as to be 'unheard of'. I'm trying to figure out if your system is (or was) more difficult than what I went through, or not.

As someone who did her A levels 4 years ago, I think, to my recollection, that 100% isn't actually 100%. It's all relative to whoever got the highest mark in the country.

So if the best student nation-wide got 85 out of 120, then a mark of 85 becomes the 100% benchmark... Kind of ridiculous, but there you go.

I definitely think people are taught how to pass exams these days as well, and that must play a huge part in the increase in A grades. We were given so many practice papers and tips on HOW to answer a question, that by the time we got to the real thing we were familiar with almost all of the questions. I went to a damn good school too, it's not like they were in the habit of lazy teaching or something.

University was something a of a shock at first, being left to just figure out how to write an essay completely by ourselves. How absurd is that? We all got into a top 20 university, all were smart enough to graduate with really good degrees at the end of it all, and yet we totally flipped out for the first semester. Fish out of water would be an understatement.

That really shouldn't be the case. What the heck is the state of our education system going to be by the time I have kids to out through it??