(no subject)

[caz963]

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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

Whups. That was me.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

I don't know what term papers are, but what I took were the actual examination papers - three questions on each of the texts, three hours per paper. And yes, true essays, for example, discussion the treatment of marriage and relationships in restoration comedy, that sort of thing.
Oh, and I should clarify, I didn't mean that I wasn't familiar with those texts - I should have said (and will edit) that I hadn't been familiar with them before I read and studied them for the exam.

It wasn't that I didn't expect to get a good grade - I know I write well and I have a good understanding of the subject; it's just that when I did my A levels back when I was 18, (in 1982) getting a mark that high was practically unheard of. Seriously, getting an A was a real achievement back then (I got one in music, but not in the other subjects I took!)

I don't know how our two systems would compare, but it definitely seems as though the exams here are easier now than they were twenty, thirty years ago. I can only go on my own experience - having taken and taught Music A level, and listening to the experiences of friends and colleagues.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

It sounds about the same--basically, that final paper is the final test in the class, right? Majority of your class grade, yadda yadda?

I can't imagine something like that being so difficult that getting over 90% would be nearly impossible. Not all my classes had that, but a few did, and as long as I studied, I probably regularly got within 92-98%. Less if I didn't study/didn't thoroughly understand the text.

However, this was my major, and what I'm good at. Majors did well, non-majors, not quite so well, obviously. If I'd had to do something like that outside my major, in the sciences, say, then I may have only scored in the high 80's.

I'm a good student/test-taker, however. I've never understood the personality that freezes up at exams, even when they know the material. (And like you mentioned, being a good tester doesn't mean you're well-educated...I can guarantee that most of the information in my head got cache-dumped shortly after the exam!)

[zommbie1.livejournal.com]

In the UK grades on papers and exams at uni over 75% were pretty exceptional BUT since an A was 70% that wasn't really a problem. I think it is just a difference in the system that's all.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

BUT since an A was 70%

Ah, that helps a bit!

I wonder what they'd consider 100%, you know? To my way of thinking, asking the impossible ought to be 120%, or 150%, not 100%. Like, let's say swimming records---Michael Phelps breaks the world record for something or other at 2.00 minutes....but that's only 80%. Now, if someone were to go 1.15, THAT would be 100%!

Coming from the (apparently wimpy!) US system, that's sort of what it sounds like! ;-)

(Apples and oranges, I know....it's like comparing Farenheit to Celcius...it doesn't matter what you call it, hot is still hot.)

[caz963.livejournal.com]

When I took my A levels back in 1982, we didn't get given percentages anyway - that's a fairly recent thing. We just knew the basic mark ranges that I outlined above. 70% was an A because it was hard to get70%. Most pupils took 3 or 4 A levels - I started by taking 4 subjects, but it proved too much for me and I had to drop one. A friend of mine achieved 3 As at A level, and he was an exceptional student. He won a scholarship to Oxford, then to McGill in Canada and was a "high-flyer" at the Foreign Office when he left university. To get 4 As, you'd pretty much have to have been a genius.
Now, because of the modular nature of the exams, it's possible for kids to take 5 A levels and get something like 2 As and 3 Bs. I'm not saying the kids haven't worked hard - they probably have; the problem is that the bar has been set lower and employers and universities know it.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Well, not quite, I think. We have national exams here, where all kids who take, for example, an A level in English will take the same exam. (More or less - there are three exam boards in England, and schools will choose to follow the syllabus from one of them, so a proportion of kids will take 1, some will take 2 and some will take 3, depending on the preference of the school they attend.)

So they're not class tests which are set by individual schools - they're set and marked by central examinations boards, and then the results for each school are published so that people can see which schools are performing better academically. Which is where a lot of the problems with our education system stem from. Schools need pupils in order to get funding to survive. If you can show you have a good academic record, you're more likely to a) attract pupils and b) attract the right sort of pupils (i.e, those from better backgrounds who are likely to take their education seriously). As a result, teachers are teaching kids how to pass tests, to keep the school's "numbers" up - hence the comment I pointed out about it being difficult to distinguish between those pupils who are "well educated" and those who are "well drilled in passing tests." This in turn is leading to "grade inflation" - meaning that some pupils are attaining results which don't accurately reflect their ability.

Yeah. It's ridiculously complicated, I know. Like you, I'm good at exams - but also like you, I suspect I'm also fairly well educated. But definitely, twenty, thirty years ago, getting marks in the 80-90% range was incredibly rare here.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

Ah...I think I'm starting to get it....so the A level exams are something like the SAT...kind of? Except yearly, and by subject, with results assigned to both the student and the school?

Yeah, that would be more difficult to get a high score, I would bet. As it ought to be.

I'd be upset too if the tests were suddenly dumbed down so much that everyone was getting wonderful scores...let's not damage the poor babies' self-esteem! Not to mention artificially inflating the 'quality' of the school.

Grr. The educational system is a racket, any more. It's all about raking in the cash, and if someone happens to scrape up a decent education in the process, well, bonus! :-P