A challenge to those who think GCSEs and A levels get easier every year

[girasol]

What is needed to suceed in life nowadays is very different from when I was in school. It's all about understanding computers now, isn't it? I didn't have any contact with a computer until I was in my 20s. And life is so much more complicated now that it was when I was in school. I think it's unfair to say exams are easier now, seems there's some hatred towards kids doing well!

I learned about all about log tables in school, but I don't get why people refer to that as though it was of any use. The main thing about school is learning how to be an independent learner.

 

[kained&able]

What The fuck would someone sitting an exam tommrow proove? Give at least a year of the cirricuulum and a few months to revise and THEN you might get a decent result.

Asking someone to do it cold would proove nothing.

Although feel free to give me the IT gcse tommrow, reckon I might just about be able to cope with that one!


dave

 

[WouldBe]

There's an example here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/maths/mocks/mathsmockh1_nocalc.pdf - I'm presuming this is pretty much what you'd get in a current exam.

Draw a triangle? Draw a square? Fill in your times table?

These were things I did a junior school not at O' level

And people claim exams aren't getting easier

 

[WouldBe]

I learned about all about log tables in school, but I don't get why people refer to that as though it was of any use.

Because when log tables were around calculators didn't exist and you'd be stuffed trying to do calculations without log tables.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

To be honest this is a thinly veiled challenge to someone who bangs on about how he had it harder and it's all too easy these days. I actually doubt that his recollections bear examination. He's a sloppy thinker who strikes me as someone with little imagination and not much nous or natural intelligence. He spouts regurgitated Daily Mail-ish rubbish and is actually a piss-poor advertisement for his Alma Mater.

 

[kropotkin]

Call out thread.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Well, I haven't named anyone. In a way he represents all I hate about people who harp on about education being rubbish and the the crapness of people who work in it. It's a call-out for a section of carpers who know the value and worth of nothing and would get a surprise if they spent a week in a good state school.

 

[ernestolynch]

To be honest this is a thinly veiled challenge to someone who bangs on about how he had it harder and it's all too easy these days. I actually doubt that his recollections bear examination. He's a sloppy thinker who strikes me as someone with little imagination and not much nous or natural intelligence. He spouts regurgitated Daily Mail-ish rubbish and is actually a piss-poor advertisement for his Alma Mater.

Another ding-dong in the moderators' forum was it?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Draw a triangle? Draw a square? Fill in your times table?

These were things I did a junior school not at O' level

And people claim exams aren't getting easier

I've just had a proper look at that exam, and I could answer almost all of it correctly. But, it does get trickier as you go through it. I think it is a very fair test of a particular level of maths – ie a person who could pass that exam would be ready to go on to tackle calculus, mechanics, more advanced statistics etc, which are the next step as you move into A-levels.

 

[WouldBe]

Well, I haven't named anyone. In a way he represents all I hate about people who harp on about education being rubbish and the the crapness of people who work in it.

Just because education standards have slipped doesn't mean the teachers are rubbish. The teachers don't set the syllabus or the exams so they can't be to blame.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I don't think education standards have slipped though. Just from my own experience I think schools are much better. I can only compare my grammar school with the comprehensives I've worked in.

 

[WouldBe]

I don't think education standards have slipped though. Just from my own experience I think schools are much better. I can only compare my grammar school with the comprehensives I've worked in.

There was a case in the news a few years ago about someone who was marking that years A' level physics papers and thought the questions seemed familiar. On later checking he found the exact same questions in an O' level paper from 10+ years earlier.

It's also been in the news that in some courses universities are having to put in more effort to drag A' level students up to the required level for them to be able to study their degree. This didn't happen years ago.

 

[girasol]

If you asked someone who had just got an A* in maths to use log tables to work out a problem they would be completely lost.

Only if they haven't been taught it, but if they were I'm sure they'd be able to use them to work out a problem. My point being, different things are being taught in school, and children have the same ability now as we did back then. It's not like the human brain has devolved in the last x years, is it?

If anything children know a lot more about a range of subjects by a certain age now than children did some years ago.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

...and are encouraged to use independent thought and critical thinking.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Now, I detest IQ tests. They are so crude as to be virtually worthless – you can't reduce something as complex as intelligence to one number – but that said, they do measure something: someone scoring 150 will have a certain ability that someone scoring 90 will not have. IQ tests score people by giving a mark according to your position relative to others – with 100 in the middle – and they have to be periodically recalibrated upwards to allow for the fact that children are getting better at them.

Kids are, in general, getting smarter.

 

[WouldBe]

My point being, different things are being taught in school, and children have the same ability now as we did back then.

and my point was that if theres something on the current GCSE paper that wasn't tought when someone did their O' levels then you can't get a good comparison. So getting someone to take an exam paper they haven't studied for is completely meaningless.

 

[_angel_]

If my old high school results are going by they definitely improved from when about 1/3 got about 5 GCSEs C and above or more to about 5/6 getting more than 8. I don't think kids are 'brighter' (hate that term) but the teaching must have improved and hopefully the general sense from our teachers that anyone not in the top set was 'thick' and automatically going to fail has gone.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think the most important factor that is making kids smarter in general is probably the improved access to information. The internet is making people smarter, I'm sure of that.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

...but plagiarism, unwitting and otherwise is a nightmare. I wish I had a quid for every sentence that looks 'wrong' in the context of that child's work that I've put through google advanced....

 

[chilango]

I don't think there's any real mystery in all this. Results have improved every year for 20 odd consecutive years. Which means:

Are exams getting easier? Probably.
Are kids getting more intelligent? Probably not.
Are kids getting better at exams? Yes.
Are teachers getting better at training kids meet exam criteria? Yes.

Schools, Teachers and Kids are under enormous pressure to get better results than the previous year. So increasingly the focus is on training kids in exam technique and narrowing learning down to what will lead to "good" results.

The breadth and depth of education suffers because of this. But kids are better trained for the box ticking culture they are about to enter.

25% of kids getting A's is NOT a good thing, if it happens year after year.

In the IB Diploma, by way of contrast, in the subject I teach only 4 - 6% of students gain the top mark globally.

And, yes, I've taken a GCSE recently (the reputedly more difficult IGCSE in fact) and got an A with no studying!

...but kids can only sit the exam that is put in front of them, so none of these comments are to disparage their achievements.

 

[chilango]

I think the most important factor that is making kids smarter in general is probably the improved access to information. The internet is making people smarter, I'm sure of that.

I'd completely disagree.

kids have access to a LOT more information. But they tend not to contextualise it or engage with it it a concrete manner.

Unconscious plagiarism and an inability to research or reference sources are a major issue in the schools I've worked at.

 

[pennimania]

I think enthusiasm can transcend that. I think if teachers love their subject kids see that.

Absolutely.

if you taught the telephone book with integrity they'd lap it up.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Unconscious plagiarism and an inability to research or reference sources are a major issue in the schools I've worked at.

I don't see the link.

I don't doubt that this is true, and that access to the internet is the reason. But where is the link between access to the internet and the inability to reference properly/unconscious plagiarism: the internet provides more opportunity to show your inability to do such things, but how could it cause that inability?

 

[_angel_]

It's got easier to cheat definitely, I found a site full of lazy American teens paying people to do their school and college homework and dissertations etc.

Doesn't mean to say I think that everyone's cheating tho.

We didn't even have to reference stuff for GCSEs anyway, so that part of it must be harder than it used to be.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

As someone who has in the past worked as a subeditor and had to rewrite series of cut-and-pastes strung together by lazy journalists and passed off as 'copy', I can safely say that such cheating is usually all too painfully obvious. It's pretty easy to tell when people have written a piece themselves.

 

[Pickman's model]

Pick your subject and I will, in exam conditions, get you to sit a paper and mark the paper and see how you do.

I have been in a situation when someone I vaguely know was in a pub and banging on about how easy science was these days compared to when he was a lad. I happened to have a Foundation Science GCSE paper in my handbag (there are various levels of Science paper...double science...applied science...foundation science). Foundation Science is the paper that is about understanding basic science in everyday life and is regarded as the 'easy' paper. He was really confident to begin with but as he read through, beads of sweat started to appear on his forehead. A quick glance through his answers was joyful to me....
F!

alright. let's see the english literature or history ones. bring it on

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I'd be surprised if you didn't get an A or A*, Pickman's. You are not a twunt who bangs on about how kids get easy exams these days. You weren't in my sights for this challenge but I can arrange an exam over lunch at mine sometime if you like....

 

[Pickman's model]

I'd be surprised if you didn't get an A or A*, Pickman's. You are not a twunt who bangs on about how kids get easy exams these days. You weren't in my sights for this challenge but I can arrange an exam over lunch at mine sometime if you like....

imo exams have got easier. certainly the 1988 gcses were considerably easier than what went before, and i have no reason to suppose that they are more difficult nowadays. we'll settle this over a fine nut roast

 

[Mrs Magpie]

OK

 

[rioted]

Of course exams have got easier! Why not apply critical thinking to the question? More kids are passing more exams at higher grades. Either kids are getting cleverer, and by extrapolation will all be geniuses in a few years time or the exams are getting easier/teaching is getting better (it's called teaching to the test). The idea that evolution would facilitate the kind of improvements to intellect in such a short time is patently absurd. You fail your science test, Mrs M.