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

[emanymton]

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.

What the hell has 14a got to do with maths?

 

[Mrs Magpie]

It's part of Statistics. The question framed can slew results.

 

[mrsfran]

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.

Christ. I genuinely could not confidently answer a single question on that paper. Fuck knows how I managed to get a B at GCSE 15 years ago.

 

[mrsfran]

If I could have another read of the texts used and revise my vocab, I reckon I could have a good go at a Latin GCSE though. That shit stuck. But I can't seem to find a source for current exams?

 

[Ms T]

Christ. I genuinely could not confidently answer a single question on that paper. Fuck knows how I managed to get a B at GCSE 15 years ago.

I can't remember anything about my Maths O level, but I could have a stab at some of that now, and with a few months revision I reckon it wouldn't be too difficult.

 

[Ms T]

If I could have another read of the texts used and revise my vocab, I reckon I could have a good go at a Latin GCSE though. That shit stuck. But I can't seem to find a source for current exams?

GCSE French would be a walk in the park, I reckon. Ditto English language.

 

[gaijingirl]

GCSE French would be a walk in the park, I reckon. Ditto English language.

French would be easy for you - but you would still have to know "how to pass" to get your A* (going back to your post above). The curriculum has just changed for GCSE but it still remains that with written work, if you do not present 3 tenses in reasonable quantities - you cannot get a higher mark. So you could write a wonderful piece in completely fluent French using some very impressive examples of the future and present tenses - but if you failed to put in any past tense clauses you'd still not be getting that high score!

 

[Ms T]

French would be easy for you - but you would still have to know "how to pass" to get your A* (going back to your post above). The curriculum has just changed for GCSE but it still remains that with written work, if you do not present 3 tenses in reasonable quantities - you cannot get a higher mark. So you could write a wonderful piece in completely fluent French using some very impressive examples of the future and present tenses - but if you failed to put in any past tense clauses you'd still not be getting that high score!

I can understand why they do that, and to be fair 'twas ever thus. Most of my 'O' level pieces (where you had to write text to accompany pictures), started with "un jour qu'il faisait beau". There has always been an element of hoop jumping in exams. I still reckon I could get an A* with a few tips from you. Would a full knowledge of the subjunctive help?

 

[gaijingirl]

Would a full knowledge of the subjunctive help?

Not especially - you wouldn't get extra marks or anything! I've had to help native speakers who've written perfectly with subjunctives left, right and centre, subordinate clauses galore! - but who still wouldn't pass the writing paper as they had missed vital elements required.

There is a lot of hoop jumping to be taught - I teach my students a shortlist of structures in Japanese that will tick the A*-C boxes for their writing. I can also more or less pre-teach them what essay to write that will slot more or less into whatever the essay question is. Sounds like cheating as essentially they are pre-learning their exam question, but the structure of the new French GCSE writing paper positively encourages students to do exactly that. At the end of the day they still have to do the work though - if they don't learn it - they won't get it. It does, however, mean that I am teaching an awful lot more memorisation skills where I might be teaching actual language. Useful though - memorisation skills.

 

[WouldBe]

I'd like to see the Foundation science exam. You didn't get those when I did O'levels. You did either chemistry, biology and/or physics. General science was for CSE students only.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Yes and in CSEs at grade 1 counted as about a C in an O Level. So no change there then, except they are called summat else.

 

[_angel_]

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.

I've seen the Daily Mail do cut and pastes out of other people's work. I'd have been murdered if I tried to do that when I worked on a tiny listings magazine.

 

[Quartz]

I've seen the Daily Mail do cut and pastes out of other people's work. I'd have been murdered if I tried to do that when I worked on a tiny listings magazine.

It was pretty funny though when they stole a policeman's blog entry.

 

[kabbes]

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.

In the full awareness that the statement makes me a massive prick: there is no way that I would get less than 100% in that exam.

I'm not sure what it proves one way or other, however. The exam is no easier than I remember a GCSE as being. In fact, I think it's probably harder. But: man who did a degree in maths and still works with maths for a living can do a maths GCSE... er.. shock!

Anyway, if the proportion of As is increasing, it must be down to one or more of the following:

a) People are getting genetically smarter;
b) Changes in upbringing and environment are making people smarter by age 16;
c) Improvements in teaching are improving children's ability at the exam;
d) Exams are getting easier.

I'm guessing a combination of b) and c), actually.

 

[ymu]

In the full awareness that the statement makes me a massive prick: there is no way that I would get less than 100% in that exam.

I'm not sure what it proves one way or other, however. The exam is no easier than I remember a GCSE as being. In fact, I think it's probably harder. But: man who did a degree in maths and still works with maths for a living can do a maths GCSE... er.. shock!

Anyway, if the proportion of As is increasing, it must be down to one or more of the following:

a) People are getting genetically smarter;
b) Changes in upbringing and environment are making people smarter by age 16;
c) Improvements in teaching are improving children's ability at the exam;
d) Exams are getting easier.

I'm guessing a combination of b) and c), actually.

You forgot:

e) Marking schemes are getting more generous.

It's subtly different from d). And would explain why the A* is now needed to distinguish the very best performances. But I'd agree, b) and c) are both likely to be important factors.

 

[gunneradt]

Yes and in CSEs at grade 1 counted as about a C in an O Level. So no change there then, except they are called summat else.

Sorry gcses are easier now. Coursework has made it easier for one. I reckon a grade c 20 years ago is about a grade b or slightly higher. My daughter got a grade a at maths gcse yet she cant even add up. I hasten to add that maths is one of her weaker subjects. Marks were also deducted 20 years ago across all subjects for poor grammar and spelling - quite right in my view.

 

[kabbes]

You forgot:

e) Marking schemes are getting more generous.

It's subtly different from d). And would explain why the A* is now needed to distinguish the very best performances. But I'd agree, b) and c) are both likely to be important factors.

Quite right.

I probably missed something else too, to be fair. That's the problem with lists off the top of your head.

 

[Corax]

Anyone posted Ben Goldacre's latest on the subject yet?

Hope no one's offended by the long c&p. It's quite interesting IMO, although not conclusive either way.

Pass rates are at 98%. A quarter of grades are higher than an A. This week every newspaper in the country was filled with people asserting that exams are definitely getting easier, and then other people asserting that exams are definitely not getting easier. The question for me is always simple: how do you know?

Firstly, the idea of kids getting cleverer is not ludicrous. The Flynn Effect is a term coined to describe the gradual improvement in IQ scores. This has been an important problem for IQ researchers, since IQ tests are peer referenced: that is, your performance is compared against everyone else, and the scores are rejigged so that the average IQ is always 100. Because of the trend to greater scores, year on year, you have to be careful not to use older tests on current populations, or their scores come out spuriously high, by the standards of the weaker average population of the past. Regardless of what you think about IQ tests, the tasks in them are at least relatively consistent. That said, there’s also some evidence that the Flynn effect has slowed in developed countries more recently.

But ideally, we want to address the exams directly. One research approach would be to measure current kids’ performance on the exams of the past. This is what the Royal Society of Chemistry did in their report “The Five Decade Challenge” in 2008, running the project as a competition for 16 year olds, which netted them 1,300 self-selecting higher-ability kids. They sat tests taken from the numerical and analytical components of O-level and GCSE exams over the past half century, and performance against each decade rose over time: the average score for the 1960s questions was 15%, rising to 35% for the current exams (though with a giant leap around the introduction of GCSEs, after which score remained fairly stable).

There are often many possible explanations for a finding. Their result could mean that exams have got easier, but it could be that syllabuses have changed, and so modern kids are less prepared for old style questions. When the researchers delved into specific questions, they do say they found some things that were removed from the GCSE syllabus because they’d moved up to A level, but that’s drifting – unwelcomely – into anecdote.

Another approach would be to compare performance on a consistent test, over the years, against performance on A levels. Robert Coe at Durham University produced a study of just this for the Office of National Statistics in 2007. Every year since 1988 they’ve given a few thousand children the Test of Developed Abilities, a consistent test (with a blip in 2002) of general maths and verbal reasoning skills. Scores on this saw a modest decline over the 1990s, and have been fairly flat for the past decade. But the clever thing is what they did next: they worked out the A level scores for children, accounting for their TDA scores, and found that children with the same TDA score were getting higher and higher exam results. From 1988 to 2006, for the same TDA score, levels rose by an average of 2 grades in each subject.

It could be that exams are easier. It could be that teaching and learning have improved, or teaching is more exam focused, so kids at the same TDA level do better in A levels: this is hard to measure. It could be that TDA scores are as irrelevant as shoe size, so the finding is spurious.
Alternatively, it could be that exams are different, and so easier with respect to verbal reasoning and maths, but harder with respect to something else: this, again, is hard to quantify. If the content and goals of your exams change, then that poses difficulties for measuring their consistency over time, and it might be something to declare loudly (or consult employers and the public over).

Our last study thinks more along those lines: some people do have clear goals from education, and they can measure students against this yardstick over time. “Measuring the Mathematics Problem” is a report done for the Engineering Council and other august bodies in 2000, analysing data from 60 departments of maths, physics and engineering who gave diagnostic tests on basic maths skills to their new undergraduates each year. They found strong evidence of a steady decline in scores on these tests, over the preceeing decade, among students accepted onto degree courses where they would naturally need good maths.

Sadly they didn’t control for A level grade, so we can’t be sure how far they were comparing like with like, but there are a few explanations. Maybe maths syllabuses changed and were less useful for maths and engineering degrees. Maybe the clever kids were doing English to become lawyers instead. Or maybe exams got easier.

http://www.badscience.net/2010/08/exams-are-getting-easier/

(apologies if it's already been posted and I missed it)

 

[ymu]

Sorry gcses are easier now. Coursework has made it easier for one. I reckon a grade c 20 years ago is about a grade b or slightly higher. My daughter got a grade a at maths gcse yet she cant even add up. I hasten to add that maths is one of her weaker subjects. Marks were also deducted 20 years ago across all subjects for poor grammar and spelling - quite right in my view.

Quite wrongly, in mine. If the intention is to test knowledge/ability in history or biology or whatever, there should be no testing of grammar and spelling muddying the waters. Lots of very talented people have specific weaknesses concerning language - left-handedness is associated with dyslexia and certain kinds of language impairment, but also with excellent mathematical and spatial abilities. 3% of the population have specific language impairment which affects their ability to form grammatical sentences or parse complex constructions, but they are otherwise of absolutely normal intelligence. It's absolutely pointless denying knowledge/talent in one area simply because the key form of expressing that knowledge/talent is impaired.

In mathematical exams it has long been the case that a wrong answer is only penalised once. If the answer to b) depends on the answer to a), then b) will be marked on the basis of the student's answer to a) regardless of whether they got a) right or wrong. This is also why Mrs M wants us to show our working - we might get the answer to a) wrong by a simple addition error, but if we've shown the right method we'll only get penalised the marks assigned to the correct numerical answer. If the purpose of exams is to measure ability/knowledge/learning, then it is absolutely correct that this very obvious principle should be extended across subjects. It might make life harder for the examiners (having to calculate b) for every wrong a) is a pain in the arse, tbh), but making life easy for the examiners is not what the exam is there for.

It's silly to write off a child just because they have problems with words - they will undoubtedly have other less superficial talents that the world needs.

 

[kyser_soze]

Just had a look throught that GCSE paper mgo linked too...I'd probably need a couple of weeks to rejig my memory for most of the geometry stuff in there, but the factorisation & equation stuff not too bad. I might have a mooch around there and try to find a science paper...

The thing is, the only way to compare would be to take an old 'O' level paper and to do the two exams side by side.

RE: spelling...I think it should be something that's marked on for kids who don't have a specific learning difficulty. Fair enough, don't penalise dyslexics, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every other kid can't be taught a 'key form of expressing that knowledge' and that they can't be marked on it.

 

[marty21]

I think A Level results have improved every year since 1982? I took mine in 1983 If I studied for a A Level now I'd hope that I would improve from my B C E that I got then

it's a difficult thing to measure whether or not they are harder or easier now tbf

I think degrees are easier though

only because when I took my degree in 1988, it was based on 8 exams - I had to pass my 1st and 2nd year to be able to take those exams, but those
1st and 2nd year exams did not count towards my degree - if I screwed up those 8 final exams - no degree

I'm not sure what percentage of a current degree is based on the final exams - but I'd hazard a guess that it is way less than 100%

 

[mrs quoad]

I'm not sure what percentage of a current degree is based on the final exams - but I'd hazard a guess that it is way less than 100%

It's often a 1/3 weighting for year 2, and a 2/3 weighting for year 3.

I'm currently veryveryclose to a hyper-competitive undergraduate system that prides itself on its exams, and on the toughness of those exams. Student performance is announced publicly, and - given students are in small communities of often <400 - there is a massive pressure to do well.

I have no hesitation whastoever in saying it is sick, pathological, and massively unhelpful for the vast majority of students. The levels of borderline mental unwellness that erupt before exam time (people constantly crying in college libraries is an absolute norm) and the equally, IMO, unhealthy splurges of spectacular and self-damaging 'relief' behaviours serves no functional or discernable purpose, so far as I can tell. 'Knowledge' is not being tested. Nor are a huge array of measures of skill, research skills, etc, etc. On the other hand, pathological coping behaviours (such as eating disorders / heavy-end and increasingly persistent alcohol abuse) seem to absolutely thrive.

It seems to be - overwhelmingly - a system designed by intransigent old shits who once had to endure the self-same set of procedures, and were often the ones who did well in them (as attested by their current positions). And who are now determined that new generations should undergo the same tests of character.

Of all the academic environments I've been in (and failed in), Cambridge is - without doubt - the least healthy, and the most comprehensively fucked up. And a substantial part of that is, IME / IMO, down to the very very heavy focus on exams.

 

[ymu]

Just had a look throught that GCSE paper mgo linked too...I'd probably need a couple of weeks to rejig my memory for most of the geometry stuff in there, but the factorisation & equation stuff not too bad. I might have a mooch around there and try to find a science paper...

The thing is, the only way to compare would be to take an old 'O' level paper and to do the two exams side by side.

RE: spelling...I think it should be something that's marked on for kids who don't have a specific learning difficulty. Fair enough, don't penalise dyslexics, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every other kid can't be taught a 'key form of expressing that knowledge' and that they can't be marked on it.

Dyslexia is only one of a huge number of language deficits - it's just the most obvious. If it affects the ability to use written language it is likely to be given some support, but if the speed of communication is normal, it won't. It's just stupid to penalise someone for poor grammar/spelling on a physics exam. Some of the best scientists in the world are hopeless at communicating. Vladimir Nabokov wouldn't even give interviews because his spoken English was appalling and he needed time to write his thoughts down properly. "I think like a genius, write like a distinguished author, and speak like a child." OK - he might have been given extra time to be fair, but it's just a dumb dumb way to test unrelated knowledge. It says nothing at all about the subject being tested.

 

[kyser_soze]

I wouldn't penalise bad spelling in physics, I thought we were talking about humanities/arts subjects...hence my use of 'key form of expressing that knowledge' (I am attempting to remember my physics paper and can't remember having to write much in longform, but it was a long time ago

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It seems to be - overwhelmingly - a system designed by intransigent old shits who once had to endure the self-same set of procedures, and were often the ones who did well in them (as attested by their current positions). And who are now determined that new generations should undergo the same tests of character.

Yes, I'm sure you're right about that, in the same way that hospital consultants expect junior doctors to work stupid hours and kill the odd person as a result because they had to.

My biggest objection to exams is that for people who are good at them, the process of cramming in order to splurge in the exam room leaves your head full of stuff that has largely disappeared a few months later.

 

[ymu]

I wouldn't penalise bad spelling in physics, I thought we were talking about humanities/arts subjects...hence my use of 'key form of expressing that knowledge' (I am attempting to remember my physics paper and can't remember having to write much in longform, but it was a long time ago

It's exactly the same deal with history or geography or any other subject. Lots of science has to be explained in words. The ability to form and understand language is tested elsewhere - deficits shouldn't be penalised twice.

 

[_angel_]

Sorry gcses are easier now. Coursework has made it easier for one. I reckon a grade c 20 years ago is about a grade b or slightly higher. My daughter got a grade a at maths gcse yet she cant even add up. I hasten to add that maths is one of her weaker subjects. Marks were also deducted 20 years ago across all subjects for poor grammar and spelling - quite right in my view.

We did 100% coursework for English GCSE 20 years ago and it was harder than doing exams! I think I would have done better in an exam.

 

[mrs quoad]

My biggest objection to exams is that for people who are good at them, the process of cramming in order to splurge in the exam room leaves your head full of stuff that has largely disappeared a few months later.

I hear that!

Just be thankful we're not in France.

According to Artichoke, the French undergraduate system is, basically, "learn this textbook." Her sister's just starting a psychology UG degree, and doesn't have internet. "Oh," said Artichoke, "that won't matter at all. She won't need to do any research, or anything. It'll all be based on how well she knows her course book [singular] for the end-of-year exam."

Just, well, fucking hell That's pretty impressively awful

 

[Giles]

I think A Level results have improved every year since 1982? I took mine in 1983 If I studied for a A Level now I'd hope that I would improve from my B C E that I got then

it's a difficult thing to measure whether or not they are harder or easier now tbf

I think degrees are easier though

only because when I took my degree in 1988, it was based on 8 exams - I had to pass my 1st and 2nd year to be able to take those exams, but those
1st and 2nd year exams did not count towards my degree - if I screwed up those 8 final exams - no degree

I'm not sure what percentage of a current degree is based on the final exams - but I'd hazard a guess that it is way less than 100%

I saw this graph in a paper in the last few weeks, about percentages of people getting "A"s at A level.

This is a big increase, so either the exams or marking or shift to potentially "cheatable" coursework as opposed to "exam conditions" is making it easier to pass at grade "A", or the teachers back before then were rubbish, or else human intelligence started increasing at a pretty dramatic rate since the early 1980s.

I think that the changes started when they stopped norm-referencing the results in the 1980s.

How long before we have to introduce an "A**" and then "A***"?

Giles..

 

[Quartz]

One of the other things that has changed is that candidates are no longer marked against each other. I forget when it stopped, but until some point, to get a certain grade, not only did you have to achieve the required mark, but you had to be in the top how-ever-many percent of candidates.