To wonder about CSEs v O Levels

In deepest West Cornwall in the early 1960s we definitely weren't tutored for anything. Not with 40-odd per class. Reading, writing and arithmetic mostly. Singing lessons were at 11:00 on Monday with the BBC Schools broadcast. First thing every day was handkerchief and nit inspection!

I think it may have worked as planned when manufacturing represented more of the economy than it does now, and where industries were concentrated on particular regions. The heavy engineering industries and the West Midlands in particular, were able to provide a depth of skills, an FE/night school infrastructure to support it, and a lot of competing companies so people could change jobs as they pursued greater success.

I’m 52 and was the first year to take GCSE’s. It’s nonsense really because if you weren’t in the grammar band you could only get up to a C taking the lower papers (now foundation) so no different to the old CSE/O levels. I scraped through with about 6 GCSE’s at poor grades. I don’t know anyone from school that went to university. I think about 6 friends stayed on in 6th form .

We were tutored for our 11 plus! Every morning at primary school! Verbal reasoning. Maths and English. Every day - first lesson was verbal reasoning. We got 1/3 through in a class of 39. This was mid 60s. My mother did more work with me at home. We definitely had a mix of dc at my grammar but it was small town rural. When I was there, I remember one dc going to Oxbridge. None in my year.

I've also seen my DH's school magazine. It included A level results and destinations in1971. A very sought after grammar. Lots did 2 A levels. Some just did Maths pure and applied! Very many, the majority, didn't go to uni. They joined local firms or went into teaching and civil service in a whole variety of training roles. Likewise my school. Politicians going to Oxford were not the norm from working class backgrounds. They were the exceptions. The norm from ordinary grammars was 0. Year after year.

Not in my experience. The grammar school system in my area was class based. If only what you write would have been the case then the school would have reflected the local society. I hope what you state applied to others though. I hope that a fair system existed somewhere.

I have to disagree with you @ButterCrackers . Everything was not based on class but on brains. Clever children passed the 11+ and no one was tutored for it in the 1960s. It genuinely gave bright WC kids a shot at a more ambitious curriculum. If you were among the most literate, numerate and logical 20% in your class, you passed and got a place at the grammar school. Read the autobiographies of the numerous politicians (both major parties) who went to Oxford after grammar school.

We knew, albeit quite briefly, a family whose children all passed 11+ but allowed only the eldest to take the grammar school place (the uniforms and activities were often expensive). Of three brothers, the one who went to university eventually ended up a full professor at a top university, but his younger brothers didn't fail, though they left school at 15/16 as wages were needed. One ended up running the Canvey Island oil refinery and the other started a large printing business, via trade skills and brains. There were then more routes to success that weren't purely academic. My grandad left school in the late 1920s at 14 for an engineering company as an apprentice but ended his career as a senior director at an aerospace firm still considered a world leader now. The establishment needed, sought and cherished raw talent.

Edited, but for clarity of reading, not message.

I was rubbish at school ( especially maths) but I came out of my rough secondary school with four o levels ! One was an A in English lit.
Still felt an underachiever, but this thread has cheered me up a bit.
I have a few CSE's ,but not 1s
Maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought I was ! lol
( but I did struggle a lot at school )

Someone mentioned Oxbridge offers were 2E grades at Alevel. My dsis applied to Oxford in 1987 and she was told by Oxford that if she passed the interview then she could choose to take their standard offer which was 3As grades at Alevel or she could take their entrance exam and if she passed that then the token offer was 2E grades at Alevel. What surprised her most was when she got to Oxford quite a few students who hadn’t taken the entrance exam got in with much lower Alevel grades B,Cand even Ds here’s looking at you David and Ed Miliband.

Manchester gave me an EE offer in 'any two A levels, including General Studies'. Interesting to hear that they were one of the few to count it.

I went to a girls only grammar school and did O levels (Cambridge syllabus) over two years (1976 and 1977). We sat two or three early when we were 15 years old (English language, Religious studies and Biology) so that we could fit all the others in for the final year. The top stream did a lot of exams including all three sciences, Latin, German and French, separate English Language and Literature, Maths, Geography, History, Art, and a choice of Music, Needlework or Cookery. The lower stream could choose less languages (one was minimum) and two of the three practical subjects. Our school didn't offer any CSEs.

You needed at least 5 grade C or above passes to be allowed to continue to sixth form to sit A levels. The school prided itself on its high Oxbridge entrance so in reality, they expected a lot more than 5. Not many girls got lots of A grades but I think there were two in my class that got 10 grade As each and both went on to Cambridge. They were considered exceptional. These exceptional girls also sat S levels alongside the A levels.

I came away with several B grades at O Level (including 2 English and Maths) and the rest at C grade and was very happy with that. I eventually went to a good university and did a BSc, Masters and PhD.

It shows that he did well at school. There was little chance as everything was based on class. If he’d have been at a grammar (got in through parents wealth being an influence on the middle school teachers) or at a private school you can be sure he would have got good o level grades.

This has got me thinking about General studies Alevel which was a really interesting exam. Paper 1 was multiple choice questions on every A level subject so a lot of guessing on MFL and social sciences for me. Then paper 2 was essay A-level on philosophical and ethical issues. I remember answering a question about justifying funding art and music in a modern society. It was also a long exam 2 hours for each paper and took the whole day.

Yes JMB board, it was also considered as qualifying A-level for some degrees if you applied to Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds universities and useful if you bombed an exam in one of your other subjects

On comparability of 1972 O levels v 2016 A levels, I found some of my old 1972 and 1974 papers. DS took them in to show his (quite young) teachers, and came home telling me that the Latin teacher thought the AS level students would have struggled with the Scipio and Catullus set texts we had read for O level. But as noted, O level was a grammar school exam, so designed to identify (and challenge) the top 20%. Nobody struggled much with the step up to A level, AFAIK.

Also, back then, a CSE 1 was rated equivalent to the lowest passing grade of O level.

I was at a grammar school (selective at 11+ exam) in the 1950s and did O levels - so far as I remember - the grades were 1-9 and we took all of them. It was exam only and no practical part of the qualification.

When I took A levels - the grades were A,B.C.D and E or a fail - correct me if I am mis-remembering.

My son took GCSEs in the 1980s as he was at a comprehensive and I think they were just as difficult as GCEs.

I was put onto CSE courses, mid 1980’s. Some classmates did GCSE and a few did O-levels. I’m fairly sure it was the year they were introduced, or possibly when my school area introduced them.

Mine was similar. I was in a northern comprehensive.

@bruffin
It was a grammar but I did have friends at the secondary and they didn't do O levels at all. Our world was very narrow though.

Just looking at my English Lit exam, we studied Silas Marner, Macbeth and The Nun's Priest's Tale - Chaucer. I think this was very hard. Would any DC do this combination for gcse now? I doubt it. I imagine CSE didn't do these either. We took Oxford Board.

The other problem we faced was teachers not completing the syllabus. The exam papers contained questions on topics we had never studied. We were never ever given guidance on how to write a good answer. I never had any advice on how to improve. Teachers' comments would just be "satisfactory" or "try harder". Where we covered most of the syllabus and received some guidance, results were better. We were not well taught but obviously no one complained. The Head said we were "drones" and not "worker bees". The only dc who got away with under performance were the county sports players. They were lauded. And clearly not drones!

Yes, but it also depended on the actual aylabus you did.

As someone has already said, O Levels were for the top 20%, CSE were supposed to be more practical and for the next 30%.

It was expected that half of students would leave school at 16 with no qualifications.

So some subjects you could only do CSE eg typing (thinking back to my school days an age ago) which fitted with being more practical.

But CSEs were offered in academic subjects too. I struggled with Chemistry so I did O Level and I also did CSE.

@Violinist64

I would say most of the computer science curriculum is identical to what it was in the 1980s. The only big difference is knowing about the internet and online safety.

Programming - the languages are more advanced but the principles are the same.

Different types of networks are the same.

Software mediums have changed.

But the binary, bytes, nybles / nibbles, input and output lots is the same.

General Studies was the norm for our school (yes, north-ish).

Depends what type of school you went to
Grammers school where everyone took O'levels, you would have a distorted view and think not so good.
Comp where only top sets took Olevels and more representative of the general population then 5 olevels were good. As i said above 5 O'level passes put in you in the top 15% nationally.

Was that in the North? No one I knew ( London) did general studies, but it seemed the norm for JNB

I wasn't thinking of polytechnics when I said 3 a levels as they weren't universities then.

I think exams were harder then in that we had no revision help from school. There was no internet or YouTube videos. Past papers were not accessible - for most of my subjects the first time I saw an actual exam paper was when I sat down to my mocks. The school kept the papers from the previous sitting which was then given to us. Some subjects the first real paper was the actual exam.
There were no public mark schemes so we didn't know what the examiners were looking for. We weren't trained to answer questions in the way kids are now. As far as I remember, there was no standard format to the exams beyond knowing we had to write 3 essays in 3 hours.

Oxbridge relied on their own exams and weren't interested in a levels results.