17% for a pass (grade 4 or a C)

anyone else fed up with the constant put downs on our exam systems and thus our teens? It always seems to be in the press GCSEs are too easy blah.blah, or constant overreporting comparing our education system with others across the world this constant reform of exams and people still complain it's not hard enough. Meanwhile the number of kids with mental health issues is increasing...what do you think.about THAT OP?

Making exams harder is something the Gov like to boost about it suggests standards are higher but unfortunately that isn't the case, harder exam - lower pass mark. Nothing has changed, the politicians have made good headlines though.
I wonder how it makes a dc feels though - to take an exam, only be able to answer a relatively small number of questions and still come out with a great result - how can that feel good, does it feel deserved?

You'd hate university then Ttbb - 61% gets you a 2:1! Damn Oxbridge and their dumbed down degrees!

out - you think teachers came up with these demonic new exams? LOL , as they say!

You have no idea about Higher and Foundation and what it means OP.

Until you understand that simple idea, you won't get the more complex answers above.

By the way, my DH teaches iGCSE at an independent school. In revision practice papers my DS was routinely getting mid As. He got a 6 in the new GCSE. It is definitely hard.

This isn't new: when I sat GCSE's in 2004 these were the grade boundaries for Edexcel Maths:
Paper 5505 (Non Calculator) - Higher:
A* - 61/100
A - 45/100
B - 29/100
C - 14/100

Paper 5506 (Calculator) - Higher:
A* - 61/100
A - 45/100
B - 29/100
C - 13/100

I got 100% in both exams and part of me is still annoyed that my grade is lumped in with people who got a third of the exam wrong - but that's how standardised marking works.

Some good news Ttbb, 'all the uni kids' are not completely thick.

Many of them have managed a constantly changing set of assessments and syllabi, and come to university anxious about 'getting it right'. What students aren't ok with is ambiguity and there not necessarily being a 'right' answer.

% can be misleading, if it was a paper made up of adding single integer numbers and you got 100% it wouldn't be impressive really. I mean 1+1=, 1+2=

compare that with something like this:

p and q are two numbers each greater than zero.
√(p2+ 5q) = 8
√(p2– 3q) = 6
Find the values of p and q

Shocking. No wonder all the uni kids these days are completely thick.

Have you seen the papers?

Out2pasture surely you must see that has to be the case for some students? If a student will get a level 1 (because that represents what they can achieve - maybe due to SEN) then they will only be able a fifth or so of the questions on the foundation paper.

Equally, a student who got an E in French this year (my subject) answered about two-thirds of the questions correctly (about 20-24 of 35) - probably the easiest 20. I don't see how you get round that, and if there is no tiered paper (eg history) it'll be even more pronounced.

but why would the teachers who come up with/conceive the exam in the first place be so far off the mark of what is being taught for a particular age group that only a fraction pass?
how does one go about writing an exam that only has a few questions on it that an average student can answer.
I can't imagine sitting for a 2 hour exam with say 200 questions and answering less than 50%.

☺ ty

Sorry rain I realise I made that sound like there were massive changes each year, as the pp said there aren't most of the time, it will be a couple of marks up or down usually.

I took GCSE Maths in 1999. I did the intermediate paper and got a grade B. I did no revision and basically answered the questions that would now appear in KS3 tests. Averages, percentages simultaneous equations etc.

My son has just taken his GCSEs and got an A/7 in Maths. He got a 5 in his SATS in KS2.

Our test papers were worlds apart. Our capabilities are worlds apart but we are only one grade apart!

I have no idea what any of this means.

Thank you.

Its not as if everyone passed their exams back in the olden days

Grade boundaries are set so that kids do on average as they are expected to do from their KS2 SATs results.

It means that GCSE results are basically set 5 years beforehand by SATs results which are very poorly controlled.

Rain - once exams have settled in the marks are in fact pretty stable from one year to the next.

If everyone across the country does badly and the boundary is then lower seems crazy to me as a ' grade c' for instance could actually represent very poor skills. Surely it should be roughly the same marks each year to pass at certain grades. Am I missing something?

Depends on how hard the exam is, surely?

A pass at GCSE maths this year was also 51%, so more challenging than back in your day, no?

History GCSE last year was 54% for a C grade in our exam board. Haven't got round to checking this year's boundaries (will do when I return to school) but hope that restores your faith.

You're not technically wrong OP but you have completely misunderstood the system. So before you write your article do some research. Not MN.