GCSE: is it true they're graded so that ca 1/3 must fail? How are boundaries decided?

This is very interesting. Having had a look into it, it seems maths and english were the most popular papers but it looks like 20% of people just left school not having sat a paper at all.

This is particularly true if you do the kind of blind recruitment whereby the interviewer doesn't see, when looking at a CV, what university the candidate graduated from.

Surely the degree matters more than the university? A History graduate will have done less maths than a Science graduate.

Back to your original point. You have no idea how difficult some people find it to learn, use and retain information. Your child aiming for the 11+ is in the top percent of children nationally. You interact with graduates at work. You don't see those people who struggle. One of the hardest working students I have ever taught got a grade 2 this year and I was proud of them.

CSE grade 1 was equivalent to an O Level grade C. I was quite shaky on chemistry so I sat both CSE and O Level in that subject.

You didn't get a CSE if you got an O Level at D or E but you could get an O level on an A Level paper because they were both GCEs, Ordinary Level and Advanced Level.

O Levels were for the top 20% academically, CSEs were for the next 30% and 50% left school with no qualifications.

Oh and when I was sitting them they also had AO Levels which were O Levels for more mature students.

And 'Special' papers for the most academic to sit alongside A Levels.

This is starting to sound like a failure at your work in your recruitment process

My last involvement in grad recruitment was 20+ years ago.
All were highly numerate as we recruited those with good quality STEM degrees.
There were some I wouldn't have writing user guides but who were invaluable for their analytical and systems design skills.

It might be that we need IB in place of A levels and/or uni degrees with a wider skills base supporting the core degree.

None of which has much to do with grades 1-3 at GCSE.

Graduates struggling with numeracy will likely be because they have had 5 years off studying any maths. Almost all would have passed GCSE maths 5 or 6 years before. Skills go rusty. I have a maths degree. I would struggle with most A level maths if you face me a paper to do right now.

There are a lot of jobs where you only need a defined subset of foundation tier maths. If you are doing something regularly you can be proficient.

If you are interested the oecd did publish a report on gcse maths.

Its quite interesting, with an idea for replacing gcse resits with something better.

It had a few points in it, one being we sit our maths test after 2 years at a young age, wheras mamy other countries go for a test after 4 years at an older age.

I think I have a different understanding of what basic numeracy means to @ParentOfOne so we will never reach a conclusion. But my view remains that a level 1 pass requires basic numeracy to pass and if you dont have basic numeracy you would fail. Mine is based on what my son did in level 1 and it was the things I keep being told he cant do. I also think qualifications are about showing what you can do, not just what you cant and grade 3 gcse shows you can do more than a grade 1.

The test isn't even inaccessible to them. Grade 3 students can correctly answer up to 60% of the paper. That's not 'struggling with basic numeracy'.

30 per cent are clearly not thick and the tests are just inaccessible for them.

I think it’s the claim that 30% of English kids are thick as mince, and not even good enough to work in the local chicken factory.

The year 1 phonics test with the fake words isn’t „easy“ either, nor is the Year 4 timetables test as doing it in 6 seconds really requires knowing it really well and KS2 SATS require real fluency in reading and speed! To gain full marks or near full marks in all of these tests isn’t „easy“ even for the highest ability children. Same applies to GCSEs. All these National tests now are very rigorous. So no surprise that plenty of children fail especially those whose parents don't read with and to them and practise with them. And that is not even taking into account SEND.

GCSEs aren’t „easy“, far from it and it’s very competitive at the top end. So if the OP is complaining about the 11 plus being „difficult“, I think they will be in for a shock. We found the 11 plus a breeze for all 4DC yet 10-11 subjects at GCSE, some with a huge amount of content, have definitely not been easy. Mine have a high IQ but GCSE requires application and effort etc and it’s a very tiring process even for kids with a high IQ.
DD has a close friend who is an award winning junior author and was awarded a 6 in English language (1 mark off a 7 and still under review)!

Someone seems to be "conveniently ignoring" that you don't need to answer all of that to get a 4

You are certainly conveniently ignoring that kids getting a grade 3 or 2, or possibly even a 1 will be getting the pen-type question correct.

Yet you are claiming that 30-40% of kids would struggle with it.

We also need to remember there is a non calculator paper. Kids like mine struggle with instant recall of times tables, so she can easily know what she is doing but make a 'basic' mistake to lose marks. Which is why they do need to be able to do harder questions too as they won't get full marks on the first ~48 marks.
(We 'solved' this for DD this year by getting her to write out a times tables grid in the first 5-8mins of the exam to then refer to it).

I've got lost as to what your point is.

Is it to write off kids age 16 who don't get the 4s as hopeless? To say if they can't get 60% on 3 x 1.5hr papers (normally amid a whole host of other exams) then they are thick?

Or do you have something more constructive to say about how you can teach lower ability children maths from 5-16 to really embed skills and give them confidence? If so I have lost that message, so please repeat it.

The easier questions won’t be the higher marking ones. You dont get one mark per question answered.

grammars still exist in some areas so we do still have the “academic schools”. I’m in one of those areas and see many of the issues with deciding children’s paths at 11.

children in this country are also expected to retake maths and English until they pass or leave education at 18.

Completely agree. Not all children’s lives are equal.

Isn’t it cited as one reason statistically children of immigrants perform so well in exams. They’ve generally got engaged supportive parents.

Especially goves change to more exams and less coursework. Some very bright students struggle with the exam side of things and the coursework percentage helped support them.

granted maths wasn’t one of the coursework exams but it means there’s more exams and more pressure overall.

Both. All throughout their secondary their maths has been wildly different to mine. With differing techniques being taught which meant I couldn’t help them a lot of the time.

and I was academic and passed mine.

It is easy for detractors to pick out an easy question on the foundation tier and go 'these are simple, it's worthless'.
They conveniently ignore the harder questions, or that fact that high pressure exams freak some lower ability kids out so they need a run in to build confidence.

Foundation paper contains trigonometry, Pythagoras, solving quadratic equations and so on.

It's certainly not all questions about pens.