Are a levels harder than they were 20 years ago?

[llamajohn]

I took my a-levels in 2002. They weren't hard. Heck I didn't even complete my coursework in one (NEA now?) and still got an A. I did very little work in maths and got a A. Did the bare minimum in third choice, Chemistry and got a B.
My attendance was around 70%.

I'm guessing those days are gone??

I took my A -levels in 1992 and there were more memory recall questions which was fine if you'd learned the content. I teach A- level biology and the paper contains far more application -style questions and the mark scheme is so specific, you can lose marks for not using the correct key word or following through an answer. You can learn the content inside out and back to front but if you don't grasp the mark schemes, you're stuffed.

Yes, the biology mark scheme is so very specific. It trips people up all the time.. DD took some time to get her head round it.

Is that not awarding points by rote @menopausalmare ? I don't pretend to understand now exams are marked now, but are you suggesting that putting the right words in the correct sequence is all that's necessary?

I did mine in 1975, I’ d passed the 11+ and did o and a levels at the grammar school. Only the really top brightest got a grades , mine were all c.
They were all final exam one chance only exams with no coursework. Which would have suited me much better.
My eldest 2 did theirs in the late 90’s and they got all A’s. There seemed to be a huge difference in the amount of work involved in the different subjects, but they seemed to have to work very hard.Youngest did them in the mid 2000’s and definitely didn’t seem to have to work so hard to get A’s
Not sure what time period this was, possibly mid or late 90’s, a friend told me he was teaching A level Physics from an old O level text book!
In some subjects they might seem easier or harder because the focus has changed. For instance I took A level music in 1975 and there was a great weighting on the harmony and counterpoint theory whereas today is more about composition so not really comparable

I did mine in 1985 and they were pretty bloody hard. I did feck all work though, so ...

Weirdly, I found my degree less of a challenge. But I did it a few years later, so perhaps I just needed to mature.

Thanks, that's interesting. Perhaps I worded my post poorly. He clearly must have done very well in both the exam and interview. But, to a certain extent, I do wonder how much these extra things, that would likely only have become apparent at interview, did aid him?

By the way, I am not trying to put him down in any way at all, he was incredibly intelligent, and certainly deserved his place there - but there again, so were many others that were applying.

Did all of this make him stand out a little bit more at interview than somebody from a grammar school? So he got the place rather than them?

@RampantIvy what I meant is that they were definitely harder before they became modular. Then for a while they were easier (2000-2017) and now I think they are harder in some ways and easier than others.

Students are (theoretically) better prepared than they have ever been but the standard of the exams is quite challenging.

However, in the subject I teach in comparison to when I did the A level the content is deep but narrow. We had 5 exams, my students now do 2! The questions are of a similar demand level but obviously it is harder to learn 2 years worth of material at once and then potentially be examined on quite a small part of it.

Basically my overall view is that since 2017 they haven't really got harder. But the students find them harder for a variety of reasons which are not really to do with the exams but to do with teenagers finding things harder generally.

I got BBC in 1987, found them challenging and the hardest exams I have taken. Only one person in the school got any A's, and she went on to be a Physics professor, so not lacking in the brain department. I went on to get a 2.1 degree, then later in life a 1st in another subject.

It's a good point about being lacking the internet for research and past papers. We were at the mercy of the library and whichever teachers we had, and it was a comp which didn't really put the extra miles in that a private school would. And in those days parents weren't involved in school work at all (mine or any of my friends' parents, anyway).

I think they are much harder now than in 1994. I got ABC, barely did any revision and went out twice a week.

I took my A levels in the early 90's and they were hard & I worked to get my modest BCD (18 UCAS points back then).

I kept my English A kevel past papers and compared it to an exam paper from 2010. My paper would be regarded as the equivalent of today's undergraduate exam papers.

I did mine in 2003. I got three As, plus an A and a B at AS level and a Distinction at AE level. Two of those A grades would have been A* under today's criteria. I didn't work very hard at all, but I found university a shock - I went to Oxford and suddenly had to put time and effort in! It would have been better if I'd had the experience of learning how to study earlier, to be honest.