How can a REALLY low percentage still be a "pass" at A level?

[Birmingbacon]

I was looking at the grade boundaries for A levels after noticing schools saying things like "97% of our A-levels were a pass" (which sounds great on paper)

But if an E is a pass then the percentage which gets you a pass is shockingly low.

Here are a few:

full list here if interested
https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Grade-boundaries/A-level/grade-boundaries-june-2024-gce.pdf

Pass (E grade) in A level Maths - 18%
Pass (E grade) in A level English Lang - 25%
Pass (E grade) in A level Biology - 23%
Pass (E grade) in A level Business - 29%

etc etc, all similar.

Am I crazy or should you need at least 50% in order to 'pass' an exam? Even to get a C in maths you only need 43% it just seems a very low bar

On which paper? At GCSE I did the higher maths paper and you needed a lower percentage in that to get a C than on the intermediate paper, because the higher paper was harder so your fifty percent system doesn't work.
DH was a bit of a nightmare at school and despite being quite good at maths his behaviour got him kicked out of top set so he had to sit the intermediate paper, he got a B which was the maximum grade for that paper and he had to score over 90% to achieve it, there's every chance if he'd say the higher paper he could've had an A for a lower percentage.

Maths isn't something you can just guess your way to 20% on though. The person who scored that had studied the subject and demonstrated a certain level of understanding. And some university courses deem that adequate for the courses they provide. It's not a deep understanding of the subject but it's not nothing either.

I think the issue here isn't so much that people that do very poorly can still pass, but that there is a percentage of pupils that can't pass, and that percentage varies each year. So someone that got 15% fails this year, but someone that got 14% last year passed.

A friend of mine's DD just got AAB in her A-levels. She was a bit disappointed so looked back at previous year's grade boundaries. If she'd done the exams last year she'd have got AAA and the year before would have got AA*A with the same marks.

In professional accountancy exams the pass mark is 50 or 55%, which I thought at the time felt too low a pass mark (even though I got 53% on one of mine and passed, which I was grateful for!).

Passing a qualification is simply confirming that the student has completed a sufficient amount of coursework and exams to receive a grade, rather than being ungraded (U.) Individual colleges, universities, employers etc are then free stipulate which grades they’ll consider for further study / employment.

A school or college’s pass rate matters because a significant number of ungraded / U students could indicate that the institution is deliberately not putting forward its less able students for exams, which isn’t a good sign. It’s more positive to see schools or colleges with higher rates of Ds and Es than higher rates of Us.

But the exams for A level aren't the same every year, some years are harder than others, this argument makes no sense

Right, as you say, the grade boundaries are shifted about to achieve a desired spread of results. They're not about the child's absolute ability in a subject, but only their ability relative to everyone else taking the same exam, with the intention being that some percentage will always fail.

The problem is bigger than just students. On a school-level, no matter what schools do to improve teaching, they can only gain a relative advantage over other schools. It's impossible for all schools to be good under this system because what is deemed good is entirely relational.

Well, if nobody fails thebt at, the test is too easy.

It's like lowering the bar on driving tests to 'can you turn in the ignition' meaning you've passed. Some people just won't be able to pass some exams. It's just the way it is.
Otherwise you end up with everyone "passing" with 9-1, but people will just interpret a 1 will mean the same as a fail or U, a 2= bare pass, 3= close pass. Etc.

So you're essentially just replacing the U with the lowest grade of 1.

No but the point being, no matter how hard some children work a percentage will ALWAYS fail. Even if the got 50% of the paper right, the boundaries would move so that they still fail.

I was told this by my older friends, older siblings and my teachers/lectures but up until about the mid-80s they used to award grades to a certain percentage of candidates. So grade boundaries have always fluctuated.

The difference now and 40-50 years ago is more young people go to university so more courses need higher grades to get on to them.

But the exam was different /harder so the person that got 15% this year and failed, would have got maybe 11% last year and failed as well.

I can’t think of many situations in which A-levels are judged purely on whether you passed or failed, in most cases they are judged on your grade. It is very clear that a student who achieved an A* has done much better than a student who achieved an E, most people don’t just judge someone’s results on whether they got a pass or a fail. In that case, why does it matter if the lowest pass rate is only 20%? Answering 1 in 5 questions correctly on an A-level maths paper is still pretty good and no doubt more than the general population could do, so the pass still shows that the student has some proficiency in maths even if it is only at the minimum amount needed to ‘pass.’ Would it really be better for every student who achieved under 50% of the exam to fail? Why? What is the problem in having grades D and E and allowing students who aren’t academic enough to achieve higher grades, but still capable of understanding some of the subject, persue it at A-level? Should further education only be about attainment with no regard to the other benefits of being engaged in learning a subject alongside peers? I think it’s great that some students who aren’t naturally gifted and talented in the area of mathematics are still taking the subject and furthering their knowledge and understanding even if they are only achieving D or E grades and the same goes for other subjects. Not all of life has to be about who has achieved the best, learning a subject can still be a valuable life experience even if you don’t excel at it and it’s not unreasonable that low grades exist to recognise that learning.

Nope. We've had a student get into uni this year with 2 U grades and 1 E.

They got an unconditional offer and took it up.

Driving test is a good counterexample to what you're saying. Because with a driving test, there are a series of specific core competencies that every driver should have and if you have those skills and you don't make a silly mistake on the day then you will pass. If only people who were ready went for the test the pass rate would be much higher. With A-Levels (and GCSEs) you have to do the test whether you're ready or not.

If driving tests were graded like A-levels, you'd have some people get to the end of their test and the examiner would say "Your driving was fine and I would have passed you yesterday, but too many people have passed today and so you have to fail."

I caught the programme this morning - Exam Nation
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00223qb

A-levels always had N and U grades, didn't they?

No one can tell me my D-grade Latin A-level was a fail. 😀

I got an E in one of my A-levels. I got distinctions in my MA. A-levels are silly exams IMO, a ridiculous test of memory as much as anything.

A test of memory indeed. I remember having to learn chunks of text, especially from Hamlet.

exactly this. For GCSEs the foundation papers have much higher pass marks, I think a 5 in Foundation Maths is around 75%ish, a 4 is higher than 50%. There is nothing higher than a 5 awarded. In the higher paper a 7 is around 50%ish but the questions are extremely hard and a lot of students getting 6/7s wont bge able to answer the last 3rd of the paper at least. It is a perfectly fine system. Getting Es differentiates easily from those getting A*s and if they do get on a uni course they will do well or they won't. My friends DS got a B, D and an E and got onto a sports science course. Ended up getting a 1st in his degree and went on to get top marks in his masters also.

I think this is because university grading is quite tough eg. 70% or above is a first - almost no-one gets over 80% [disclaimer, I may be 30 yrs out of date here!]

If you want the pass mark to be higher then they would need to dumb down the exams. This makes it much harder for the top universities to differentiate between the brightest pupils.
I think in the US the pass mark for AP exams is 60% but the tests are easier than A levels.

Stats/research methods papers often see marks in the 90s! I saw a lot of over 70s in my dept, even in essays. Depends on the module really. But below half seems ridiculous for a pass.

E has been a pass grade for a very long time - certainly since 1969 when my husband took his A levels. The grade below E was an O grade, which was the equivalent of O level, and then F which was a fail.

Oxford and Cambridge often used to make offers of 2 E grades. Once they had decided they wanted you, all you had to do was pass 2 A levels as that was the minimum needed to qualify for a grant.

It’s also shocking how few people get 100% though - the grade boundaries change depending on the cohort and are referenced to ensure rough parity with previous years.

Well said. Lots of smug posters around today. DH’s exam grades were terrible, now an ultra high earner. Exam grades are not the be all and end all as many employers are now beginning to appreciate.

I have a problem with anything under 50% being a "pass". Surely getting more wrong than right means you've failed.

Perhaps students unlikely to get more than 50% in an A level exam shouldn't be sitting the A level and there should be more appropriate courses/exams for them? Maybe A/S levels as an alternative.

I personally think that it's very discouraging and counter productive when a student can't answer more than half the question marks, as it tends to suggest they've also struggled with the lessons/course too (unless it was just a bad day!). That must be so demoralising for them to spend two years struggling, presumably getting relatively low marks in tests, coursework, homework, assignments, etc.

Certainly in professional body exams, to "pass" an exam, you're needing a mark somewhere in the 45-55% range. From memory, I think my accountancy exams were 50% and my son's actuarial exams are typically 55-60%.

It does students no good at all to get "passes" for as little as 25% in A levels and then have to get over 40% to pass Uni modules and over 50% to pass professional exams. No wonder there's such a high drop out rate both at Unis and in professional exams.