in thinking that in a few years time it'll be impossible to fail an 'A' level?

[BarmyArmy]

A level pass rate up

"The pass rate for A-levels rose for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6% of entries gaining an E or above, up from 97.5% in 2009."

The problem (for I see it as that, rather than evidence of increasing 'hard work') began under the Tories, when they introduced the GCSE in 1986.

Traditional 'bell curve' grade allocation was replaced with marks awarded to a particular 'standard', meaning it is perfectly possible for everyone to pass, or indeed everyone to gain the same grade - depending on where the grade boundaries lie.

Under the old bell curve system, grades were allocated according to the percentile bands in which you lay - i.e. the top 20% of any given intake received an A, the next a B and so on.

What do people think?

An 'A' means nothing if more than around 5% are gettig that grade. If 15-20% can achieve an 'A' then it is not an indication of excellence. Excellence should mean exceptional, outstanding.

And perhaps you don't understand the structure of an exam paper. There's a huge range of abilities at fifteen/sixteen and the paper has to cater both for the very bright and the not so bright. How would it be if the less able students were taking exams at that age where they couldn't answer one question?

Questions are graded. Obviously some of them are a low grade question but equally some are higher grades and a smaller proportion will attempt them. The point of GCSE (rather than O level and CSEs) was that all pupils would take the same papers so that students weren't streamed at fourteen.

BarmyArmy - I do think you need to get out more; you seem to be spending a hell of a lot of time on MN pissing people off.

I disagree with the bell curve model - it's completely arbitrary. Actually grading on what people know (x%) is much more reflective than arbitrary cut off points.

As for having the formulae on the exam papers - I think it's a good idea. The schooling system I went through expected you to know all the formulae off by heart, or, in my case, make them up as you go along. I did manage to get the right answer, just spent three pages getting to it. The skill you should be assessing is not whether or not someone can memorise a formula, but whether or not they are able to apply it correctly.

As for the comment about being given past papers - I think it is better to do so (having sat and passed over 100 exams, including professional ones). Exams are as much about assessing your knowledge of the subject as they are about assessing your ability to apply the knowledge, in an exam setting.

Very few people I know give a toss about a-level results when recruiting assuming the person has then gone on to study for a degree or get a job and if you're recruiting grads then they'll have all done a-levels around the same time anyway.

A very bizarre point.

My grades were, for GCSEs - 3 As, 4 Bs and 3 Cs.

For A level - 2 As and 2 Bs.

Interesting article about how easy A Levels are now, although the journalist didn't retake any MFL A Levels, but did English Lit.

www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/aug/17/took-a-level-at-37

I did O levels, at a comprehensive, and I certainly saw the syllabus and did past papers. We question spotted like crazy. I did the same at university.

And I think you missed the post in which I said I have recently directly compared a Higher tier GCSE paper and an O level paper. And was surprised myself to find that my current GCSE students could tackle the questions on topics that we have covered. How Science Works was alive and well in the early 1980s it seems.

AbsOfCroissant - fair enough, except that grading on what people 'know' only works if you move the grade boundaries in order to take into account differences between candidates of the same intake. Otherwise you end up with an ever-increasing proportion of people passing, and an ever-increasing proportion of people getting the top grades...and an ever increasing proportion of people being unfairly led to believe that they are 'brilliant' when this is far from the truth as they will find out when their illegible CVs get turned back again and again and again.

Ewe - I would read everything on a CV and use all of it to judge a candidate...after all, they've written it in order to 'sell' themselves, so surely I should do the decent thing and pay close attention to it?

it's nonsensical to say that by doing past papers this renders the exams worthless . By that token some of my husbands electronic engineering masters must be some mickey mouse qualification. He got a first. From a Russell group uni. One year after practising countless past papers which were in the university library he discovered when sitting that particular module he was doing a pass paper from a few years ago. He could see the tippex
mark over the date on the pcopy. Ergo he must have cheated and now be a piss poor engineer as he used past papers to help him revise.

Ooh Barmy, you 'bell curve' controversialist you.

AncientStarlight, thanks for posting about the journalist taking English Lit.

She mentions that she couldn't take texts into the exam, and in 1990 you could for similar subjects. When I took Eng Lit you were also not allowed to take texts into the exam (1988). I think this made it easier as the pressure wasn't on you to find the most relevant quote.

Thought this was interesting:

Despite the reassuringly high standard, however, there were concerns. Thinking for yourself and reading outside of the syllabus are discouraged. There's no point, because you don't pick up marks for extra knowledge. A lot of it is about box-ticking: show you know this, show you know that. If you forget to do those things, no matter how good your analysis, you are penalised. I dropped four marks on my Seamus Heaney coursework essay, for example, because I did not specifically put that he was Irish: not enough "context". Never mind that his name is Seamus.

If my future had been hanging on my grade, I could have taken the chance to fix the Heaney and Eliot oversights and improve my scores. After an initial marking, you are allowed to rework your coursework before handing it in. I avoided doing this on purpose as I wanted to know what mark I would "really" get and be made to live with it. Anything else felt like cheating. I was left with the impression that, although the most able pupils do get their chance to shine, the least able also get perhaps a little too much of a leg-up. Is that really fair?

I realised when I took the AS-level exam how much my much younger fellow students have absorbed the box-ticking. Obviously anxious not to lose their "context" points, they were all pacing the corridor outside the exam room reciting Robert Frost's biography by heart: "Born 1874. Bought a farm in 1915. Died 1963." In the age of Wikipedia, why should they feel they have to learn that stuff?

Oh, I just knew it. A hurtful, badly timed and inflammatory post, and who is behind it?

There was a documentary fairly recently that showed that modern exams aren't getting easier but are very different. Young people familiar with modern exams tend to do better at those, and older people tend to perform better in the style of exam they sat themselves.

O levels and older GCSEs and A levels tended to test you more on memory, whereas today's exams tend to expect the candidate to show clarity of thought, progression and development of argument, and a higher-level use of data, especially in Maths and Sciences where the development of technology has led to access to scientific calculators, for example.

I think that older people who haven't done as well in their careers as they might have hoped tend to be the only whingers on this "exams are getting easier" bandwagon. You know, the ones who thought their above average (but still not fantastic) exams results would get them into a really swish job, when in actual fact they found themselves (for example) snooping through poor squaddies' diaries for a living.

Richard Spencers blog has it spot on. Your anecdotal evidence mentions state school leavers at gcse at 16. You mention a level students results in your op. Two entirely different types of cohorts of students!!!! This is confusing for many people! You can't point to standards dropping for alevel when describing the literacy skills of a possible sen school leaver at 16!

atswim I can't work out if you think that paper is easy or hard. it seems dead easy to me - the formula are all written down for the students (in the past you had to remember them) and it is only an hour long.

I can still remember all of those formulae now. As an example of why the exams are so much easier now just look at Q3 - not only are the students given the formulae but the question actually tells them that they need to use them! I can now see why employers are compaining so much about school leavers incapable of doing anythign for themselves. How can someone with the sense to realise that they need to use one of the formulae given be differenciated from someone who needs to be spoon fed everything?

I don't think they are easier just different.At school we didn't get law or various other subjects taught now it was the usual suspects history science maths etc

Surely the OP is not about whether the exams are getting easier but about the statistical method by which grades are allocated?

I think one can have a debate about that (even today, of all days) without insulting or dismissing the achievements of any of the current or recent 'A' level students.

Even if it is a thread from Barmy, wind-up champion of Mumsnet.

....today's exams tend to expect the candidate to show clarity of thought, progression and development of argument...especially in Maths and sciences...

but they do not - the questions are now broken down into so many tiny steps that the candidates do not need any clarity of thought; and progression is somethign done for you by the exam board.

Just compare this:

www.burtongrammar.co.uk/?cat=19

(1968 O level maths - couldn't find physics) with this:
www.gcsemathspastpapers.com/gcse-maths-past-papers-june-2009-paper-4.htm

Of course you would read it BA but surely GCSE/A-level results are pretty irrelevant unless you have two candidates who are identical in degree/uni/grade and work experience/personality/team fit etc. Let alone your whole conversion on year of taking thing, very odd.

Why don't you do a quick A-level practice paper now and see how you do? If they're that easy, you'll surely ace it.

We always compare O levels and GCSEs, but it was O levels and CSEs. I've actually never seen a CSE paper to compare it to a foundation GCSE paper. Has anyone else seen one, or did them?

The main two difference between those papers are that the GCSE paper is written in clearer English, and is graduated so that the first questions are easier than the last. This is so that borderline B/C/D candidates who could have been entered for the foundation paper are not penalised for their teacher's decision to enter them for the higher paper.

Unfortunately the papers you have chosen don't have questions that are very similar so it is difficult to assess how hard they are in comparison to one another.

With my "clarity of thought" and "progression of argument" points I was referring to non-scientific subjects, such as English, MFL, RE etc. I'd be interested to see a French O level paper, let's see if I can find one...

The higher level GCSEs are supposed to be comparable with O levels and the foundation level GCSEs with CSEs

Blimey - I would have got an A on that gcse physics paper and I was hopeless at science at school. I guess we were just taught completely differently. I did one cse - in Maths, and got a 1 which was supposed to be an O Level pass.

well my dd got Bbb in her a levels today and I for one am proud of her achievements
Haven't read thread but responding to annoying OP

Hmm... having looked at the French one from 1952 from the same website, it is impossible to compare.

In the O level paper pupils are asked to translate, which we don't do now (as it is a fairly irrelevant and specific skill).
The creative writing question is fairly similar to what we would do now, but specifies not to use a certain tense, which is quite odd.
The last question is a similar comprehension to what one might find in a modern paper, but it is in the form of a poem, which you are unlikely to find in a modern GCSE as poetry is relatively redundant in modern life.

All in all, I would prefer to take the O level paper, but my students would find the GCSE paper more accessible.

Yes, I know soggy. I'd like to see one though.