to think the tories are making education elitist?

[ThatVikRinA22]

just watching the news, they are making the A levels harder, saying they are too easy

my boy did maths and physics and trust me - they were not too bloody easy!

my dd is doing GCSEs now, (at 14!! too bloody young imo!) and was doing one science syllabus, the government changed it recently and now, where she would have been awarded a C, she ended up with a D. The science teacher had a rant about the tories at parents evening....

so, now A levels are going to get harder, getting into uni is going to be harder plus more expensive, does this spell and end for opportunities for all to go to uni?

is it going to be the reserve of the very bright and the very rich?

I wonder why Maths has gone wrong then, and not the Sciences?

Is it a knock on from GCSE?

In my school, Maths GCSE gets the same curriculum time as Science. And we do two or three GCSEs to their one. I do wonder why they can't do more int he time they have...

Do I mean "gone wrong", or am I channelling Gove ?

I think there does need to be a breadth of level 3 courses.

We are introducing an Applied Science A level, which is much more accessible than the straight Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Different target group of students entirely, and there is certainly a place for both.

Perhaps it is because students do work linked to Science in other subjects. Certain areas of Science that DS does are also covered in PSE, Geography, PE, Technology and even History. Maths is a bit more out on a limb.

If students don't study Science at A level, or perhaps opt to study a limited amount of Science at GCSE, when Science is the only subject other than Maths itself which contains a substantial amount of Maths, then there isn't enough opportunity to apply Maths in the rest of the non- science subjects the student studies. So more has to be crammed into the Maths lessons.

It's said that the work needed for Maths GCSE is equivalent 2 GCSEs work in other subjects. Usually the most able students will sit two maths GCSEs anyway (stats or additional maths).

There are also all sorts of plans for double maths GCSE afoot.

You might be interested in the graph showing the relative difficulty of A-level subjects on page 73 of the Vorderman Maths report (sorry, can't link to it directly, you have to go to the right page yourself) showing that the sciences rate as harder than maths at A-level!

'Agreed Usual but how do you get people to see both Uni and Vocational courses as having the same parity of esteem?'

They manage to do it in Germany. But then again there are jobs there for people with vocational qualifications, jobs that pay middle class salaries, and an apprenticeship track where apprentices are laid a bit while they train, and an esprit de corps among the middle class that earns its living by 'vocational' means. There are not many trades offering any of that in the UK.

Oh, I believe it. About Science A levels beign harder than Maths. And so would my students who do both!

I don't think there's more work for one Maths GCSE (and they do one) than Science and Additional Science though. And certainly not more than Biology, Chemistry and Physics!

the numbers going to university will naturally decrease over the next five years. year on year all the unis will put up their fees to such a level that even though it isnt a real debt in that you dont repay it except when you earn above a certain level this will put off a huge number of particularly middle class students. as numbers fall the so called mickey mouse courses that we keep hearing about in Daily Fail will also disappear - no one is going to pay £15K plus for a degree that employers dont value. If a levels are also made significantly harder with say the top 5% getting A's / A stars then what will happen to all those kids who have been made to stay in education because the leaving age has been raised to 18. Taken on their own the decision to raise the school leaving age, toughen up GCSE's by removing too many assessments and toughen up A levels and strengthen the links with unis is a great idea. but the big but is what will happen when all of these elements combine into a perfect storm? Kids doing A levels with no intention of going to uni just because they have to stay on at school and disrupting the education of those that do. overall the G man speaks a lot of sense but some joined up thinking would be appreciated.

FallenMadonna

"It is widely believed by pupils and teachers that the amount of effort required to achieve a single GCSE award in Mathematics is similar to the amount of effort required to gain two awards in English Language and Literature or to gain a Double Award in Science. There is widespread concern that this is adding yet further to the perception of mathematics as a disproportionately hard subject and may be adversely affecting pupils? subsequent choices post-16. ?"

From the Smith report, quoted in the Vorderman report which I linked to.

I'm surprised your triple scientists don't get extra curriculum time though, it's treated as an extra option block in my school!

Widely believed by Maths teachers perhaps, not Science teachers

And yes - I may have mentioned it once or twice to SLT, but there you go.

It's all about the "inc English and Maths in my school", not the other three GCSEs. Which will bite them on the bum when the vocational equivalences are overhauled

I suppose it's because in maths there's always harder, new work to learn unless you're an A* candidate who has completed the syllabus. For the vast majority of maths candidates there are questions on the exam that they can't attempt as they haven't been taught it so we have to cram in as much of maths as they can take in in the time given. In science once you've done blast furnaces and the lung you can say 'well, that's science done' (I expect ), without anyone saying 'if you've done that, that means you've got time to have a go at this'.

Oh Lord, now you're channelling Gove!!

Not only do we have to cover vast, vast amounts of content, but we also have to analyse it, apply it, investigate it practically, oh, and deal with our Maths colleagues failure to teach our students how to do basic stats and draw graphs . There is always something else to do in Science!

English now - that's a doddle

colleagues'

Perhaps English teachers have more to do than I suggested

I might have subscribed to this argument before I watched ds1 go through the system in the last two years.I think some of what he is required to do (all arts subjects)is way above what I had to do in 1983,more investigative ,more evaluation of the text and sources etc.

What isn't so good is the relentless learn it quick philosophy and the constant and unremitting pressure of 4 solid years of exams every 6 months.It is not healthy and it frightens me quite frankly,there is a massive amount of jumping through hoops,the teachers try to minimise this and expand things but the fact remains that the answer has to conform to the mark scheme,no room for flair or originality ,just learn the mark scheme.

Very boring and relentless for the more able and very difficult to distinguish the truly able from the "works hard and learns the mark scheme"

On another note I have a degree for Durham (generally thought of as quite solid!) but when i went into my first job i still expected (and did) spend most of the first year photocopying,running errands and generally being a dogs body ,new graduates now just aren't prepared to do that they are very demanding about their"rights" etc .I learnt an enormous amount about the world of work and my future profession in that first year ,no they are so busy ticking the boxes on their training contracts that common sense has gone out the window.

Yeah yeah FallenMadonna I know all you do in science is watch Brainiac.

The reason that we have equal curriculum time to double science is because otherwise maths results would be even more dire than currently. That said, Maths GCSE is a joke and not fit for purpose. Neither, incidentally, is Gove's new harder maths GCSE. A-level isn't actually that bad though.

I think it's fine to make A-Levels harder and therefore less people go to university, as long as generous bursaries/grants are given to poor but brilliant students who would otherwise be put off by the massive debt incurred, also apprenticeships and schemes set up for those bright students not quite capable enough for university (not going to happen though).

I did my A-levels in 2000, shortly before the advent of AS levels, Chemistry and Biology were modular, Maths was the traditional exam at the end. Maths was certainly the hardest subject/exam although for some reason I do remember the chemistry modules getting progressively easier, god knows why.

Ds fees have gone from £1300 to £7000. He was told while every effort would be made, there were no guarantees to keep his fees the same. I'm quite surprised that people agree with the proposals, tbh but there you go. As someone said, most pass because of the AS levels.... If they fail at this point they simply don't do the full a level...

I'm going against the grain here. Our ds did GCSE's last year - a mixture of courses and some IGCSE's. He did exceptionally well and got 11A*s and one A (for maths - not his strong point). He didn't kill himself during the two years; he did three in the equivalent of Y10, but he did work hard for his mocks and then steadily from Easter until finishing. I recall going through biology, history, Latin and English papers with him and being astounded at the depth and the detail that were required and the level he was working at. It was far higher than anything I did in 1976 when I remember having three neat exercise books for both history and biology and the O'Level was one written paper with three essays and a multiple choice. I recall learning two topics inside out and two adequately the day before each exam and reading the exercise books through a couple of times before the multiple choices. I did no other work at all in the two years, no learning for practice questions, copied homework, etc. I got B's in both subjects and A's in English.

Sorry, haven't read the thread fully, and I hate to have to disappoint, but Maths A Level is measurably less hard than it used to be. The University of Warwick Maths Department have been doing a yearly study of their first-year cohort for over 20 years now, and those who are currently getting Bs would have got Ds in the past.

You actually can't argue with the maths.

I think for most subjects GCSE and A level, grades have been inflated by approx two grades.

University education should be elitist - is that not the point of it? It should be for the very bright (although not the very rich). We should stop pretending that everyone can or should go to university.

I have taught at post-grad level and found that there were large numbers of students who would have been much better served earlier in their accademic careers by being told honestly that they were not suited for what they were trying to achieve. They would never get the jobs they had been lulled into believing were there for them.

We have brought up a generation of children to think that they must go to university after school and that that is the only way they will be valued as the only measure of success at their age is accademic. This results in large numbers of people wasting their time and money and racking up huge debts attending courses that they are ill suited for and which will not yield the financial rewards they dream of.

We need to look at the value we place on other skills and other achievements and teach children that there are many ways to be successful and then help them find the one best suited for them. It is a total fallacy to assume that all children can and should do a degree.

I agree in relation to the maths. It was harder in 1976 when we had calculus and log books and slide rules.

TheFallenMadonna - maybe I expressed it badly. What you describe - taking on board new information, using it to assess a situation and make a decision - I called opinion. But I did essentially mean what you describe.

Although we do add in an additional layer of the ethical side of conservation which isn't in the curriculum - there is a certain level of subjectivity in this but I think it's no bad thing to introduce a small element of uncertainty. I am aware that as a facility people visit for a day-long visit I have a bit more freedom to introduce the idea as long as it doesn't take over and dominate the other stuff.

Seahouses - yes and no. One of the things I am aware of is that actually some people in my field do not have degrees (my DH for a start). I also work with many teenagers on a voluntary basis (clubs etc) who would not necessarily be any good at university but who could be brilliant in conservation. I would do them a massive disservice if I said that discussions of some of the methods and practices were to be left for undergraduate level. And back I come to asking what A'Levels are for.

I happen to think that I can best teach by showing kids why we do what we do. So I take real life situations, and I teach the kids the facts they need to know - the same facts that are used by real professionals in the field. This hopefully gets round the moaning of 'Why do we have to learn this? This is pointless'. But I also try to show that science does not by any means have all the answers yet and that in the real field of science, you need to be able to use the facts, assess them and judge accordingly, sometimes where there are gaps in the information or where there are ethical dilemmas with no straightforward answers.

With respect to environmental managers making decisions, yes there are frameworks. But I work in a field where a lot of information is unknown (working with a particular species for example, you may not have information about breeding patterns and seasons, which might be critical in terms of forming a plan of action but if you do't have it, you don't have it). That's what I meant by doing what you can for the best. Part of the approach I try to take is demonstrating that science does not in fact have all the answers.
Climate change would be a great example - we just don't have anywhere near the information we need.
So part of the lesson I teach involves discussion of what we do know, followed by consideration of the things we think we need to know but don't have answers to yet and a discussion of what we might need to do in the event of us finding out differing answers. Does that make sense?
We can't teach it as a series of facts in the way that Mr Gove would have it because some of the facts just don't exist. Doesn't mean we should leave it out as it's pretty important.

So the students would be encouraged to analyse what we do know, take into account various possibilities of what scientists think might happen, and then put forward their own ideas to answer a specific question I pose, maybe relating climate change to the future of farming.

Vicar they may not be able to keep his fees at 1300 but they can't put them up to 7000 as this new fee system does not apply to continuing students and the uni will still be getting the govt funding they are due for your ds in the 3rd yr that they claimed in his 2nd yr. Any fee increase he would face should be modest.

'and now, where she would have been awarded a C, she ended up with a D. The science teacher had a rant about the tories at parents evening....'

Sounds like your school got caught out then. They shouldn't have been pushing pupils who were too young through GCSE and this has shown up the worthlessness of doing so.