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Original poster

To think A CSE Grade 1 from 1985 would be equal to at B at GCSE today.

57 replies

motown3000 · 01/04/2014 10:09

Despite being demonized and stated that they were not worth the paper , they were written on could a Grade 1 CSE be the equivalent of a B grade Gcse today . Maybe a Grade 2 CSE is the equivalent of a C Grade.

It would be interesting to compare the exam papers with today's Gcse papers. I bet the CSE papers would be at least equal to the foundation papers.

OP posts:
kilmuir · 01/04/2014 13:48

Cse's were for the less able. Supposed to be equivalent to a C at o level, but not seen as such by employers

RufusTheReindeer · 01/04/2014 13:59

I did CSE maths

As far as I'm concerned it was more like business maths, adding subtracting etc

Whereas the o level did a bit more of the pure maths, trig, logarithms etc

When they introduced letters into maths (algebra) I switched off completely Grin

The above is based on the very little I can remember from a very long time ago!

gordyslovesheep · 01/04/2014 14:36

I did cse maths and did trig and algebra . I remember it well

HappyAgainOneDay · 01/04/2014 14:47

At the time A CSE grade 4 was considered to be the National Average and a CSE Grade 1 was an O level grade C.

If GCSEs are considered to be the same as O-levels ho ho ho a CSE grade 1 would be a GCSE grade C.

tb · 01/04/2014 14:52

Anyone who argues that gcse's are more difficult than 'o' levels remember the series where they took a group of pupils predicted to get all A* grades and put them through either 50s or 60s 'o' levels.

Not one of them did as well as they did in gcse's.

Fwiw, I did SMP mathematics 'o' level, and covered some topics that someone 11 years older covered in their first year of maths at Liverpool University.

Also, I seem to remember the CBI saying that school leavers simply do not have the levels of literacy and numeracy that they expect, and that they used to have 20 or 30 years ago.

Melonade · 01/04/2014 15:25

Went back to study an evening class GCSE last year, and my impression was that the questions sounded harder but everything was shockingly geared around passing exams, tests and mock exams and tests, with not enough time for studying the broader subject as a whole.

Its also the way its marked. Teachers mark the mocks certainly with a very strict marking scale with a narrow range of responses which are learned in the tests and mock tests to prepare for this. Certain words and phrases are necessary. It doesn't encourage free thinking or development of intelligence.

The exam questions are also very predictable. Thankfully it hasn't (mostly) affected university teaching and exams. I'm a university lecturer. My experience of teaching at teaching at HND level prior to this was that it was done in a similar cynical way to coach students through exams but not to teach a good breadth of subject knowledge or skills such as critical analysis and comparison.

IceBeing · 01/04/2014 16:00

I feel like a traitor....but while I am sure some degree level exams are what they should be it really isn't the case that the majority are...unless my institution is the exception...which given we passed our accreditation with flying colours seems unlikely...

Actually it may be a subject specific issue. I would imagine arts/humanities subjects to be more open and interesting than Maths and SET etc.

Over all I think academics have been a bit slow to catch onto just how amazing at rote learning some students are. They don;t realise they have flash cards with the past paper questions and answers from the last 10 years etc....

sashh · 01/04/2014 16:01

I did SMP mathematics 'o' level, and covered some topics that someone 11 years older covered in their first year of maths at Liverpool University.

But that can be due to the syllabus. Some of the topics I covered at O Level were new to the A Level students I studies alongside.

Some different bits were studied by my brother at uni.

It's a bit like one person studying the Tudors for GCSE and another having studied the Napoleonic wars. I'm sure both periods are studied in degrees and probably for pHDs.

Creamycoolerwithcream · 01/04/2014 16:21

I remember O levels as practicing the answers questions for about 6 topics and then 3 or 4 would come up, there would be either no or maybe 1 surprise question. I just thought it was a case of memorising everything taught. I then found A levels a massive jump (English, Economics and Sociology) and actually harder than my first year at university.

LadyVetinari · 01/04/2014 16:30

IceBeing: It's a shame that you feel that way about your institution. It may be an Arts vs. STEM issue but my experience doesn't support that. I did an Arts degree whereas my DH did a STEM degree at the same university and, while there were definitely a few pretty basic "rote learning" assessments on his course alongside the very sophisticated problem-solving tasks, we both found our courses intellectually challenging. We got pretty much identical final percentage scores, too!

I'll agree with you that students of my sort of age are excellent at rote learning, but my friends and I were always focused on using that rote learning to support us in coming up with creative and non-obvious solutions to the problems we were set. The alternative would have been no fun at all! We were mostly students of Literature, History, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, and Economics, but the same was true of the few of us who studied Engineering. Admittedly, my sample is skewed as I gravitated towards friends who were at university for similar reasons to me (i.e. the academics rather than "the student experience"), but there were certainly plenty of others like us.

ImAThrillseekerHoney · 01/04/2014 16:31

I do think that teachers have got better at teaching children to pass exams - in both good and bad ways. But there was always a bit of that.

My Latin teacher was a master of the craft: he'd scoured every option on every exam board to work out the pathway which would provide the maximum reward for the minimum of effort. Specifically he'd found the options which would enable you to get an A grade for O level without writing a single word of Latin.

OldDaddy · 01/04/2014 16:39

I was the first year to do GCSE's and would say that an A* today is about the same as a C grade of that first batch. Therefore I'd say a CSE 1 is at least a B by today's standards.

LadyVetinari · 01/04/2014 16:42

ImAThrillSeeker - How on Earth did he manage that? (Seriously!)

Allergictoironing · 01/04/2014 16:43

Grade inflation is now more of a concern at university level than at school level, so that specialist employers are looking for Masters now as an entry level qualification, whereas 30 years ago a good first degree would have been sufficient.

Then again, 30-odd years ago somewhere between 11% and 14% of people went on to university, whereas for last year the figure quoted was 49%.

ImAThrillseekerHoney · 01/04/2014 16:45

There was an option which you could choose which involved a Latin to English translation, a Latin comprehension with the answers in English, a translation of a set text (memorised of course) and an English comprehension on the set text. A couple of the comprehension questions might say "what would be the future perfect equivalent of phrase X?" but they only added up to a handful of marks in total. You did have to be able to read Latin (a bit) but you did not have to write it at all.

HowContraryMary · 01/04/2014 17:16

As some one who got a grade 2 CSE in maths in 1986 and is about to sit gcse maths in June, trust me , it is not easier now!

I cant count. I got a grade 2 CSE in 1983 (I have no idea how). I took GCSE maths in 2011. I got a B grade on the higher paper, 3 marks short of an A. I only needed something like 53% to achieve that. I did not have any lessons or tuition, I just tried a practice paper, thought that looks do-able and enrolled for the exam.

There is a reason why the government is tightening up the exam structure. Come Summer 2015 results, there will be a huge difference, a return to O level standard.

The new specification maths is far harder requiring more GLH than other GCSEs to make it more rigorous. If you thought the grade boundary saga in August 2012 was a stroke - what's coming will really sort he wheat from the chaff.

x2boys · 01/04/2014 17:25

interesting thread I did my gcse,s in 1990 so it was only the third year they had been around my sister did hers in 1988 the first ever year I wonder how the gcse,s I took compare to todays gcse,s we all hear about grade inflation etc I wonder how true this is it would be interesting to compare papers from the 90,s to now.

gordyslovesheep · 01/04/2014 17:30

that's great HowContraryMary but I find maths very hard - thankfully I am attending lessons !

gordyslovesheep · 01/04/2014 17:31

but I guess I am chaff anyway Grin

HowContraryMary · 01/04/2014 17:33

gordy

Look at the the iGCSE - even I can do that paper - I had a look at the CIE sample. This is why schools are switching over to bolster their results before the discounting comes in.

BoneyBackJefferson · 01/04/2014 17:59

HowContraryMary

A "stroke" of what exactly.

Rushing in a new syllabus and exam won't "sort he wheat from the chaff." it will just be another sound bite of gove-ism.

Dominodonkey · 01/04/2014 18:33

Not an expert on the difference betwee gcse and cse but I can assure you that English a level has got far harder. The essays in produced to get my a grade in the 90s would barely get you a c on the OCR syllabus now.

And people discussing why students are taught to the test? It's all about league tables etc- we are told we had to get certain grades or else so in the limited time we have it is teaching to the test which gets those grades. It will be much harder when it becomes 100% exam.

jamdonut · 01/04/2014 22:23

Back in 1981 I was "double entered" for maths o level and CSE .

I got a level 1 CSE but a D for O level ! Blush [bl

IceBeing · 01/04/2014 22:29

vetinari we have had a few people set some different questions recently...usually we set what are considered testing questions but with a maths bent that in reality are drawn from too small a subset of usable questions...this year people were asking students to do the maths bit but then identify what some of the variables were and why they were important....a LOT of students could rip through the technical stuff but didn't know what any of it meant....very worrying.

Like they knew that to get to the answer you integrated blah with respect to whatever, but then couldn't describe what any of it meant in words.

It seems to me this is the result of robotic learning of protocols to answer the questions.....

5Foot5 · 01/04/2014 22:41

Anyone who argues that gcse's are more difficult than 'o' levels remember the series where they took a group of pupils predicted to get all A grades and put them through either 50s or 60s 'o' levels.*

Yes but I don't think you can put much weight on that.

  1. They were on the programmes for about 6 weeks and if the syllabus differed significantly from the one they had been following for 2 or 3 years then of course that would have an effect.
  2. It was television - therefore edited to show what they wanted to show. IIRC correctly there were about 30 kids taking part but less than half got much screen time. Probably the half we didn't see much of coped admirably and so didn't make such a good story.

I did SMP mathematics 'o' level, and covered some topics that someone 11 years older covered in their first year of maths at Liverpool University
But wasn't SMP a modern maths syllabus? We did a bit of SMP in first and second year at secondary school and then switched to the "traditional" syllabus for O- and A-level. Thus there were some topics I touched on at 11, e.g. set theory, which I didn't encounter again until first year at University. Nothing to do with the level of difficulty really, just what was and wasn't part of the syllabus.

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