To think that 70% should not be an A

[Arealmanithink]

Background: I'm American. Grading is different in the US. In the US, the scoring goes , 89-100% = A, 79-89% = B, 69-79% =C anything below 65% is failing. I don't think the school work is that different but I do think that the standards are lower in the UK. I'm amazed.

We should also remember that our exam papers are levelled (interested if the Us do this - foundation and higher.

Higher level maths (I remember my teacher scaring the crap out of us saying if we missed the C grade it would mean we get U) - you not have to score something like 30% to get a C because the questions are all significantly harder than the intermediate or the foundation paper, where the grades are capped at B or C.

Foundation paper science here - you had to get a much higher score to get the C because that was the highest grade.

Uni grades - god I don’t think I ever understood!!! I fed saw some genius friends score high 70s and 80s. It could be done - ultimately it was still a first regardless of being 70 or 95. Not a natural academic is me.

The American university system has always fascinated me, I sometimes feel I would have been someone suited to a broader range of subjects than specialising in one area. Swings and roundabouts tho I guess, I would have had to do post grad in America whereas here I was done and dusted at 21!

the exams and exam styles are very different.

The marking is different.

the standards may or may not be, probably are in some areas and not others.

You are comparing with apples with oranges

70% gets you a first at Oxford, as far as I remember . In the 90s the bands were >70% = 1st. 60-69%=2:1. Not quite sure about the lower bands though, as I think 50% was already a third. Some scoring systems just have quite narrow bands. I think they also scaled it depending on volumes, so that there are always roughly the same % of 1sts. I got a middling 2:1, with I think 65%.

Sorry I’ve realised I repeated what others have also said - typing at the same time!

Recent(ish) Uni grad here. 1st Uni (Manchester) lots of American students but the quality of their work was known to be far below the standard of the English students. I'm know that a few of them were required to do a couple of pre-courses in order to meet the standards required.

2nd Uni (Law school) Americans were generally far better than the English students, but also on average 5+ years older... And they had usually already practiced in the US so were far ahead.

You can't even compare across the uk..the scottish exams are more academic than the English exams..a c grade pass in Scotland is equivalent to an b grade pass in England..
So a* is an a up here.. If they can't level the playing field across the UK there is certainly no point in comparing to other countries

@Tootletum I think those are the standard grade bands for universities - they were for mine and others who I used to compare with (and none of us went to oxbridge!)
70% and more - First
60-69% - 2:1
50 -59 % - 2:2
40 -49 - Third
Below that - fail

What I never quite got - in my graduation book they had a list of some people on my course who got the degree but no honours, so just a BA. Didn’t seem to match with other grades though (which were listed) - so it wasn’t just people who got Thirds, because people with thirds were still listed as BA honours.

Slightly deluded OP and a lack of understanding of the concept of a bell curve.
Having studied in UK and US and now a UK teacher, academic standards here are off the chart higher than in the US. I was receiving A grades for 3rd year uni work in US that I would have been ashamed to submit at ALevel here. This was studying American Politics, Philosophy, & Economic Theory - not exactly easy subjects.

chomalungma I am still a bit annoyed that my Maths GCSE is grade C when I got something like 95% . I did intermediate (?) level and C was the highest you could get. I could have scored 100% and it would have still been a C.
It's been almost 30 years now thought so it's pretty much irrelevant.
Still hurts deep inside me (not really).

In my first year at uni as an undergrad, we had an American student in our shared house on a study abroad programme. He could get his head round the difference in marking. He had a mini breakdown one night after getting 67 for an essay. That's a high 2:1, it's a very decent mark. He couldn't accept that- he wanted the sort of score he'd have got for the same work if it was being marked in a US university. It was odd, trying to explain to this otherwise intelligent man that the two systems were different. Whatever 70 represents in the US system, it represent something totally different here.

This website might help you. Your 'A' grade is roughly equivalent in standing to our First. Work you'd get 70 for here, you'd get upper 90s for in the US.

You need to clarify what you’re talking about. Degrees aren’t graded with letters and GCSE and A levels are A* to G or 9-1. The percentage for grade boundaries can vary year on year so I’m really not sure where your70% comes from.

FatherBuzz, thanks for your input. You sounded the most rational!

I've never been told that before!

This is not America and if you think 70% too high for an A then what u suggest a C should be?

My DD got 100% in one of her GCSEs. It certainly happens.

As someone trained in the UK and now teaching at a university in the US, I promise that the discrepancy is due to exams being a lot more challenging in the UK than in the US.

It is crazy how different it is. I'm UK educated but did a degree at a Californian University and got 110% for one course. 100% for the multiple choice exam and 10% for attendance. I mean how can you score 110%?!

@bananaskinsnomnom didn't know that. Also yes, should not brag! Bit drunk, and should not have a keyboard, lol.

I am an American who has taught in the UK for 20 years.

British people are OBSESSED with ranking. They call it a league table. Everyone and everything needs to be put in order from best to worst. Without league tables the world might collapse and no one will know their place (see hand wringing about CAGS and grade inflation. Search mumsent, it is easy to find)

You can't have a league table without a normal distribution, and then you need to pick out the very best and the very worst. So, you need 70 to be an A, (don't forget we have A+ and A*) so you can see who is the most clever, but still give credit to those are merely clever.

As someone who has taught university in both places, it doesn't matter.It all works the same.

OP, it's really not possible to get such high marks on a test that isn't binary, ie all answers are either right or wrong (such as multiple choice), at least using the assessment criteria (AO in GCSE/A level parlance) that are used here. We have no fixed grade boundaries (I wonder if they really do in the States?) and they are set each year based on the bell curve of the students' actual results. A bell curve is a representation of data, not something fixed that the results are attached to.
I would say that American academics are among some of the leading experts in assessment. I think it's just the different system as a whole, and not just the assessment system

I'm from Mexico and I tend to agree. We were at uni for at least 40 hours each week and took 6-8 courses per semester. When I studied here as an exchange student it was a breeze to get As.

Setting the grade barrier at a fixed percentage is just stupid. Obviously it works far better if you take into account the difficulty of the exam!

@jackparlabane

As others have said, it comes down to how hard the exam is how people are expected to do. English kids grew up with 50% as a 'pass' mark, so say 50-60% being a C at GCSE and 70% being an A, then at university 50% is a 2:1 and 70% a First, with lots of variation.

All my work at school was marked out of 10 or 20 and 7/10 was 'good', 8 very good, 9 almost unheard of except in maths where there were clear right/wrong answers. The idea of getting 90% in a test would lead us to assume the test was too easy and a waste of time.
(the scene in a later Little House book where Laura is sad not to make a perfect grade in school and is shocked to get only 93/100 once, is funny to me)

When I did my MSc one student got accepted to an American PhD program as long as she got an average of over 90%. It took the course coordinators a lot of effort to explain that only 2 students in 20 years had got over 70 and this girl's average of 65 was in fact excellent! Their inability to understand stats nearly persuaded her to go elsewhere (it was a science PhD using stats...)

Laura Ingalls Wilder inflated her own grades for the Little House books! Read Prairie Fires, it’s brilliant.

oofsplat that's because Americans have to do 4 year Uni before Med/Law school. It;s considered a post grad degree and they usually get a DR/Masters degree for it.

I grew up in NZ and completely get where you are coming from (I think) - that when you say "standards" you mean standard required to pass vs standard required to get a perfect score rather than standard in UK vs standard in US. I tend to agree that the GCSE exams should be set at a level so that the bell curve sits a bit more to the right - I think the average students should be coming in at around 65 and it should be theoretically possible to get 100% if you learn the standard, stated GCSE curriculum (it's true that this won't sort the God like candidates from the archangel candidates - but is that really the point of a GCSE - can't you do that at A level?). It doesn't seem to work like that and I'm having to readjust my expectations from horrified to pleased if my child gets just more than 50% on a higher level maths paper - feels wrong!

When I did my U.K. MSc we were told any essay or case study graded above 80% was good enough to be published in our professional journal. Needless to say none of the 60 of us achieved that during the three year course of study. I did get a couple of grades over 70 and still can’t quite believe I did! The boost to my self confidence and self esteem made all the work and expense worth it.