To think GCSEs are ridiculously hard?

[donpanicme]

DD did pretty mediocre in her mocks and has asked me to help her revise. We’ve been working through the sciences and geography and OMG it’s so hard. There’s so much to learn in each subject for a start and it’s actually pretty complicated stuff like ions, relative atomic mass, mitosis. Honestly, I don’t know how she’s going to get though it all and remember it in order to do well. How on earth do kids do it?

@babsanderson I don't remember exams being that long. An hour? Maybe?

If GCSES are harder, why do so many children get top top grades?

I did mine in 1990 (think we were the second year to do them) I went to a very able private school. There were about 15 girls out of 120 who got top grades (so 9 A's)..the rest of us got a mixture of As and Bs mainly.

Fast forward to 2005 and every single young person who worked for me got 9 A*s. All 10 of them. Trust me - they were not brighter than any child I was at school with. Not at all!

Same with degrees. Getting a first was a rarity. Now they hand them out like sweets!

An hour! I have no idea how old you are but when I did exams there were all at least 2 hours, some up to 3 hours long. Your hand would be aching by the end.

I don't know. Does it matter? Personally I don't think it does.

Except language lab. That was an hour exam.

I don't think they're particularly "hard" as such. The kids have been learning for several hours per day for 5 years at secondary by the time they sit their exams. That's a lot of hours of teaching!

Yes, there's a lot of content that can potentially crop up in the exam, and lots of what the kids are taught doesn't appear. Perhaps the scope/breadth could be reduced, but the difficulty remains or increases so that then the exams have questions on a narrower range of knowledge, especially in, say, humanities subjects and perhaps English Lit, where the current breadth is quite ridiculous.

It's no surprise that the OP, as a parent, takes a quick look at an exam paper and thinks it's hard - they've not had the lessons, practice tests, revision sessions, etc, that the kids have had. Even if they'd done the subjects themselves 20/30 years ago, they'd have forgotten most of it and the syllabus will have changed so some of what parents learned for their GCSEs may have been removed and replaced with new topics.

I do think that teaching practices could be improved to help pupils though. My DS's school were known for their excellent history results at GCSE and A level. We were very impressed by the history lessons from literally the first week in year 7. They started with teaching bias, sources, intepretation, etc right from the first lesson, treated more importantly that content and learning of dates/facts, etc. They followed that through the school - barely any emphasis at all on learning dates/facts and constant practice on sources, i.e. diaries, illustrations, inscriptions, comparing one commentary of an event against another, etc., and also on the other "themes" of history exams such as cause & consequence etc. It was only in years 10 and 11 when they started learning "facts" as required for the looming GCSE exam, but they'd all got the core "skills" by that time that reading and understanding about the events to be examined was basically all they were doing, as they didn't need to learn exam technique, answering questions, etc that had been done to death in earlier years. It was a completely different way of teaching compared with my school days where it was all facts for the earlier years and then exam technique etc crammed in to the last few weeks before the exam!

GCSEs should be hard. The problem is too many DC and parents have an aversion to hard work and think that 10 minutes of looking over notes will cut it.

DC should have a tough revision schedule in place for evenings and weekends from the start of year 11. Those who do this will get good results- it’s not rocket science.

Can't speak about 2005 but in 2022 just over 2000 kids in the entire country got straight 9s, from around a million students who sat the exams, so around 0.2%. They are not "handing them out like sweets"!

Why should they be hard? Every student has to sit them and pretty much all jobs require a GCSE pass in maths and English. Who does it serve to make them difficult? Many students who struggle with GCSEs are perfectly capable of many careers, why create Barrie’s towards them finally being able to succeed?

It doesn't matter so much when comparing people who took exams around the same time. But it really DOES matter when comparing today's 20 year old against a 40 year old, both applying for the same job. Today's grade A was probably something like a grade C, 20 years ago, so the older applicant looks a lot worse on paper and may not even get through the initial screening process.

It also matters because a decade or two ago, someone with a string of As was really something special. Now it's commonplace. Employers need a way of selecting those with genuine ability. How do they do that when they get large numbers of applicants, all with A grades? It devalues the achievements of those at the top. Hence why every few years, there's either a new higher grade announced or a change in grading structure. Before long there'll be a grade 10 at GCSE or a 9 or 9+ to break up all those currently getting a 9. Likewise at A level, there'll be an A to break up those with As.

Furthermore, it makes it harder for Unis to select the most suitable applicants for their courses. It was almost unheard of for Unis to "require" an A* at A level, but now it's seen more and more as they get too many applicants with As that they need a new way of differentiating.

On a slightly different tangent, I also find it unhelpful that exams are graded according to a normal distribution curve, which means one year may need 90% to get an A*, the next year it may only need 85%, etc - so there's no comparison between years nor applicants who've done exams in different years. Yes, I know it's claimed to be due to "smooth out" variations in difficulty between years, but surely it would be better to set the questions properly so that each year is the same in terms of difficulty! It's how professional exams work - my accountancy exams had fixed pass marks year after year - the percentage required didn't change between years and strenuous efforts were put in place to ensure consistency of difficulty between years. Why can't that be done for GCSE and A Levels?

I took O levels in 1985 and I agree with this.

I also think us oldies forget what we once knew. DD often asks me about something that seems like complete gobbledygook only for me to read it slowly and remember that - yes I did once know about it.

Not to mention many students home lives aren’t set up for them to just study in evenings and on the weekends

Because employers and further/higher education need a way to differentiate based on ability. An exam where nearly everyone passes because it's so easy is of no use to anyone!

But yes, it's very soul destroying for pupils who struggle to look at an exam paper and see that most of it is beyond them. It almost certainly means that they'll do more badly on the bits they can do, because they'll be demoralised. It also means that the weaker pupils may well have been causing low level disruption in classes because they were being taught topics way beyond their abilities.

I was an advocate of the old system of CSEs and O Levels where the weaker pupils sat the CSE and stronger pupils sat the O level. It meant that the weaker students had an "easier" paper where they had a fighting chance of answering most of it, which may have ended up with the same relative grade compared with their peers, but they'd have been in lessons learning subjects they were capable of and less likely to become disengaged. I believe that GCSE's had a similar "lower" and "higher" tier of exam at some time, but not sure whether that applied to all subjects or even whether it still exists at all.

I also like the "modular" and/or points based systems instead of final exams used by universities and secondary schools in some countries abroad. Where you pick up "points" or "module passes" throughout your teaching time there which count towards an end result. By letting pupils accumulate "passes" or "points" throughout several years in smaller chunks, there's less emphasis on mass-revision towards a few weeks of "final" exams and lets weaker pupils concentrate on the basics at first and moving up to harder topics once basics have been mastered. Much better for avoiding disengagement.

@babsanderson I might be wrong. They might have been an hour and a half.
I just don't remember them being really really long.
It was 1991 I did my GCSEs. It was much more coursework and module based subjects then. Obviously that would vary between schools depending on which exam board yours went for.

Yep, I remember SOHCAHTOA (trigonometry) and what it stands for. When the time came, I confidently expected to be able to help my DS with his Maths homework, but when it came to it, whilst I knew that sine was opposite over hypoteneuse, I hadn't a clue how to actually do it in practice! I also knew the basic physics equation of V=I*R and how to rearrange the equation and thought I'd be able to help him with electrics in Physics, but realised that was a tiny fraction of what the Physics syllabus contained and was the most basic level - he was beyond such basics in his first electrics lesson and soon moved on far beyond it. I recognised everything else he was being taught, but had forgotten it completely! It's very surprising just how much we forget over time, despite thinking (or kidding ourselves) that we remember it!

I think they are harder now than in the 00s - I thought grade inflation was particularly bad then?
My DS is in year 11 and very capable but it is the quantity of revision that is a real contrast to my experience in mid 90s. That said, you had to be a very good musician, grade 8, to be allowed to study Music GCSE, DS is more like grade 3 on the guitar and he was allowed to study GCSE, the problem is he has to do a medieval composition and I think he is just finding it too hard. He wants to take maths A level and as far as I can see Maths GCSE is hard enough so probably good practice. I like a PP struggled with teaching my year 5 DD at the time for homeschooling! With year 7 maths my son helps her. My DH is pretty good at maths but I achieved a C in GCSE and I don't think it was as hard. History looks similar to me with the use of sources and English Literature appears easy enough but I studied it at university so I would say that!

I’d like to see data on this because it sounds very speculative.

Not sure that they are too difficult to be honest - even more children would get top grades if they were easier - it's already impossible to see the outstanding students. In the olden days they would be a tiny minority achieving an A grade, now the top grades are meaningless (one at A level, one at GCSE this year before anyone accuses me of being out of touch).

I will admit that I found home schooling GCSE maths in lockdown tricky - we'd get the same (right) answers, but the method to achieve them differed beyond comprehension.

I was the first year to do GCSE, so my SPAG - well more the grammar bit to be honest - was more suited to primary school levels. I managed to get my degree, write scientific papers and journal articles, and edit/proof read others without ever needing to know what the three articles are called, but I usually know how to use them.

(a, an and the if you're wondering)

Smiles of happiness come after having tankards of ale!

GCSEs need to differentiate enough to know who could go on to succeed at A levels and otherwise what level BTEC/Apprenticeship is needed.

However it matters not one jot whether someone gets 8s or 9s, except for boasting rights. Universities can differentiate based on A level results.

Marking on a curve for the all important grade 4 for maths & English Language means we are literally (and I use that term advisedly) setting DC up to fail. We would be better off having a certain standard at least for those subjects. Additionally we need to bring back tiered papers for English Language that do not include Victorian texts.

I think MFLs (at least pre-reform) are more 'use' now than at O level. My DB got an A for German&French O levels but could not really speak the language usefully, whereas my DD got Bs at GCSE and had much more speaking practice & skill.

O level papers were mainly 2hrs, some 2.5, some shorter. I didn't have any 3hr papers (I have copies so checked recently). I don't think 'extra time' as a concept existed then. I think shorter papers are better, but there are still too many.

The issue is the sheer amount of content that teachers have to cover in two years particularly for example in the Humanities: Geography, History and Sociology. In addition to this I don’t think the kids have enough time in the actual exam. If you can get your child some revision books and get her to go through what is covered in a lesson that evening or over weekend it will help with understanding and retention long term.

Many posters are conflating difficulty of exam with how many get top grades.
As they are marked on a curve, the two aren't directly related.

Make exams too easy and you end up differentiating based on silly mistakes.
Make exams too hard and you freak out pupils who then can't show even what they do know.

This is a strange thread. The whole point of GCSEs is to mark students across a scale of knowledge and capability.

If they were too "hard" then students wouldn't get top grades. Obviously it just means your daughter will be on the lower end of the grade scale. It's also not surprising that you find it "hard" given you haven't gone through the specific education for that course so... YABU.

Source?

I do remember reading reports stating that back in late 80s/early 90's only about 10% of children would achieve a top grade. In some subjects now its up to a 25%. A quarter of the people sitting the exam! Madness.

Children now don't really have an excuse not to get a top grade - revision galore available 24/7 on Youtube. Back in my day, if you hadn't noted it down properly in the lesson, tough. You were never going to get given a revision book as they were so expensive and your notes were the only thing to revise from.

Sorry I'm just not buying that exams are harder and that children today are brighter!

The grade boundaries are far more generous now.

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