To ask if you only have one CSE grade 1

[Cumberb]

.. and the rest all lower grades - you're not that academic?

For reference - I'm talking about someone born prior to September 1971

In the 1960s I sat my O levels with the JMB. They were graded by number. In the mid 1970s all the boards agreed on standardised A-E and U grades.

I was in the NW then, yes. Hadn't realised it was a regional thing.

Remember in the 80s only the top 20% got 5 o levels. So a grade 1 case equivalent to an o level would be higher than someone juat getting 1 gcse now.

The school system back then was dreadful. I failed the 11+ and was sent to a secondary modern school, where I didn’t achieve anything except grade one CSE English. Subsequently as an adult, I was lucky enough to have the chance to dip my toe back into education. At times I felt like I had imposter syndrome, yet I went on to achieve GCSEs and A levels, all grade A, a diploma, a degree and a teaching certificate at masters level.

I did 16+ exams in Wales in 1984. Only in Maths and German - my worst subjects so only just about managed to scrape a grade 5 CSE in both.

My Brother was the last year to take O Levels in 1987 and his girlfriend at the time was at a Secondary Modern School, so she took CSE's in all her subjects I don't think she did that well .

I remember her being very bright, so I think its a combination of the bad old 11+ and truly dreadful non Grammar Schools not just Kent, so that includes Comprehensive Schools outside 11+ areas in the mid 80s !

I think O-levels were originally aimed at the top 20%, and CSEs at the next 40%, so in terms of where the lay within their cohort, perhaps somewhere in the middle.

There will be plenty of people from that era who did CSEs who would get a good clutch of pass grades nowadays. All sorts of reasons: poorer teaching, low expectations, exams seen as just something for the top end, undiagnosed dyslexia, undiagnosed poor eyesight (happened to a friend of a friend). If you struggled at primary, and so ended up at secondary modern, the die was partly cast, although some sec mods did push their stronger pupils - that friend of a friend did catch up and transferred to the grammar for sixth form.

You're wrong - we had 16+ Biology at my school in Essex - exam taken in 1977. It was a different board to the rest of my O levels, can't remember what offhand.

Husband had 1 CSE. Now he's a Chartered Builder Surveyor.

He is very intelligent. He just messed about school.

@ErrolTheDragon aaah, right. I know my friends at my old school which was also NW didn’t do them. I moved to a new school in a new area in what would now be year 11. Couldn’t imagine doing that to my own child now!!

There were two lots of 16+ exams, one in the 70s and one in the 80s. I don't think they were the same exams? The 80s one was a trial for GCSEs. But I've no idea if the 80s ones were just in the NW.

Probably the 70s ones were the trial for the trial...Mine was a grammar-turned-comp, I was in the 'bilateral' year where they had all the GS intake for the wider area plus the same amount again unselected from the new local catchment so maybe a good test site.

Mine was a super selective grammar, I always thought the opposite - that it was a really odd choice for a test school!

Not just in NW. I did 16+ in 2 subjects alongside O'Levels in South Wales in the mid-80s.

It doesn't necessarily mean you're not academic. It could mean that you weren't ready at that particular time in your life to study properly. My DH left school with one grade one CSE in technical drawing. He ended up as a university lecturer in computing. He wasn't ready at 15 and went back to studying at 33.

Schools were different in the seventies. Teaching was not under the intense scrutiny we now have with Ofsted, and getting the best grades was not reflected on the teacher/school performance table competition like it is today. If you didn't pick up on something in class, the lesson moved on, thus leaving holes in building blocks on any given subject, that consequently a pupil had to find elsewhere. There was no Internet, just friends, parents or libraries to guide you through. GCE/CSE were in my experience apart from history, based on exam only, no points given for coursework. There wasn't any. Consequently to pass GCE at grade C or CSE at grade 1 to 4 was a reasonable grade. Sadly CSEs were not given the recognition they deserved. I replaced apart from history all my CSEs with good GCSE grades later on in life, due to feeling underestimated. However, I'm proud of my CSE grades that were achieved in different times. You can't compare, the system was different.