What Mr Gove doesn't tell you about O levels

[TimeChild]

Well, if Mr G has his say, our dc will be taking O levels before long. There is one thing about the old system that's never discussed and I want to shout it from the rooftops (and mumsnet is the closest I get to it )

He says O levels are better because only a few managed top grades compared to the masses in the dumbed down GCSEs. The facts are correct but the reason is NOT, because O levels were not necessarily harder.

The true reason is that O levels were marked in a NORMATIVE way. What this means is that the grades were marked so that they fell into a normal distribution (a bell curve) so that the vast majority received the middling grades and a few got the top and bottom grades. The grades were deliberately massaged so that this was always the case. So even if in one year, there was a particularly good cohort, still only a few got the top grades. The logical conclusion is that the grade you got depended on how good you were relative to your cohort. It also meant that an A grade one year did not necessarily compare equally to one in another year.

GCSE's did away with this frankly useless system of marking. It uses a CRITERION method of assessment. This is where a benchmark is set, so that to get an A, the student had to reach some objective level of knowledge/skills. Anyone achieving that or above would get the grade. This system is much fairer as a student is assessed for him/herself not in relation to every one else. You can also compare students across years as long as the criterion used stays the same.

I am not sure what form of assessment Mr G is planning in the new improved O levels. What I am sure of is that he is deliberately misleading the public about the true worth of the O levels vis a vis GCSEs.

PS I know this as I was there as a teacher when we converted from O levels to GCSE. Perhaps he is hoping that old dinosaurs can't remember. This one does!!

I don't agree at all
The reason for the bell curve was in case exams were harder in one year than another. I very much doubt the overall in the country that the students in one years will be much different to the next across the whole country.
At least an A meant you were the top 5% (or whatever the banding was).

by the way I took o'levels in 1979.

Bruffin, when I took A'level Chemistry, for my exam board there were 2 marks between a B grade and a D, in those days B was good, D was pretty rubbish, and C got you into Uni if you were lucky. This was because of the normative method of marking. But as 2 marks could just be the difference between having a headache or not whilst sitting the exam, those 2 marks will have affected a lot of peoples futures.
Exams were written differently under the O'level system, all questions were pretty much equally "hard", people did not get anywhere near 100%, and quite often you could get an A having not studied whole areas of the syllabus. The syllabus was also less prescriptive and detailed, and it took a real expert to understand what students needed to know.

But most important of all, only a small percentage of the population were expected to get 5 O'levels, a smaller percentage were expected to get 3 A'levels, and even fewer were expected to go to University.

Finally, O'levels were based a lot of regurgitating facts. GCSEs are based on understanding facts and being able to use them.

bruffin - you are entirely correct. Normalisation means that no matter how 'hard' an exam is the same proportion of candidates get an A, B, C, D, E every year.

I want not only normalisation but a single standard exam in each subject at O and A level for the entire country so that you know if you get an A in whatever subject you are always in the top 5%. That would stop the race to the bottom.

I took O Levels in 1980 and A levels in 1982.

What mymmytime said.

bruffin, the bell curve is not to adjust marking across different years, it is to manage marking WITHIN a year's cohort. So in a good year, when there were a lot of students attaining high marks, the cut off would be a high mark fo an A. In a bad year the cut off would be a relatively low mark.

MoreBeta, normalisation may appear to stop a race to be the bottom (ie there would only ever be a certain percentage who would get a fail), it wouldn't really as the true value of the 'fail' would vary from year to year.

Where did i say it was to adjust marking across the years. I said the chances of a cohort across the country from one year to the next being markedly brainier is very unlikely. I was told by my teacher back in 1979 the bell curve was used because exams do sometimes come up easier or harder.
If the tops marks are 60% one year and 70% the next it is usually because of the difference in exam not because the cohort is that much better.

O'levels were based a lot of regurgitating facts. GCSEs are based on understanding facts and being able to use them

To be honest, I see no difference between the two systems in terms of regurgitating facts. I don't know if either system is/was that good at promoting understanding and application of knowledge. I say this as someone who has sat both O levels and GCSEs and as a university lecturer who sees on a daily basis how young people's knowledge these days is based on compartmentalisation and short-term recall of learning.

BBC item on cross party MPs report calling for exam reform.

I haven't seen anything that suggests Gove, the coalition or the education committee are proposing a return to normative marking.

bruffin, yes, your teacher's point is one justification of using the normative method of assessment. However, it still stands that the bell curve ranks each student in relation to the others, not against some absolute criteria (which I would have thought would be more useful for employers etc)

fluffyanimal looking back to my O level days, they were also based on compartmentalisation and short-term recall of learning (ie the final exam):o Students now live in such a different world where facts are available 24/7. What they need to know is how to understand and assess them. Disappointing if GCSE is failing in this way.

It depends what you want from O levels/ gcses. If you want a leaving certificate type exam, it's fine if 50% get an A, it shows that they have worked hard and achieved a certain standard. If you want to employ a 16 year old who is good at, for example English, but all the applicant have a A grade, it must be difficult to know which is the best. It makes the exam meaningless.

I think there is a lot of unnecessary pressure of children to get As in everything now because everything else is seen as a fail. Back in my day 5 O grade C was good and allowed you to get into a reasonably job or onto A levels.

Edith thanks for the link. You are right that normative marking has not been mentioned. Let's hope that it won't revert to that.

TimeChild - The problem is that the current system still does not rate students against an absolute criteria. If it did we would not have grade inflation. As it is, a study by Durham University suggests that A level grades have gone up by a tenth of a grade every year since 1988, so a student who got a C in 1988 would get an A today. I don't know whether or not they are right but there seems to be a lot of evidence of grade inflation.

In any case, I haven't seen anything suggesting that Gove intends a return to normative marking.

RackandRuin I suppose it depends on what you want from the exams. My view is that if 100% of students work hard and achive an A (according a criterion that is valid and respected) then that does not make the exam meaningless. It is not for the education system to create a ranking system so that employers can choose who is the 'best'. They should have their own interview/assessment for that.

Sorry, RackandRuin reading back over my own comments, I guess we agree :)

Timechild thats my point. We need a system of assessing young people that does not deteriorate into compartmentalised learning and training them into how to pass the exams (not getting at teachers here, btw, just at the system they are forced to deal with. League tables etc don't help this either.)

Returning to O levels may not be a good move, but sticking with GCSEs and the current A levels is also not working. Not that I know what the solution would be though

prh47bridge I haven't read the Durham study, but the fact that the grades have gone up steadily each year isn't necessarily a bad thing! I would also be interested to know how a student nearly 25 years ago (before the digital age) can be compared with one now.

Other countries still use that system.

In Australia the thing they do instead of A Levels (is it still the HSC? can't remember) ranks you nationally. To get into university you have to have got over the 85% centile (I THINK).

So long as employers and universities understand the system, whatever it is, then where is the problem?

If I pick an A or B graded candidate I know that in a normalised system I am sure to get someone in the top 25% of their cohort.

That is all I need to know if I am an employer or University interviewer looking at Al level grades as they stand today and if I don't have a normalised score then I have no idea who is in the top 25% of their cohort.

Gaaargh ... I'll write that out again so it makes sense. I did get A levels honest.

If I pick an A or B graded candidate I know that in a normalised system I am sure to get someone in the top 25% of their cohort.

That is all I need to know if I am an employer or University interviewer.

If I am looking at A level grades as they stand today where I don't have a normalised score then I have no idea who is in the top 25% of their cohort.

Think this comes back to what are the exams for. Are they a leaving cert acknowledging what the student has achieved in their school career? A normative system has no part in this.

However, if they are a certificate for getting into further education/employment then clearly ranking would be useful for the future employers/unis.

I would argue for the leaving cert option and leave the entry criteria for the unis/employers. Japan for instance I think has separate entry exams for universities.

I wonder if the 16+ exam (whatever it is called) is just becoming irrelevant. With more 16-18 year olds at school and college a gcse maybe nothing more than a stepping stone to the next stage of education.

I took o'levels and got a mixture of Bs and Cs. This was pretty normal yet these days I hear of vast amounts of kids getting As and A+s. This is why there is a perception that GCSEs are easier I guess?

I came from a normative system, it seems fine to me. I found the non-normative system hard to get used to (had to do some marking at Uni level long time ago).

I think Gove is trying to do too much too fast. And that there's no reason not to keep GCSEs just make them "normative" or harder if the demand is there. Stop the constant tinkering.

The elephant in the room with O levels isn't the normative marking, its the fact that in the old days only 40% of those who took the exam were allowed to pass. For those whose math is worse than mine, that means 60% failed or 6 out of every 10 who sit the exam failed regardless of how well they did answering the questions.

The pass boundary was normative which meant as someone said, if your year was an above average cohort the pass mark might be quite high. But that is neither here nor there. What about all those DC's who are going to fail (60%) in each subject. That could be your child or mine if they are not amongst the 20% academically gifted because O level was very highly linked to measured intelligence. So what happens to all those DC's who at least have something to show for their efforts in GCSE and are marked according to how well they do, not comparative to the rest of the group. Under O level they would get nothing. As Ann Robinson would say "You are the weakest link, you leave with nothing" So what happens to all those weak links? That is what bothers me.
But MNers are such a clever bunch I am sure all their DC's are the best in the pack?
PS - mine will probably pass, so should I worry about anyone else?

Oh FGS!

Just turning up for the exam does not entitle you to a pass. Exams like O levels were and should always be about ranking the elite candidates. We need to get rid of this stupid 'all will win prizes' mentality. We want to find the best candidates in O and A levels exams.

HND and NVQ is about basic minimum qualifications to do a job competently and safely - they should not be normative but they are not the same as O and A levels. Yes we want education to be about educating everyone to the level of their ability. However, we do not need 50% going to university and lets stop pretending everyone is able to cope with higher education.

We only need the top 25% of people going to university and we need a way of finding that 25% and normative exams do that in an O and a level format.