What Mr Gove doesn't tell you about O levels

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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!!

sohia wasn't aware of the elephant and what a beast he is! I remember in the old system anything under C was deemed a 'fail'. You would have thought that any exam system with such a high failure rate would be deemed not fit for purpose!

Morebeta - But employers want people with O levels (or GCSE grade C or more) at the moment and most will not look as a DC with NVQ or B Tech. Its a lame duck qualification. As my sociology teacher said when I was at school many years ago - what do we do with all those lame ducks?

I don't think sohia figures are correct

§ The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Dr. Rhodes Boyson) From the latest available information it is estimated that 31 per cent. of all English school leavers in 1978?79 had attempted O-level in mathematics, and 21 per cent. were awarded grades A to C.

this is from Hansard which suggest that 68% of those that took the maths olevel passed it in 1978/79

It's back to the leaving certificate vs ranking thing again.

I achieved a CSE grade 4 in French. Nobody cried over it, I just knew i would never make it as an interpreter. Giving me a pass mark for trying really hard wouldn't make me any better at it. It would be patronising and devalue subjects I was really good at.

Give me a certificate to prove I attended classes, but let's not pretend I can speak French.

Is this 21% of 31% or 21% of the entire cohort. Not that clear. Anyway this is just one exam.

I read it as 21% of the entire cohort, but it makes nonsense of sohia's claim that only 40% of those who took olevel were allowed to pass.

sohia - I sort of agree and disagree with you on NVQ/HND qualifications.

The thing is, I have old fashioned O Levels, A Levels, and a variety of higher education qualifications - but I also have an NVQ!

I did the NVQ last year at grand old age of 47. The NVQ students I was with were not capable of academic degree courses but were hard working and very very capable in a practical way and much better than me. They really put me to shame sometimes.

We need NVQ/HND and we need O/A levels but the mistake was mashing them together - they are different and not equivalent but both are valuable.

Well if it was 21% of 31% then it would be even worse than sohia's claim. There's lies, damned lies and statistics!

It's not though. I have found another reference to history olevel where is says that for many years it was nearly 60% that passed at A_C.

When I took my O Levels, back in the days of dinosaurs, my board only awarded three grades: A, C, E (no Bs or Ds). As a result, my children think I am thick for getting 5 C grades and only 3 A grades. Other boards marked A-E (plus fail grades) or 1-6. Some boards were easier than others.
What does Govey have in mind for grading in his return to the good old days?

My figures are correct. Only about 25% of the school population took any exams at all and of those 40% would pass .

It was a very different sytem. It is not the whole cohort. Its a small percentage of a small percentage.

Sohia, I can find nothing to back up your figures at all, other than something on wikipedia. If you search the information that comes up near 60-70% pass rate of those that took the exam.

Sorry meant to say
"if you search google, the information that comes up is nearer a 60-70% pass rate".

Just found this, written by someone from Cambridge Exam Board in 1996.

Twenty years ago (ie 1976) school examinations were under the wing of the Schools Council, students took O level, aimed at the top 20% of the ability range, or CSE, aimed at the next 40% of the ability range, leaving 40% of 16 year olds for whom there was no specific national school leaving qualification. Less than 20% of the cohort stayed at school beyond 16, about 15% took A levels, and less than 10% went to university - there were only 46 universities in the UK.

Do we really want to return to this?

You have to remember the purpose of the O level and when it was introduced.

It was designed to back up the 11+ and the grammar school selective system. CSE's were introduced for SM school to ensure they could not access those exams which were for the brightest and so they remained failures all their lives. Not nice but it was what it was for and it did a good job.

You also have to remember that two thirds of the population left school at 15 with no qualifications at this time. So O level were taken by those who were in grammar school and who stayed on to 16 - about 25% of the cohort.

Then of those who took O level there was a built in failure rate.

All of this was further intelligence testing- so those who took O levels were seen to be around the top 20% of the population. Of those only the top 10% would go on to A level and of those only 5% were supposed to go to university. The rest joined the SM failures at different jobs or went to teacher training.

Thats what we are going back to. One which etches failure in 80% of the population. The problem of course is that when this system was introduced it was envisaged that there would be full employment and everyone could get a job suited to their abilities from factory cleaner and floor sweeper through assembly jobs to shop, office and then educated classes. There was a hierarchy for that too. The disabled, the special needs and those with learning difficulties were in the reject bin.

Now, everyone leaves school at 16, there is high unemployment and such an exam would just ensure the weakest and poorest were disadvantaged even further.
I dont know about you but its not a back to the future I want to see.

Well nowadays too many are going to university and wasting their time doing useless degrees. I didn't stay on beyond 16 and got myself a job in the City with my o'levels. My Dh left school at 15 and did an apprenticeship in engineering and today is a professionally qualified engineer. I certainly don't believe that todays 16 years are any better off served than we were then. I have a 16yr old who has just taken his gcses and its a lot scarier for him than it was for us. He will have to go to university to become an engineer.

I suppose it depends on your view of education and schooling.

If you take the view that children vary, from the clever through to the stupid, and that basically education has minimal effect on that - then normative marking makes total sense.

If you are of the opinion that the point of schooling is to teach children things, and in particular to teach them the skills and knowledge that they need to function in modern society - then criterion marking is far more appropriate.

I think its helpful to look back much further - say to the mid 18th century. I think that many people then would have considered that it was impossible for the mass of the population to be fully literate and numerate. They might have imagined that one could only say that a country has 90% literacy/numeracy by moving the goalposts dramatically. Yet we don't consider this an impossible target.

Another interesting comparison is the driving test. I took 4 goes to pass my driving test; clearly I am not a quick learner, and on a normative marking scheme I would never be allowed to drive. Despite this, once I had passed, my insurance premiums were no higher than if I had passed first time. You can be sure that in that case if being a slower learner were correlated with poor ongoing performance, then 'how many times did you take your driving test' would be on the list of questions when you ask for a quote.

My personal opinion is that - looking at the international picture as a whole - it is quite possible to teach the vast majority of the population most subjects to GCSE grade A* level. Some may take longer to get there, but they will have learnt the skills and information that they need in later life just as well as those who get there quickly. Hence I think at 16+ level, criterion marking makes sense. I'm much more open to the view that normative marking is more appropriate say for a university degree.

I ask again bruffin - what are you going to do with the lame ducks and the reject bin in your brave new world of selective education and survival of the brightest with little opportunity for those at the bottom?

bruffin, the world has changed since you (and I) left school. There is a massive problem with youth unemployment and the apprentice scheme that your dh benefitted from barely exists. If they didn't go to uni and do their 'useless' degrees, they will be unemployed at 18 and all that entails.

But doesn't it mean that we are deferring the problem and ending up with a massive group of unemployed 21 year old graduates rather than a group of unemployed 16 year olds?

While I'm of the opinion that no education is a waste, I think that some young people are miss sold degrees. And I fear that they are no more employable when they leave than when they were 18.

Possibly, for some, but surely it is better to have 3 years studying than on the dole? From the students I know, its a whole different world out there at uni from my time. In those days you did very little for 2.5 years and then swotted in the last 6 months, don't think you can get away with that now.

It would be worth spending 3 years studying and then ending up unemployable if you didn't end up unemployable with a millstone of debt round your neck. We are told the debt won't be repayable until you earn a decent wage - but it's still your debt. There hasn't been long enough to see if it will impact on ability to access credit etc - but I'm betting it will. And at the same time we have more people with As and A*s than we can shake a stick at and no way to differentiate between them. It doesn't serve the brightest kids well, and it doesn't serve the rest well either.

I grew up in Holland, where there is no normative marking - you get marks out of 10, with 10 being 100% correct in those subjects where there is a clear-cut right or wrong answer (i.e. multiple choice text comprehension, maths etc.). In subjects where there is no clear-cut correct answer (i.e. writing an essay on a topic in which you have to demonstrate subject knowledge, command of language, logical reasoning, spelling, grammar and punctuation), 10 out of 10 would mean outstanding/excellent (and there would be appropriate marking guidelines).

So it would theoretically be possible for a group of pupils sitting a multiple choice French exam to all score 100%. And that would just have been tough.

I can't accept a system in which it is possible to perform brilliantly and still fail, whereas people who did less well than you in objective terms the year before and after passed. I can't believe anyone would want to go back to that.

pointythings that's interesting. How doe the selection for university/work operate in Holland?

I can't accept a system in which it is possible to perform brilliantly and still fail

But that never happened.
If you performed really well in a year of brilliants then you might only be graded B instead of A, but you wouldn't be graded a fail. In a bell-curve the middle ground is the largest section: it is only the abnormally good/bad who get abnormally good/bad grades - unlike now where we have almost got to the situation where an A/A* is the norm, and anything less than perfection is seen as a failure. Imagine what that is doing to children's self-image and stress levels.