Exam Factories

[ObjectionOverruled]

My DC is at a grammar school after all the stress of the 11+. Now, I can totally see how kids can leave that place with an impressive string of glittery A*s but not have been properly educated, purely because of the extent of spoon-feeding that is going on in there. And speaking to some friends (i.e. employers) who are receiving similar young people at the other end, they will tell you that they have been seriously let down. How are they going to compete internationally? There is so much pressure to produce "results" for league tables. I don't know if it is any better at the indie schools.
Then, of course there's the kids who can't take X subject at A'level because they only got a B at GCSE, which then limits their access to particular university courses by age 16! I am having serious concerns about what is happening to our education system. :(

I'd say it's very much a vicious circle: the better teachers get at getting kids through exams and supporting them, the more this becomes a basic expectation and then a requirement rather than 'extra help' for those that need it. It's not just lazy kids that expect to be told exactly what to do, able girls in particular are increasingly anxious that what they are doing will get them an A* and will ask for and often slavishly follow scaffolding.

On the other hand, I don't see a way out as long as teachers and schools are held so accountable for results and there isn't a good understanding of the importance and role of parents and social and cultural factors in relation to kids' motivation and performance.

Having said that, Gove's reforms are definitely going to address some of that. Now there's a return to linear exams and end to endless resits and the removal or reduction of controlled assessments and coursework, students are going to have to get used to their results being dependent on their ability to cope alone with exams at the end of the courses again.

Gove's reforms are definitely going to address some of that

I think they will make it worse. The all or nothing stakes of exams at the end will narrow the teaching even further.

Exams can never test the sort of skills that extended essay writing can achieve. They put so much more emphasis on the memorization of 'facts'.

In a three hour exam, my undergrads write on average 2,000-2,500 words to answer three questions. If set these questions as essays, each one would be 3,000 long.

No student, no matter how brilliant, can produce the depth and complexity of understanding in an exam that they can in an essay. They don't have the time to do so.

'The all or nothing stakes of exams at the end will narrow the teaching even further. '

No. Because unlike controlled assessment or coursework you can't know the question and you have to be flexible enough to answer any question which means you need skills and knowledge. This is quite different from working through an essay plan provided for you for a piece of coursework.

I sort of agree that exams may not test the same skills as extended essays but the reality of teachers being expected to provide essay plans/scaffolding plus the increasing likelihood of internet plagiarism mean that extended essays are not testing those skills either at least not pre-university.

I speak with experience of both systems as teacher and student btw.

I would also argue that an essay three times as long is not necessarily a better essay.

And an essay which is longer and has had more time devoted to it (plus redrafting and teacher input) is unlikely to be a better measure of a student's ability than an exam.

Those who can write the long essays (in exams in the arts) have always been the better ones surely academically, including good essays written in the exam in exam conditions.

I'm dyslexic, I loath the physical act of writing, I hate planning and re-drafting and I detest having to proof and put in spelling corrections.

I never minded three hour/three essay exams. Just writing without the rigmarole I'm good at it (very good at if you old enough distinction at S level biology means anything to you).

Writing exam essays and class extended essays are very different skills. DCs need to be able to do both, but I'm not sure there is any point in examining extended essays at GCSE. At that level I think it's massively more important pupils learn the skills required with as much or as little help as they need.

Apart from anything else if you are doing 12 subjects many of which want course work and projects completed and HW done there isn't time to research extended essays properly at the end of Y11.

Thus you get daft things like my dyslexic DD having to submit English essays done first term of Y10 (when she was 14)

wow nocomet, I am old enough to know what an S' level is and I am suitably impressed!

I only know one person in RL who has one (to my knowledge) and she is one of the brightest people I have ever met. And flying very high these days too.

Because unlike controlled assessment or coursework you can't know the question and you have to be flexible enough to answer any question which means you need skills and knowledge

At university level in my subject, essays are almost universally a better indication of a student's abilities than exams. Longer essays of course don't automatically mean better, but in time-limited periods the depth of answers produced does not give you as strong a sense of ability. It is not possible to ask for depth if you want the exam to cover a good part of the curriculum. Indeed, one of the reasons we still have dissertations is that this is the strongest indicator of ability as students have time and space to show what they know.

I have been setting and marking university exams for over 15 years. I also have some limited experience of GCSE & A level. I would really disagree with you about what exams can test.

The critical skill tested in exams is memory, which is not that useful in itself as outside of exams, it is always possible to work around.

The knowledge displayed of exam technique is often rewarded more than knowledge of the subject. This is especially true give the formulaic marking schemes that now exist at GCSE and increasingly A level.

It might be different in different disciplines, but I should imagine most subjects that require discursive answers would be the same.

Clearly if we return to more open questions which can be answered in multiple ways, more knowledge would be required. But this needs a lot more judgement and flexibility on the part of the examiners, and exam boards have not yet ,as far as I can see, shown any inclination to do this. Just removing coursework in favour of exams does not change formulaic teaching to the test.

If you think about the world after school, there are very few areas in life in which you are required to demonstrate skills and knowledge in a time-limited period without reference to anything else. The driving test is one example, but most people agree that passing your driving test is not the same as being a competent driver. The persistent use of exams in school as a way of gauging skills and knowledge is traditional rather than a sound pedagogical practice.

BTW, if you ask for electronic copies of work, then the risk of internet plagiarism is now no more significant than other forms of cheating. There are plenty of good software systems that can detect copying (the only exception to this is where the source is in a different language to the piece submitted).

I feel very please4d by creams' post - so my children's universal preference for subjects or questions which don't require a lot of memory work but mean they can in a sense show off their intelligence might not be so bad after all.

The thread reminds me of myself when I was about 16. For some reason I got into my head that I wanted to win a scholarship to university. I wrote to universities to find out which had scholarship exams and got the school to let me enter. I was pu t a room on my own on the day and the questions were really open - 3 essays on three totally random topics where you just set out your thoughts. They were some of the most interesting best exams I ever did, where people wanted to know your own views rather than anything taught (and I got one - a pretty tiny sum of money but I was still pleased).

I suspect it depends on your brain however. I know computer programmer types who are really clever and did advanced computer stuff at Cambridge and no way could they write essays in anything - not particularly good at English. In fact I'm trying to work out at the moment if the youngest who will pick A levels in the next few years will be good essay arts A level people or better with maths (but clearly not science which are their worst marks probably because you cannot fake those subject - you have to learn).

No high flying here I'm a long term SAHM, DH has one or too and he is stupidly clever and reasonably paid, but we are wandering OT

creamteas hits the nail on the head with the fact that examiners who have to justify every mark given are withheld, show no sign of moving away from very formulaic tightly formed questions. Exam technique and learning the revision book from cover to cover are what matter.

I'd have been up a gum tree with modern remembering every tiny detail exams. I'm far better at remembering many of the facts, but stringing them together in the right order.

For me order and understating has to happen because non connected facts don't stay in dyslexic brain.

I also agree that hand written exams purely from memory bear little resemblance to real life.

DH has a head stuffed full of geek and it's hugely useful in pointing in the right direction for sorting everyone else's cock ups, but he'll still go off and check data sheets and specifications before giving people solutions. And if course he types so no one ever sees the hand writing he spent 18 odd years getting moaned at for.

Nocomet, I tend to think disconnected facts are very difficult for anyone to keep in their brains.

Gaining deeper understanding, whilst a slower process, actually makes learning easier in the long run and building on understanding, rather than memorised, disconnected facts makes the 'jumps' between levels seem less severe. However, the current OFSTED dictated strategies, in which all pupils must make measurable progress in every lesson, do not support deeper learning (which tends not to be so linear).

It was one of the glaring differences for me between my PGCHE training (the higher education equivalent of the PGCE), in which we were told that there is no research evidence to suggest assessment encourages deeper learning, but if anything, research suggests assessment encourages shallow or strategic learning approaches. OTOH, when doing secondary training, everything was about constant assessment of progress and demonstrating progress every single blooming lesson. However, when students learn at a deeper level, learning becomes easier and more enjoyable, something which has been sadly lost in an era of making teachers more accountable, constant assessment (of both pupils and teachers), Ofsted and the like.

We had one topic at university for a year where at the lectures the tutor used a case method or something like that. Any week he could pick at random one of us to talk about what we'd been studying and fire questions at us. I loved it - the debate back and forth rather than listening to someone just talking to us.

Perhaps in a sense I pay fees to ensure my children are not subjected to state required box ticking of pointless assessment in loads of categories which can ignore the overall goal of educating them. Obviously most parents do want to know if little Johnny is a lazy so and so who is bottom of the class or doing really well so a rough idea of their class position helps but that does not have to involve constant assessment all the time. I think the marks twice a term at their current school seem to work fine although I was told by one of mine to ignore his mark (an A*) in one subject as that teachers apparently gives everyone ridiculously extremely high marks and interestingly the boys are so aware of that and respect him so little for it I was told not to bother seeing him at parents' evening which amused me.

I guess my take away from this thread is that I have to be the one set standards for my DC, i.e. pretty much as I did when they were at primary school.

If you think about the world after school, there are very few areas in life in which you are required to demonstrate skills and knowledge in a time-limited period without reference to anything else.

Actually, I have to do that all the time, in my job.

creamteas I don't think you can make a realistic comparison between extended essays at tertiary level and controlled assessments at GCSE.

The former really does require a student to read and think at a deep level.

A controlled assessment at GCSE is the antithisis of that. With good teaching and a great memory, 100% is perfectly attainable.

But Word, that wasn't the intention of c/w at GCSE if done as intended but is a result of pressure on exam grades. It was supposed to prevent excessive help.

I'm sure you're right slip but the reality is an absurdity.

I think it's pretty much indefencible in its current format and certainly bears no resemblence to, nor teaches skills that would help with, assessment pieces at tertiary level.

If anything, it gives pupils and entirely false idea of the supposed purpose.

I think it's pretty much indefencible in its current format and certainly bears no resemblence to, nor teaches skills that would help with, assessment pieces at tertiary level

The point is that moving to all exams won't help either.

The heart of the problem is that the whole emphasis is on qualification not education. Changing the form of assessment to exam only, does not address this fundamental issue.

Clearly there needs to be some way of distinguishing between those that can and can't do things. But the system we have at the minute, which is a product of wider society, focuses far too much on the exact numbers.

You can see this clearly on MN. Endless threads asking about sub-levels of progress, comparing schools on their exam results, messages to always appeal if you have just missed a GCSE grade, and the notion that anything less that an A is somehow a fail.

But this is all part of a broader obsession with quantifiable measurement in eduction.

For example, my university, like all the others, sets minimum entry grades onto our degree courses. These are not decided by a reasoned expectation of passing or failing. They are set in relation to league tables and 'market' position. Higher entry grades means higher league table position, regardless of the quality of the eduction provided. Obviously this is just stupid.

But nothing will change within the exam system in isolation. It is not exams, schools, or Ofsted on their own that is the problem.

We need to all value education more and reduce formal assessment to only where it is really, really necessary.

Well I think linear exams do help. A bit anyway. At least if there are exams at the end, then througout the course, the teachers are free to concentrate on, as you say, an education. Whereas, assessments at regular intervals force the focus on grades again. I can see this very clearly in my twins GCSEs because one is doing linear and one not - the focus and tenor is very different.

My DC have also done a mixture of GCSEs some formally assessed at different times and others all at the end.

There has been no discernible difference in teaching to the test in my experience. Both focused exclusively on the assessed learning outcomes only.

The only difference was that in modular, this was broken up during the year, whereas in now they have rushed through the curriculum so they could spend as much time as possible on revision and past papers at the end

I don't think anyone really thinks exams are an accurate way to measure attainment. The thing is that they are not so inaccurate that they are unacceptable, and they are relatively cheap, so you can use them for those stages of education where huge numbers of people need assessing every year in a short timescale.

Eventually it stops. Eventually you get to a doctorate, where it is all controlled assessment, no exams. The problem is, it is a monster to mark and they have to do vivas so you can see if they have plagiarised. We couldn't afford to assess every GCSE that way, and there wouldn't be time. But it's better, no question: that's why we do it for doctorates.

As for ppl not needing instant recall of facts at work, I hope some of them can do it, or I am not going to hospital again in a hurry

I have one DD at a superselective (and another due to start there in September) and a DS at a comp. The SS is popularly considered to be an exam factory but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Whereas the comp seems to be 100% about teaching to the test.

Yes, I had the same experience with DS1 at a super selective and DD at a comp. DS1 did well at Cambridge as he was prepared for the volume of work and had good skills to manage that.