What were "good" O level results in 1987?

[Tanaqui]

Does anyone have any data on how O level grades back then correlate to GcSE grades now?

I am aware that it obviously isn't a clear comparison, but maybe just in terms on what % of children got an A, B or C?

Year 11 ds wants to know how well I did, compared to how well he might do!

Feel very old as 87 was the last year of O levels!

Have tried google, but get lots of newspaper dumbing down articles and would rather something a bit more accurate.

Thanks.

The standard to study 3 'A' levels was 5 'O'levels at grade C or above in my day.

The vast majority at my crap and under performing comp did CSEs.

No revision classes, no past papers, no resitting for a better grade unless you needed a C.

I did o levels that year. Got 6Bs and 3As....private girls school. Most got 9 O levels, although it was academic, not many got all As. My results were considered disappointing. Went on to get 3 As and 1B at A level. Was pressurised to try Oxbridge but refused. Got a 2:1 from good university and am doing ok as an inhouse lawyer.

You don't get to resit GCSEs now either. Unless you get less than a C in English or Maths, and then you have to retake (the whole thing) in perpetuity.

Gently
I did not say they were rarer than hen's teeth
they were by definition 5-10% of all GCEs taken
straight A's was pretty rare though because of the statistical probabilities

There was an interesting conversation on a MN thread recently when one poster berated a teacher who had advised a pupil about needing to pull something special out of the bag in order to get an A at GCSE as it would confuse what said pupil had to do in the exam. A's at O and A level were pretty noteworthy as you did indeed had to pull something special out of the bag in order to differentiate yourself from the herd.

I remember a A level teacher telling us in order to get an A we had to have a unique point of view ( even if it contradicted the established one) and we would get marks for the quality of our argument and the evidence we use to back it up. Nowadays public exams seem to much more about how well you toe the party line. But then all our exam marking were overseen by universities which made up the examination boards [middle age emoticon]

Of the 9 I took in 1983, I got 2A, 6B and 1C. But I also took 1 O level early (A) and one late (A). The Bs were almost certainly deserved Bs, regardless of cohort - the exams had slightly flummoxed me! My A level grades were BBC.

I got 6 As and 3 Bs in 86. I heard later that they were the best results in the bog standard comp that year but nobody actually bothered to tell me. Mind you I didn't go and get them in person so maybe they would have if I'd gone. Probably not though as I 'gone off the rails' apparently

6As, 5 B's and a place at Oxbridge in the late 80s. And many of my contemporaries had the same sort of grades. So not what Talkinpeace says

1983 2 people got all As (9 or 10) at my (pretty good) comp. Several others, who went to Oxbridge got 7 or 8 As. I got all As and did feel elated and at medical school it was definitely not par for the course. Has made bugger all difference in life though.
I look at DD2 (doing GCSE/IGCSEs at the moment and think their papers look really hard, with the notable exception of languages the papers seem just as rigorous. Can't comment on the marking, although my instinct is that an A then is equivalent to an A* now and so on down the scale.
Not sure my DDs or your DS will agree though

Also Olevels and Alevels were sat as final death exams no coursework was included in the final mark except practical subjects like art or needlework. You also had to declare all resits with date and grade on UCAS application forms.

I'm- I thought talkin said bs and the odd a was the norm- if you went to Oxbridge that cannot be the norm?! Unless I am misreading!

It was an UCCA form, back then

I mean the people saying all as were the norm seem to be the Oxbridge people?

I did see some figures a while back that suggested that an A* now is equivalent in difficulty to a B back in O=levels/A levels in the 80s.
And in maths perhaps even more difference.

But I don't remember the source for that. And it's hard to compare as maybe today's teens are working harder on average than a generation ago. And they're taught more to the test, at school our teachers tended to think that you shouldn't teach narrowly to the test (even when it would have been quite useful to know how the marks were allocated).

I don't think I knew anyone at my very academic school with all As nor any f my friends who went to Oxbridge. In fact many of them didn't have all As at A level (I had 2 As and a B). It was the days of 2 E offers though

I got 7 As, 2 B s and 1 C in 1987, so 10 altogether. State comprehensive. Fab teachers though.

I went to London to uni with an offer of 2 EEs. School,said I wasn't bright enough for Oxbridge...def. not the 'something special' that was required as pp have said!

I was a teacher for many years, now a SAHM.

I did my O levels at a girls' grammar in 1980 & got 2 As, 4 Bs & 3 Cs, which was considered well above average. A grades were rare & I don't remember anyone in my year getting more than three or four. Nobody in my year went to Oxbridge, but four did the following year. No idea of the sort of grades they got though.

I got ABBC at A level, which was more than enough for the BBC offer I got for a top redbrick uni, which these days asks for AAA for the same course I did.

A good friend of mine got into Oxford with ACE grades which I can't imagine would happen now.

Selective private school first year of GCSEs. 1A, 5Bs, and 2Cs.
Went on to get A at AOlevel the next year and 3As at A-level, got accepted on the hardest degree course to get on at that point 10 applicants for every place.
One thing I would say is that I did not find my academic stride till lower sixth even though an educational pschy had identified me as very bright. I often wonder if now I would be written off at GCSE now. When in truth I went on to get two excellent degrees from two top flight University of London Colleges.

I did my O levels in 1987. I don't know anyone who had all 'A's, it was practically unheard of. I was one of the ones who had the highest results in my year, and I had 9 O levels, A x 2, B x 5 and C x 2. I then did 2 extra GCSEs in the first year of my A levels.

In our school, everyone sat 8 O levels, and if you wanted to do one extra, you picked two subjects in the same column and went to half of the lessons of each, and copied up notes from friends of the lessons we missed. I did this with Latin and biology, and had a B in each.

I then went on to get 3 A levels, with grades A, B and C. I needed to get two Bs and a C to go to university, and ended up with a 2:1.

I only know of one person in my year who had 3 or maybe 4 As, which was very unusual. He was extremely clever and went to Oxford, but he could barely talk to people.

I'm sure I did 10 O-levels but I can't remember what they all were! (Useful eh) I got 9 As and 1 B and that was definitely considered very good (in a very normal comprehensive). Although being a very anxious perfectionist I wasn't happy. Damn you chemistry! :o

I went on to Oxford where I got a 1st so it's fair to say I was very academic.

(Sorry forgot to say that was 1986)

I got 3 x A, 2 x B and 6 x C at O level. I cocked up A levels completely, got a C, a D and a fail, resat them and got the same again. 1983. Applied for uni after I'd done them and got unconditional offers to do the course I wanted to do at Birmingham and Manchester, and, I think, Swansea, but got onto a graduate scheme instead and went to work. Was the only non-graduate to be taken on.

I went to a really crap comp and got 6 As and 2Bs in 1983. No one made much of a fuss of me, (working class kid from the wrong side of town). And I got really crap careers advice; you can't do Law, it's not for the likes of you, if you do a History or English degree all you can do with it is teach. A couple of the middle class kids did Oxbridge entrance papers and got nowhere. I was very engaged and read everything I could get my hands on, I think I'd have done better.

I was pushed down the science route and loathed my degree, (got very low Uni offers though; I thought that was because they thought I was thick). Never used my degree, straight onto a graduate scheme.

Every time I do a careers aptitude test it comes out with law or academia. Even now I feel a bit cheated.

Noooo it was 1981!

Big, very bog-standard comp, early 80s. I got A grades in the O levels I was going to carry on doing at A level, but the others were Bs and Cs. Even with a couple of CSEs in weaker subjects thrown in, I was probably in the top 3 performers at my school. Certainly nobody got all As, though I think a couple of seriously geeky kids got a fair string of As a year later.

The BBC grades I got at A level would have taken me to pretty much any university I fancied outside Oxbridge to do my chosen course. I only got a couple of offers, though - perhaps they were put off by my CSE Chemistry.