B & C A level grades were ‘RG’ worthy in 80s? What’s changed

[Peverellshire]

Why are required A level grades so high now? Is it easier to get an A or A star now compared to early to mid 80s? Well A star wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then but…

In past B,C,C and certainly A,B,B enough to get on relatively prestigious courses at top universities, so what’s changed?

There is much more competition for places. When I was going to uni in the 80s only a handful of my peers even considered uni as an option, not many stayed on at 6th form to do a levels now teh government have made cinoilsory education or training until 18 so that has forced grafe levels for entry up

There’s not really more competition for places because there are far, far more universities now than there were in the 80s, and universities take a much wider ability range.

Universities have expanded and massively increased their intakes, so I don't really think that there's more competition at all.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2019/08/the-great-university-con-how-the-british-degree-lost-its-value

The last O levels prior to introduction of GCSE were sat in 1988 so that cohort took their A levels in 1990.

I took GCSEs 1988, which was the first year. There were some trials in certain areas the year before, I think.

We didn't really know what the syllabus was except by what the teacher taught us as we went through the year. Now, I'd look it up online. You were stuck with whatever your teacher told you and the text book you were told to use. You could get revision guides, but most people didn't. I think now it's good practice to be more upfront about learning objectives and expectations.

In my first A-level French lesson, we did an old O-level paper, to start getting back into the swing of things, and there were some grammatical points we hadn't covered at GCSE. That was 35 years ago, though, and syllabuses will have changed more than once since (never had to learn vocab for mobile phones, Internet, WiFi and so on back then!) And I don't know if anything was introduced that hadn't been covered before.

For subjects like languages, you had to hope that someone kind would be going on holiday to France/Germany/wherever and could bring back a copy of a newspaper. Living on the south coast, I could sometimes get long wave to tune into French radio. Nowadays, I can order foreign language books online, look up YouTube videos, get DVDs, tune into Internet radio, join Internet chat groups, get any amount of stuff to read... as well as find all sorts of resources to explain grammatical points in different ways, if your teacher failed to get you understanding it.

There's also more about technique. We were told essays should have a beginning, middle and end, and that was about it. Exam technique was, read the full paper and the requirements, check the points to give an idea of the length of answer, and plan your time. (Oh, and for maths, always show your working.) That was pretty much it for everything. We only ever saw past papers in mock exams. I've done language exams as an adult, and I had access to almost every past paper for those. I think exam technique always was important, but we weren't really taught it.

But since there was so much criticism, the exam boards are probably too scared to do that again!

Nah, Edexcel aren't scared of 'impossible maths question' tabloid stories. This was on the higher paper in 2022.

Don't know why anyone would try to argue that there wasn't grade inflation up to 2010. The exam boards were in charge of their grade boundaries. Imagine there was a dispute about where to put the C grade boundary. If it was 34 marks then 60% would get a C, and if it were 33 marks then 63% would get a C. The argument could easily be made that those scoring 33 marks had demonstrated enough ability to be awarded the C, and so 63% it is. Then the next year they're debating where to put the C boundary. If it's 35 marks then 62% get a C, if it's 34 marks, then 64% get a C. But 63% got a C last year and that standard is about the same as the 34 marks, so lets go with 34 and 64% get a C. Comparable standards to the previous year, per professional judgement.

Then the next year the grade boundaries are set with one eye on the percentages from last year who were given the more generous interpretation and as this happens every year, the % getting a C goes up. Without necessarily meaning to, and with each grade boundary each year being arguable.

This is where Gove made Ofqual step in and insist on comparable outcomes, not standards. Ofqual now monitors where the grade boundaries are set, and they have had to intervene where the proposed grade boundaries would result in a much higher % of kids getting good grades.

I think it's a very good point that people who would have been expected to "only" do CSEs went from celebrating passing their CSES to "failing" their GCSEs. I've never seen it in that light before.
My memory as a young child was that GCSEs were meant to encourage the lower end by giving them more to aim for and not being pigeonholed.
However thinking of it in that way it actually changed the achievements into failures. That's a really sad thought.

O level French was fabulous. I only got a C Grade but can still make a passable attempt and speaking and writing it now, and I'm mid 50s.

We learned the building blocks and that's always stayed with me. As has the confidence we all needed to muster to face that scary oral exam which was blind.

I'm sure the quality of our speaking in the oral exam was worse than the students produce now but there's a real skill in being put on the spot and doing your best to communicate.

The four O levels I was.most proud of were French C Grade, Physics C Grade (it was sooooo hard!!!) English Language A Grade (where did that come from? I was double entered into CSE too as I was borderline!) And English Literature U Grade (also, where did that come from, I wrote for 3 hours!!!). Those were the days when strange anomalies just were what they were. No one questioned the result they just laughed as me for the giggles and we moved on.

The great thing about O levels was there wasn’t much of a leap to A level.

It’s absurd to argue against grade inflation.

My old school A level results in 2022 were 92% A*/A.

In my day it was roughly 92% A/B as there were no A* (although results were not made publicly available then).

Everything has shifted up a grade. Then, Oxbridge required AAB, RG unis BBB/BBC (the lower rungs would even accept CCC).

People haven’t got cleverer, the exams have got easier, as they were intended to at GCSE, due to the merge with CSEs.

Haha In 1980 I got into UCL with BDD. These at the time were fine results and as I'd done a good interview I was good to go. Completed the degree easily and have used it all my life. Ten years ago, DS (who is by no means amazingly clever) got two a stars and two a grades. And grades have gone up again just in the last 10 years, so God knows what he would get if he took them now.

And grades have gone up again just in the last 10 years

Not really, because of comparable outcomes. Discounting the covid years, obvs.

Yep my old course at my old uni now requires A*AA and I think when I went in 1992 it was BBB.

According to university of Buckingham since 2020 it has been 20-25 per cent A/A* at A level. Mid 1990s it was about 10-15 per cent and pre 1990 it was about 7 per cent got A at A level. So about 4 X as many people now get the top grades..

You can't look at covid grades as evidence of anything though.

"When I was at school in the 80s, we had past papers, revision guides, text books, etc. Most teachers would give us a copy of the syllabus at the start so we could use it to tick off what we were learning and use it to help with revision planning etc. I don't recall any significant lack of resources back then"

Then you went to a far better school than I did. I never saw a syllabus - I didn't even know such things existed, so didn't even know enough to ask for one - or a revision guide, or even a past paper for several subjects. We had textbooks for some subjects (French, sciences) but none for others (English, Maths, RE). So for the latter, all we had to go on were the notes taken by hand in class.
I suspect that your school was the exception and those like mine were rather more common.

"Universities have expanded and massively increased their intakes, so I don't really think that there's more competition at all."

This is true for some courses/institutions but not others. Globalization has meant that UK-domiciled candidates are competing increasingly with overseas candidates for places at top UK institutions, particularly for STEM courses and top institutions such as Oxbridge and Imperial. Overseas students provide a lucrative revenue stream for elite UK institutions.
E.g. for maths at Oxford:
in 2010 there were 1689 applications and 291 offers
in 2022 there were 2700 applications and 288 offers
and the increase of 60% in applications, with no increase in places, in that period was driven entirely by overseas applicants, overwhelming Chinese. Similarly, for many courses at Imperial, Chinese students form a majority and it is extremely competitive for UK-domiciled students to secure one of the minority remaining places.

That’s true and I considered that as I was writing - but it doesn’t affect all unis in the same way.

And just because double the number of students apply to Oxbridge doesn’t mean that double the number of students are Oxbridge material, there are simply more people giving it a shot. Doesn’t necessarily make it more competitive because you can still get in with AAA. (Also the standard of the average Oxbridge student is nothing like as high as popularly believed with the exception of a sprinkling of geniuses).

Because we now have to pay fees, for those who can afford it, we're also competing with overseas universities. If you're going to pay upfront, why not look at the USA, or a European university that teaches in English?

That should be 2A*A, not bold A.

In the mid 90s the offer was AAB for English at an RG.

I've seen FOI requests showing that the overseas candidates trounce the home-grown ones in the subject entrance tests. So the top institutions are, largely speaking, deciding the percentage split they want between home and overseas students, then making offers on that basis. They could easily fill the whole course with overseas students who have higher performance than the vast majority of UK applicants. It really doesn't say much for our secondary education system.

Re: "the standard of the average Oxbridge student is nothing like as high as popularly believed", I do agree with this. For those who are facilitated by a good school, in terms of natural ability it's probably enough to be in the top 3-5%, which is frankly not that extreme - the brightest kid in a primary class is on average similar. The rest is hard work, facilitation/support and luck. Those who are not facilitated by their school need to be far brighter to stand a chance. And it also depends on subject - the bar for classics is much lower than maths/physics/natural sciences.

I have 16 year olds working for me. I can categorically tell you they are not cleverer than children from the 80s/90s, yet the amount of them who have achieved all Grade A's (or higher) in their GCSE's is insane. It's a standing joke in work that you must be pretty dumb if you got a grade B or lower these days. Confused all the staff when the grades 9-1 came in though!

Same with A levels. In our day, you were super intelligent if you got more than one Grade A in your A levels. Now it's the norm. I'm just not buying kids are brighter - they're simply not. Grade inflation for sure. Also goes into uni scores. A first used to be reserved for the top 2 students on a course. Now they hand them out like sweets.

I can remember during the 90s and 2000s that whenever the A level results came out and there were complaints of grade inflation these were heavily criticised for not celebrating the success of the students who got these grades because they worked harder than previous years, the hard working skilful teachers and of course because of the investment by this .[Conservative/ Labour ] Government into education.

Wow. The comments on this thread. "You must be dumb if you get a B at GCSE" So many kids getting A at Alevel, blah, blah. I know 2 pupils getting 3A. They are both exceptional students. A lot are devastated by their grades.

The pupils I know work damn hard, far harder than we ever did in the 80s. There are A level subjects at my DD's school that never get an A, let alone an A*. And all those unis demanding high grades often end up taking students with lower grades. There is very much a thing of lower unis bigging themselves up on paper and then taking a vast amount of lower grades in clearing.

As for there being no revision material in the 80s, that's bollocks too. We all spent our own money on Letts revision guides, which gave you every thing you needed to know. DD has had to do so much wider, outside the syllabus reading, it was difficult for her to know where to stop. It was very clear in the 8Os that if you ticked everything on the list you were good to go.