The return of the O Level.

[hermionestranger]

Leaked reports suggest that the government is to scrap the GCSE from 2015, 2013 option takers will be the last year to take them.

I'm sorry it's the mail bug they were first on my twitter feed. I 'm on my phone so can't link properly.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2162369/Return-O-Level-Gove-shake-biggest-revolution-education-30-years.html

I agree about one exam board but they need to be independent. Nationally the top 8% get A grades, much higher in single sciences (Physics 22% A). Making the exam harder wouldn't necessarily mean fewer candidates getting A* grades though.

From Hemmen's article

Question the First: Have Exams Got Easier?

Short answer: Probably.

Question the Second: What Is Difficulty?

The thing is, I do actually think exams have got easier. I just don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

It is, as I said at the start, almost certainly true that exams are getting easier in some ways, but this is often for quite unexpected reasons. Perhaps most interestingly, the recent Ofqual report on the viability of the A-level suggests that the recent proliferation of multiple-choice questions and short structured answers over longer essay-style questions has more to do with making exams easier to administrate than anything else. There is simply a shortage of skilled examiners (students, and adults who work outside of education, tend to forget that people actually have to mark exams) which means that it is impractical to mark large volumes of complex written questions.

Physics 22% A*

Physics used to be one of the toughest exams, it would have been impossible for 22% to have gotten A in 'O' level days.

I think he is responding to serious criticisms of GCSEs by institutions and employers, who are saying that there has been dumbing down.

They generally say that school leavers lack the skills necessary in a modern working environment. The Executive Director of Tesco criticised school leavers' time keeping, attitudes to authority and appearance (link). These can't be blamed on an examination system. I'm not sure they can even be blamed on schools.

With more, shorter answers you do need more breadth of knowledge, so if there is a question you don't know, you can't answer. That's the best way of approaching the science IMO, and that's the only subject which is answered in that way. Essays are still given for essay subjects.

It's a very good point about getting qualified examiners. In a way that also contributes to the low grade boundaries as, in physics for example, very few answers will be accepted if they are not on the mark scheme (despite being right). This is because there are very few physicists marking GCSE paper - many are marked by chemists, biologists or mathematicians. Add to this the lack of time they have to mark papers, it's not surprising that boards favour short questions.

However, as I said earlier in this post, that does make it harder for candidates to gain marks, which in turn makes the exams quite tough.

Not sure if that makes much sense!

Again, the reason 22% get an A* in physics is because only the top 25% or so of students take the qualification!

I agree with you there. But I have linked to lots of articles further up which had criticisms from an ex-QCA person, the Royal Society of Chemistry and which had a chief examiner at an exam board saying she didn't know how it got through the exam regulator.

Claig, I'm not surprised that it would have been impossible for 22% to get an A on the old physics o-level if the questions were as poorly written as the one discussed in that article.

'Again, the reason 22% get an A* in physics is because only the top 25% or so of students take the qualification!'

But only the top 25% took O levels and 1 in 5 didn't get an A.

'Last week Glenys Stacey, the chief executive of Ofqual, said the value of exams had been undermined by more than a decade of ?persistent grade inflation? which was ?impossible to justify?.

Re Physics 22%. Single science subjects tend to be sat by the brightest students so they will do better in any exam. These students would get an A in Combined Science but because they're brighter and their teachers want to challenge them they enter them for Physics. An A in Physics has to be comparable to an A* in Business Studies, ICT or English. It doesn't mean the exam is easier, it means that the brightest students are being entered. The data is skewed because in subjects like this the exam isn't say by candidates covering the full spectrum of ability.

From a Melanie Phillips article referenced by Hemmen

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2138340/Ofqual-grade-inflation-Everyone-knows-exams-got-easier-decade-The-surprise-educational-establishment-admitted-it.html

OK, how many actually take Physics GCSE?

O levels were graded according to the Normal Distribution. 10% got an A no matter how clever they were or how easy the exam was.
An A grade meant you were in the top 10% of the candidates in that test
It actually MEANT something.

Employers and Universities are surely clever enough to know that an A at Physics implies a higher level of leaning than an A in single science.

This whole "brighter students take it" argument is just hogwash.
Later in life, only the brightest of the brightest will succeed.
Accountancy students by definition are bright - they have
GCSE's
A levels
Degrees
but they are not all allowed to get distinction "because they are the brightest"
in fact over 60% of students fail

GCSE's are setting kids up to think they are brighter than they are
BRING BACK THE NORMAL DISTRIBUTION

Interestingly, claig a year ago Glenys Stacey was saying the exact opposite.

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6081609

There is a suspicion that Gove has leaned quite heavily on her to get her to change her mind.

Good post, Talkin, now you're talking!

'Decades of relentlessly improving GCSE and A-level results, forcing the creation of new A* grades, have seen the phrase "grade inflation" become common currency. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and even the head of research at one of the big three school exam boards say it could be a reality.'

noble, are you saying that you don't think that GCSE maths higher is easier than GCSE maths O level?

claig

You need to read the rest of the article. The writer makes a distinction between whether exams have got easier and whether they have become more demanding. Comparing courses, he argues exams have got easier because they are now matched better to testing what is demanded, not because the intellectual demands have drifted.

It's this failure to discriminate which drives those of us who work in education mad. To make up an example, if I gave Yr 1 a written test which said 'Calculate the sum of ten and eleven' that would be harder than giving each pupil a tray of teddies and asking them to work out what 2 add 3 was (by counting out and then counting the total). But if what I wanted to test for was 'do they understand the basic concept of addition' then the second test is much better because it tests that demand and that only. Obviously, if I want to check they can understand the words sum and read numbers as words then the first is better.

It is so axiomatic to those of us who assess that where you start with is what do you want to test and that you then design a test which makes it as easy as possible for that to be tested. You want exams to be easy in every way except for demanding content. A structured or multiple-choice question is therefore often better than a freer one because what is demanded is clear. The idea that hard exam=more intellectually demanding one is total shit.

And that's why so much of this debate seems odd. When there is no consensus on what we want people to know and be able to do then saying 'we will make exams harder' simply answers the question by 'do harder exams'. That's totally unsatisfactory, any trainee teacher would be torn to shreds for its confusion of task and learning objective.

'It is so axiomatic to those of us who assess that where you start with is what do you want to test and that you then design a test which makes it as easy as possible for that to be tested'

Yes, but you then run teh risk of formulaic testing, tick box against syllabus goals like describe 1345 in words. As noblegiraffe said they have changed some of teh question types now to make them harder, I think she called them "functional" type.

Surely awarding strictly by normal distribution only works if the plotted results follow a normal distribution. The point with Physics is that the results don't conform to that, the data is skewed. You could end up with 4 marks being the difference between an A* and a C.

Claig - GCSE results PDF

You can make it easy to devise a test, but does it test in the sense of stretch the candidate or does it tick a box for the candidate who already knows what type of thing will be tested?

claig if the question is in the time frame that Glenys Stacey is referring to, i.e. ten years, then that's quite difficult to answer as in that time so many changes have been made that none of them have really had time to bed down. Ten years ago maths GCSE included coursework and that certainly made it easier for some students (especially girls) to get grades that they wouldn't have got on the current exam-only course. However, we also had a higher tier and intermediate tier so the higher tier could contain more of the harder questions which arguably made it more rigorous. However, when we went to 2 tier, the first results showed that students were missing out on A*s not because they were getting the harder questions wrong, but the newly added to the exam paper easier questions on methods which they hadn't studied in years. So were the new papers easier or harder in that respect? We also had a multiple choice paper for a couple of years which I think was easier but was scrapped pretty quickly. Now we have functional maths questions on the paper which people agree mean that the current GCSE is harder than in previous years.

However, also in that time we've had increasing scrutiny of league tables, the added measure of A to C inc English and Maths meaning that SLT are on our backs, value added measures meaning any kid performing under target, be that C grade or A is targeted for intervention. Unsurprising, really that in that time results have improved.

claig

It's not easy to devise a test, it's incredibly hard. It's hard because it is really easy to write crap. 'Describe 1345 in words' is an example of a terrible question, and wasn't what the quoted paper asked. What if someone answered ''It is the 269th multiple of 5' (epic fail, not all words and hasn't written the number') or 'It's digital root is thirteen'? It is a classic example of the sort of question which allows room for 'stretch' but doesn't actually properly test what it wants to-which is can a candidate write that value in words. A candidate does better with that question if they know what is being asked, regardless of the knowledge. You might use it as an oral starter, but you wouldn't use it as a summative test question. And if the difference between G and fail is being able to do this, you have to test it. Simples.

Of course, you could later in the test have other questions such as 'calculate the digital root of 1345' which would test and stretch. The point is those would be aimed at testing different knowledge. Sometimes what is being tested is a more complex skill-extracting information and then calculating for example, not just calculating. Then you have different questions for that.

There are two totally different issues-what should be on the syllabus and should an exam be hard? If you want stretch you set an exam with demanding content which is as easy to access as possible. If you want a hard exam you just make the question harder to understand and less related to what is being tested. Before you do either you decide what it is you are testing for and why.

'not because they were getting the harder questions wrong, but the newly added to the exam paper easier questions on methods which they hadn't studied in years.'

Interesting. So if you take out teh coursework, since that is not as objective as it should be. If you take a GCE O level paper which tests 2 years' syllabus in 3 hours, is the range of questions across teh syllabus larger than what pupils are expecting to be tested on in GCSE Higher, particularly when Intermediate existed. Was the higher drawn from a smaller possible question pool (syllabus-wise) than an O level paper?