Only girls get a level results AGAIN

[FluffyMummy123]

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There are, broadly, four possibilities, aren't there? Unless anyone can think of a 5th.

a) Young people are getting brighter. It's astonishing that, 20 years ago, we even knew which end of a pencil to hold. And our parents' generation, phhht, amazing they even found their way to school.

b) Exams are getting easier, and it was harder to get an A twenty years ago than it is today.

c) People are taking subjects in which it is easier to get higher grades (Media, Leisure, Batik, etc) rather than proper subjects like Maths and German.

d) Teaching is more carefully targeted towards the passing of exams, rather than the imparting of knowledge and the acquisition of tools to analyse it.

Well, a passing acquaintance with teenagers would make (a) hard to espouse without guffawing uncontrollably.

As for (b), it's hard to prove without a control experiment - which I'd quite like to see. (Not fair just to give a current paper to a 38-year-old - they'd have to have had the same teaching. Ditto giving a 1987 O-level to an 18-year-old.)

I tend to go with a (d), plus a bit of (c), and DW, who is a secondary school teacher, concurs. There is a a lot of pressure on teachers these days to improve results - league table obsession has come in during the years since we thirtysomethings left school, and every point counts.

Are there any state sixth-forms in your area apart from the FE college, SueW?

Our local paper is often reluctant to show them...

Why are there so many thick kids out there if their A levels results are so great then?

One of my close friends has been job-hunting recently - go to any agency and they give you a calculator to do the maths test (basic arithmetic) and they look amazed if you score over 50% on any of the computer tests.

Because they are taught to pass exams, hunker, as I said below, and not to think for themselves. Also calculators are allowed in maths exams.

We had in my O-level (1985) a "mental arithmetic" paper and a "calculator" paper - the latter was for sine and cosine values and the like.

Have our local paper in front of me. The front page article has a picture of two boys fron state school celebrating their A level success. All the state schools with sixth forms have done well aparrantly. Then the follow up to it (page 4) has two more pictures - one if the boy's independent (although accepts girls and there iare two girls int he shot. minly noys though) and then another of a different state school (2 girls, one boy). The state schools and the independents have write ups, a lot more on the state schools as they are in the majoirty.

I'll have to pop out and get the Telegraph! Sounds as if they've learnt their lesson...

Yes, it's the Telegraph I have.

One thing that interested me about the A level results was that girls didn't do better than boys in Further Maths and MFL. IME, the pupils who tend to do those subjects tend to be pretty bright, with less of a spread of ability. So the 'working diligently' effect would be reduced IYSWIM. In further maths anyway. Your DW is a MFL teacher isn't she UQD? What does she reckon?

Yes, generally her A-Level students tend to be the bright ones. This year's results are disappointing though. People who got A and A* at GCSE have just found A-Level beyond them. There is more emphasis on content these days and less on the language.

There's been a bit of a dip in MFL recently since it was dropped as a compulsory GCSE subject. It's swings and roundabouts though - coming back in now in all primary schools, so there will be a few barren years in secondary and then it will pick up again.

Yes. I taught Biology, and we had by far the widest ability range out of the Science subjects. And girls tended to do better than boys. But I arrange the students I taught into ability bands as it were, then the effect is much more pronounced with those who were of lower ability than those who were really bright. Bright boys got top grades, as did bright girls. But less bright girls also tended to get top (or good) grades, whereas less bright boys didn't.

Are the grades lower, or just the marks?

When the new AS was brought in, the first paper was really hard. Much harder than the specimin papers had led us to believe. When the marks came back, the average cohort mark was well under 50%, and the grades adjusted accordingly. And then the summer exam was the other way round. It was all very .

Oh gawd.

if I arrange

specimen

This might be why

Very good! Did you write that?

the thing is though, there used to be a certain % getting As, more getting Bs etc so you were judged against your peers, comparatively. that used to be the case for A levels and at university too. personally, I think that system makes a lot more sense. for example, if there was a particularly tricky paper.

Tricky papers are taken into account - see my post below.

yes but if the grades were awarded proportionately then that would avoid grade inflation.

I reckon its cos they've all probably been breastfed

actually you may have something there

"yes but if the grades were awarded proportionately then that would avoid grade inflation."

Yeah, and then you end up in the Japanese situation where everyone's in an education race; kids about 12 hours a day in school and private tuition, because everyone else is doing it.

It lets the most obsessive and pushy parents and kids dictate the work levels of the entire class, because no-one wants to be left behind.

Personally, I'd like to see a bunch of journalists sitting A-levels. After all, the exams are supposed to be piece of piss nowadays, and the hacks are experienced in waffling at length about subjects they know virtually nothing about, so about a weeks tuition, 2 at the outside, should see them all scoring A*...

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No, can't take credit for that one

Funny though, I thought!

And horribly true...mind you, the best satire is!

well, that is what we used to have until twenty years ago and what we had at university until fifteen years ago, and we didn't have all those things

Ah, I see. Just wondered. Our local weekly paper has been guilty of ignoring the state sixth-forms in the past - although not this year, to their credit.

When they mention Oxbridge success, though, they always focus on the two big independents in our city.

(It gives the impression of being rather hand-in-glove with the business movers and shakers, who will no doubt form many of the clients of these schools. It has six pages of "Business News" FFS, which always seems odd for a local paper - it's the most tedious crap about who has bought whom and who has moved to whose firm and so on, complete with photos... surely of no interest to anyone who works in public/voluntary sector, i.e. most of the rest of the world).