How 'hard' are GCSEs compared with 'O' levels?

[ProperLush]

And yes, how long is a piece of string??!

This is why I ask:

• Obviously because I don't know, or maybe I should say 'am less sure' than I was

• I just finished watching 'Educating Essex' and, tbh, was rather surprised about the number of DCs who appeared to have a limited idea about what their subject was about, yet they were shown passing the GCSE (memorably: 'What is pi? WHERE did it come from?'); and the drifting, troubled truants seem to be getting 5 to 7 GCSEs.

• My slightly aggrieved friend who has 2 x DDs in uni and a struggling Y10 DS (and who herself has 13 'O' levels) was at pains to tell me GCSEs aren't easier, they're 'different' BUT then said there is no need to remember the whole syllabus. You break the subject into small chunks, learn that chunk, sit a module in it, then resit til you get the right mark. That sounds very different to me! For a start in my similarly aged social circle, the non fellow-HCP one, I am often, well, surprised at how few have any 'O' levels or even more than a clutch of GCSEs if they're younger which leads me to believe that 'O' levels were a different beast entirely to GCSEs

This isn't an 'exams were far harder than in my day' rant. But they do appear to be different!

I have been tying myself in knots about my DS2, Y6 who to my mind, is not academic. He 'passed' his KS1 SATS and I'm told should 'pass' his KS2s if he 'keeps progressing as he is now'. In my opinion that either means the school is a bit deluded or the 'pass' level is lamentably low! MY 'target' as his parent was to help him get '5 GCSEs at A-C including Eng and Maths'. Of course, that goal post has now shot off around the pitch; it's now the Eng Bacc. I'd think I was realistic enough to recognise that the MFL component may prove too much for DS2 but then I think, 'Actually, I am comparing the degree of difficulty with an 'O' level, but that may not in fact be the case. Maybe DS2 will 'walk' a reasonable clutch of GCSEs as they are 'easier' if only because of the 'small bit of knowledge then test, and resit if necessary' approach'.

I am wondering if the fact the uninterested, gobby, non attending, slightly gormless, or at least appearing to not have grasped the basics of their subject Y11s are getting a good slew of GCSEs whether I need not fear for my quiet, attentive, well behaved DS2!

WDYT?

That's true Applecider, one has to get a job/training contract. I fell into mine when a local firm came to my college looking for that years 'student'. They took on one every year and you applied in the final year of A levels, or - in my case - the second year of BTEC in Business and Finance.

That was 25 years ago now and I wish I had the capacity in my office to do the same but we have no room to expand and staff stay, I am pleased to say, for forever and a day.

OHF - I agree about the recruitment procedures, but from my own experiences in the workplace a lot of HR staff are worse than useless and can't even work out correct holiday entitlement for p/t.

Unfortunately the first example is indicative of what is happening in education, where your GCSEs are taken into account along with A levels for a university application.
How on earth can the A level results be more important than the degree, which was basically what she was being told.

The second example I think he was applying for something in the City, but they would have had his CV for him to have made the online application which again involved a 500 word personal statement.

Thankfully both of them have jobs now.

Both of them were shocked by the sudden termination of the interviews.

dh took an apprenticeship at 18 (day release)

Fast forward 27 years - company director.

I did teacher training (geography sounds so familiar - god knows why I chose that, I hated it!) but dropped out after two years with not a teaching practise in sight, that might have lured me to stay on, had I enjoyed it.
Countless times I have wished I'd stuck it out!
But then, I have Asgergers and when you don't want to do something, you really don't want to do it with AS.
I sometimes think about going back to education and finishing or starting anew a degree, but not now the costs have skyrocketed!
What is the situation for the older person either early retired or unemployed or just a house person, regarding fees?
Can we still go to university as before? When do they expect us to pay back the loans if we do? Especially if we are retired! Is it even allowed to start a degree with no chance of paying it back?
Is that not ageist?

My mother got an A at O level maths but struggled understanding my GCSE maths when I did it. I think they are just different. I'm surprised at the number of parents here who talk about babies being on the 100th percentile or above! I think that was about year 9 maths for me.

My DD went through the school system 40 years behind me and it has been interesting to compare her experience.

I taught GCE and CSE and then saw through the conversion to GCSE. GCSE replaced a very unsatisfactory and inequitable system.

Only a fixed percentage of candidates passed GCE so each year students failed who should not have.

The exam papers were very predictable. It was possible to look through past papers and work out what questions would come up. (An experienced teacher could probably do the same now for GCSE but I suspect they wouldn't be able to predict questions word for word as often happened in the past.)

Students who were entered for GCE were picked at least two years in advance and, often, long before that when they passed the 11+ so there was little or no scope for the late developer to tranfer in.

GCEs favoured boys because girls tend to do better on coursework and boys do well on last minute cramming. (I know that's a sweeping statement but the subsequent surge in girls' exam success since the introduction of GCSE bears it out.)

CSE was actually a pretty good exam system. It allowed for more innovative teaching and much, much more interesting exam papers and it contained a large element of coursework. It was the best aspects of CSE that influenced the GCSE syllabi.

The fixed pass rate at GCE meant that pupils doing dual exams attained a Grade 1 CSE yet failed at O level. Yet the Grade 1 CSE student had often put in more work and achieved a greater understanding of the subject only to earn a certificate which had little academic recognition.
(A grade 1 CSE equated to a grade C O-Level.)

DD is far more fluent in a foreign language after taking it for GCSE than I was in the language I took for O level. For that matter, she and I both continued our language to A level and I never achieved the level of fluency that she has.

She studied equally difficult texts for Eng Lit as I did and, though she didn't 'like' English the way I did I find I have nothing to complain about when it comes to her understanding of the texts. Her knowledge of grammar is far greater than mine was at the same age.

Her strengths are science and maths and there we have little in common. DH, who is of the same mind-set, is in awe of the depth of her knowledge and very aware of how out of date his knowledge now is.

40 years on I can honestly say that she has had a better all-round education at a bog standard comprehensive than I had from a selective high school and her GCSE experience was far more stimulating than my time studying for O levels.

O level papers were designed to be a stepping stone to A level so the type of question posed on them is possibly useful practice at A level. CSE students weren't expected to go on to A level. A levels have changed relatively little so there is a greater step-change between GCSE and A-level in terms of skills such as essay writing.

Another thing that is different today is that students take maybe 11 GCSE exams. We took 8 O levels.

Also, when I was teaching O-level there was a comparatively huge amount of time scheduled for teaching the subject. Eng Lit was timetabled separately from Eng Lang. This meant that there were two double lessons and a single in which to cover a very tightly restrictive Eng lang exam. There would be a comprehension, a precis, a bit of grammar, an essay question and that was just about it. All these things could be covered very thoroughly in two years with a class that was hand-picked for ability and there would be hell to pay at parents' evening if one taught anything outside these parameters. On the other hand, you could let your hair down with a CSE class and do really interesting things, or teach the same things more interestingly. This meant that many CSE students would have a Road to Damascus change of attitude to a subject but there was no possiblity of switching to an O-level exam course and fulfilling their ambitions.

Because GCSE was designed to be accessible to the whole ability range it allowed for the more innovative approach in order to engage the less able but there was enormous care taken to ensure rigorous grade standards, especially during the transisition period. A great deal of work went into getting it right.

One thing we couldn't predict at that time was that the surge in internet usage would make it so difficult to detect plagiarism in coursework.
It was also not foreseen that boys would fare so badly on coursework. It was expected that girls would do better when coursework was assessed but I doubt if anyone expected such a great disparity and so the coursework element has been reduced since the introduction of GCSE.

titchy's post on the first page with the pass rates by year is very interesting BUT I don't think it means you can conclude that the exams are easier - I think the main reason for better pass rates is rising standards following the introduction of the national curriculum, coupled with a greater naitonal emphasis on the value of education (so its taught better and on average the kids work harder)

The rising pass rates are indicative of the success of GCSE for the reasons I've given and are not a sign of watering down.
The removal of the variable pass mark at O level which ensured a fixed rate of successful candidates was the first reason for the early surge, coupled with the greater success of female candidates.
The rise continued as more and more teachers became comfortable with the new exam and it properly bedded down. And, of course, the disparity between boys and girls at GCSE has been addressed more recently.

The Nat. Curric. contributes hugely to continued rises in pass rates and it was very much part of the change to GCSE though there was a period of several years while the NC was introduced at different age levels. We were actually working on draft documents for both simultaneously and there was a great deal of consultation locally, regionally and nationally. It was a labour of love because these initiatives were addressing a state of affairs that was no longer defensible by the mid 1980s. It is my DD's age group (19-20 yr olds) that has derived maximum benefit throughout their school years from the changes. It is tragic that their emergence from the school system coincides with the rise in university fees and an appallingly bad employment market.

There is now no structural barrier to pupils doing well. There are still social and economic reasons for lack of attainment but the whole ethos of those years when GCSE and the NC were introduced was to make educational success accessible to all. It cheeses me off when the press attacks the results year after year instead of recognising that fine-tuning is continually going on to maximise pupils' attainment.

If there is something I could wave a magic wand at now it would be to abolish OFSTED and reintroduce Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools but that's another essay!

I deffo think that O and A levels are more rigorous than GCSE's AND current A Levels. A friend of mine is a maths teacher and achieved an A grade at A level in 1988.
I was shocked when she told me that she had found a copy of her her old A level paper and wasn't able to do some of the questions on the paper that she took in 1988, despite the fact that she currently works as a maths teacher. She believes that this is because the syllabus has been dunbed down and she was no longer challenged

I expect her old self back in 1988 wouldn't be able to do e.g. the Decision maths which is an option on the new A-level syllabus. Does that mean that Decision maths is harder than what she sat back then?

If everyone is doing so much better academically with GCSEs why is the UK slipping further and further down the maths, literacy and science international league tables according to the OCED?

Because the other countries above the UK in the league tables are throwing money at it and don't use education as a political football. They see it as an investment.

So all the others are getting better, we're not getting worse. Even though apparently we're not spending enough on it, unitarian.

How likely do you really think that sounds?

You never really knew where you were with GCSEs. And it was completely obvious that we weren't learning for the sake of learning, just being stuffed for tests.
I got an A for Drama without reading any of the set texts and this was an extra thing held after school, an hour a week if we were lucky.
I got an A* in English Lit and I didn't read the books, got hauled into the deputy head's office to rewrite my half-page Romeo and Juliet coursework, they got another page out of me, in the exam I wrote nice little notes to the examiner in brackets of the "half a page more to go...ten minutes left..." variety (stupid, but I didn't care what grades I got).
Got a B for English Lang but an A* in c/w...must have done terribly in the exam!
Language GCSEs are complete jokes...