Dumbing down of A levels?

[Happygardening]

My DH went to St Paul's boys a long time ago admittedly but it has always been very very selective. He reckons when he was there out of 150 boys only about 15 (10%) got three A's at A level and those boys were considered to be unbelievably bright often boarding on the dysfunctional. Allowing for poor memory on his part lets say 25 got three A's so how can this be accounted for; FT Secondary School 2011 Percentage A/S you will need to search it as I don't know how to link it directly on here! Apparently 94% of the boys got A/A's although their web site states its only a mere 89%. No one is going to convince me that a levels have not been dumbed down.

I do think the note bring able to doss is a valid point. My incredably bright DH dosed his way through St Pauls maybe those who got A's we're incredably bright and motivated.

My DS1 got an A* in A level Maths and he freely admits to being absolutely rubbish at maths.

One boy who left in 2010 got a B at A level maths but managed the top grade in the STEP exams and is now at Cambridge studying for the Maths Tripos. And the boys who got the A*s in A level were certainly not always the brightest.

I agree with Letchlady that very different expectations are put on students these days. I spent my lower sixth having the time of my life not taking exams. Once year 10 starts we put kids on a four year treadmill (or worse if GCSEs start in year 9) where they are constantly assessed. It may all be in bitesized chunks but its not something I personally would want to go through.

And yes the A* at A level is difficult to get. DD2 has one in Maths and she had to go into the final maths exam knowing she could only drop a few marks or lose her university place. I was a nervous wreck never mind her.

Happygardening I think you said yourself that your premise may be false - it depends on your DH's memory as opposed to recorded data (though I'm sure that exists). That apart, I would bet on the fact that the London day schools are now far more selective than they were thirty years ago - the loss of the grammar system may well be a factor in that. It's also possible that St Paul's boys now sit more science A2's than they did back then - the A*'s flow more freely/ predictably than in Arts.

Let me write that again I do think that not being able to doss may be a large influencing factor my incredably bright DH dossed through St Pauls I agree lots parental money/supportand in his day those heading for As we're slightly ridiculed unless the rowed and played rugby as well. So the culture of aiming for an A was not all pervasive when we looked at it a few years ago for DS2 I felt that the school has now a very strong A culture obviously their results testify to this.

" We don't evolve that quickly!" We don't necessarily need to evolve quickly if ability to learn is something set/enabled in early childhood. They say 'rich' kids are 5months ahead of poor kids on average at age 4 report here probably due to'a richer learning environment' rather than any innate abilities. It doesn't seem a stretch to me to believe that on average children these days generally have 'richer learning environments' than children did a generation ago. My dc have had more toys etc. than I ever did as a child and there seems to be much less of a 'children being seen and not heard' mentality about these days too. So our intellect doesn't have to have evolved, it may well just be being better nurtured these days.

That's generalising a little too much from the particular MrsJAP!!!! And I'm not sure how to interpret the Cambridge B grade....

At our school, which would rate as 'academic', the As in the past two years have definitely gone to the high achievers and though some very bright students have missed the A, it hasn't worked the other way round.

As for the students achieving straight runs of A*s (three or more), they have almost all been the Oxford or Cambridge offerees.

My fourth DC in almost the same number of years is taking his A2s this year and the achieving an A* is a very tough call, whereas for bright students with good AS results under their belt, achieving an A grade at A2 prior to 2010 was for many a walk in the park.

the achieving of

Also universities handed out plenty of matriculation offers back then, so it wasn't the end of the world if you didn't hit the top grades. You could shine. Whereas now you're pretty much dead if you don't get the grades. Which is stupid. Lots of really VERY bright people don't get A*s, just as lots of less than impressive people get them.

I suspect that anybody who claims to be absolutely rubbish at maths yet gets an A* at A-level is measuring themselves on a different scale to one normally employed to assess maths ability at 18.

I suspect that he is comparing himself against the very best mathematicians, instead of a national cross-section of his peers.

Dilys the Flynn Effect seems to have stalled in the west in the last decade or so. I suspect there is only so much improved nutrition, access to education and increased parental interest can do.

Well I'm endlessly impressed by the A* kids and I've got fairly high standards....

I think the point that the A is there to aim at has a huge influence as well. DD1 took A levels before the A was introduced and she had high enough marks in previous modules and coursework to only need about 40% in the final exam to get an A. She could have pushed herself to work really hard but what for?

I'm impressed too yellowstone

That's what I meant webwiz. Plenty of students knew they could notch up an A grade at A2 with very low marks because of their AS cache. The A has changed that and will change it further as more and more universities start making A offers.

That's true about apparent stalling noble, but we're talking about changes in the last 20-30 years, so the Flynn effect would still be a factor to some extent

. I was really taking issue with SQ's comment; as gelatinous says, intelligence is not entirely genetically pre-determined at birth and hence changes in its expression do not have to take place over geological time periods.

I think DD2 ended up in a similar situation with her Maths A level - she needed something ridiculously low in the final paper to get an A but because she needed the A* she had to work to get a high score.

She is pretty good at Maths though

Maths is statistically the easiest A level to gain an A in (in terms of percentages gaining A) I believe. I do think achieving 90% ant C3 +C4 (the A criterion) is achieveable by moderately good mathematicians who are prepared to work very hard indeed to thoroughly learn the material and do lots of past papers (and there are lots available). But I don't think people who are genuinely 'rubbish at maths' could do it (perceiving oneself to be 'rubbish at maths' is something else though, and this can easily happen to really quite good mathematicians who become aquainted with an exceptional mathematician). And I think to get less than an A at maths A level and achieve a top grade at STEP must be almost vanishingly unlikely without some severe extenuating circumstances - virtually everyone on the maths tripos at Cambridge these days has A* maths, a B is very much an anomoly.

Yellowstone - Hmm. Do you think more universities will begin to make more A offers? I talked to someone at a party over christmas who's involved in universities admissions for a uni that already uses the A grade and apparently so far they aren't that impressed with the A* as a selection tool.

"I suspect that anybody who claims to be absolutely rubbish at maths yet gets an A* at A-level is measuring themselves on a different scale to one normally employed to assess maths ability at 18."

I think that is an interesting point. I suspect that just about anyone capable of doing a hard science degree (maths, physics, chemistry et al) at a Russell Group uni would be able to get an A* in current A level maths. So, is an A level meant to be a preparation for that kind of degree or a more general qualification? If the former, it is way too easy. If it is just "a bit more maths" to help with social science stats or with life in general, maybe it is set at the right level. Maybe we should have 2 maths papers taken by 18 year olds, one specifically aimed at science degrees and the other more general.

Also agree with webwiz - I dossed through my A levels, because if you can get an A by dossing, there's very little motivation to do extra work to get a near-perfect result - you didn't even get a % score back, so there was absolutelu no visible difference between an 81% paper and a 99% one.

Further maths is usually taken by those who need "more maths" larry and STEP by those who need even more.

It's not maths that's the 'easiest' A-level to get an A or A * in, it is Further Maths. A higher percentage of students sitting Further Maths get the top grades than all other subjects.

I think that concluding from this that Further Maths is an easy A-level would be an error.

Larry Maths A-level should certainly not be so difficult as to exclude social scientists etc. There was a report relatively recently about how many university courses require further study in mathematics than GCSE and how few students were taking A-level maths in comparison.

A-level maths also has a high dropout rate. I don't know how it compares to other subject but my current group started in Y12 with 22 students and now in Y13 I'm down to 9, which is not unusual. Students drop out as they discover they can't keep up at the start of the year and switch to another subject. More drop out after the first module in January. Then more drop out at the end of Y12 having done poorly at AS or comparitively poorly compared to the other subjects that they will take to A2.

I think the low standard required at GCSE is partly to blame for this.

But it is worth bearing in mind if you are comparing A-level results now to 30 years ago, 30 years ago it was difficult to drop an A-level partway through the course, now it is expected that you will start with 4 AS levels and drop to 3 A-levels. Therefore you need to be careful comparing 50% A grades from those who started the A-level course 30 years ago to 90% A grades from those who did well enough at AS to consider completing the A-level course today.

I'm not sure why one line of my post is being picked on out of context with the rest of what I wrote.

This is what I wrote:

"My personal feeling is that yes exams are getting easier. Well, at least the syllabusses are different etc. Certainly in maths some things that used to be a-level are now degree level I think.

I haven't read all the posts but did get as far as pushydad's. It is wildly unlikely that children now are far brighter than when we were young! We don't evolve that quickly! As for your examples - I can do those things and when I was 8 I got my ZX spectrum and spent hours programming it to do not very exciting things. Parents always think their children are doing clever thing but for sure across tge board human beings aren't getting cleverer!!!

Also I think this because I did a science degree in the early 90s and frankly it was bloody impossible. I am now doing a similarish degree with the OU and so far it has been a piece of piss. So that's interesting. Certainly when I was at uni they were bemoaning how little knowledge the students had when they arrived. For financial reasons they were doing what many other science courses were doing at the time which was set entry grades very low and know they woudl lose a lot of students after they failed the first year. I have heard that on some courses that the 1st year uni is now covering stuff that used to be taught at A-Level. So I would be amazed if overall the standards are the same, the difficulty of what is taught is the same. It can't be. But the universities have to make money too...

And then you have the explosion in "professional" qualifications, maybe to make up for these gaps. Most jobs now have exams you can take to hone your skills whereas in the past there were only the obvious ones (accountancy etc)."

People seem to be taking issue with the "we don't evolve that quickly" comment. Do people really believe that children now of of an entirely different level of intelligence than 30 years ago? Surely not? Yet in taking issue with my comments that is what people seem to be implying.

Also interesting that in the same post it was pointed out that a degree course in the early 90s and a degree course now seem to be very different in difficulty - when assessed by the same person - ie me. Unless people think that my brain has "evolved" to be significantly more advanced in the last 20 years