I've just been talking to the Head of English at ds's school about the new Govelvels

[Hakluyt]

... And she says she reckons that to be on target for a 9 (the top mark) a year 8 would have to be finishing the year.on an 8c. She reckons that a child like mine, who has finished year 8 on a 6a and would have been on target for an A- possibly A*- will now be predicted a 7-possibly just an 8.

It will be very interesting to see how the press cover this when the time comes. And how parents used to their kids getting top marks deal with it!

But that would do nothing but show how bollocks the system in your year was, surely?

How do you know what level your child is in Y8 or Y9 ?

Noble
Not really.
When I took GCEs you KNEW that if you got an A you were in the top 10% in the country in that subject.
The more A's you got the more top 10%s you were in
So somebody with straight A's at GCE (which was incredibly rare) was quite exceptional.

A girl at my school got straight A's in her 9 O levels and A's in her science and Maths A levels
she then got a first at Uni and now leads an international research team

straight A's were like hens' teeth then
TBH it would be good if they really started to mean something again

Half of all Chemistry students getting A and A* does not allow them to compare themselves with each other - which is what they are interested in.

Talkin, I suspect I'm around the same age as you - give or take 5 years - ansd think that you are exaggerating the 'straught As' thing.

I have 11 straight As at O-level, 1 at A/O and 4 at A level. Both brothers - both at local comp - had pretty much the same (fewer, but still all straight As). I would guess that around 15-20 of my school year - selective, but not very, girls school - had straight As at O-level, though rarer at A-level. Off the top of my head, 30 years later, I could name you 5 or 6 other than me in my year, and as it's so long ago, I suspect there would have been at least double that number.

Schools will put intense pressure on their staff to push kids to get a 9, when it will be well out of the reach of most students. Teaching is set to get even more unbearable.

When I took GCEs you KNEW that if you got an A you were in the top 10% in the country in that subject.

You forgot to add in that year. That would make comparisons between year groups impossible. It would also make comparisons between subjects impossible - being in the top 10% of a subject that ten thousand people sat would make you one of a thousand to get an A. Being in the top 10% of a subject that only the brightest 100 sat would make you one of ten in the country to get an A. Which of those two people are the brighter? The one surrounded by 999 other As or the one where only 9 others got one?

And in terms of league tables, that would make it risky to enter for a known difficult subject, skewing the figures for that subject even further.

Incidentally, talking of grade inflation, when the exams first started, I believe the number of students getting the top grade in maths doubled in successive years, because the number of people entering for the exam doubled. That's just stupid.

Noble - exactly. I really don't think that the top 10% thing can have been applied to e.g. further maths [only taken by those most able in Maths], because that would penalise those who were amongst the very brightest but didn't make the top 10% of the very brightest.....

[Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who took Further Maths back in the day who didn't get an A or the occasional B, which seems to suggest that it wasn't on a 10% model]

talkin the discussion above was just on the A, to lump the A and A in together like they are one grade isn't fair, of course that's going to give a larger stat- that's two grades.

And I thought the subject the OP was discussing was English? Yes, other subjects have had upper end inflation, but PP saying 25% we're getting A*s in English just isn't true, no matter how you look at those stats.

Agh were getting. Autocorrect is a twat.

Nobody said that 25% got A, which would be totally untrue. Someone said that "a grade obtained by 25% is devalued", presumably referring to A, which is true of course, 'A's are nothing special, but looking at the figures, 6.8% got A, which I think should be special enough.

On talkin's point about differences in IQ standard deviation between girls and boys; it's a neat theory, although it has been challenged, but it's certainly not borne out by these figures in which girls get significantly more A*s in every subject except maths (in which they're pretty much level) and the mysterious "other science" and "other technology".

Op, I think that is the idea, to make top grades outstanding not just available to all.
I come from abroad, I don't know if things have changed but in my time they used to grade us over 20 points. Getting a 17 was good, when I got 18 I was very pleased. Only the super brainy kids got 19s. 20s we're cause for a super celebration.

LadyIsabella
Remember that if REALLY bright kids are doing REALLY hard subjects, and lots of them are getting the top grade - that is because the exam fails to differentiate between the kids all lumped together with an A*
so the 'tail' is being foreshortened by an artificial cut-off.

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201101/how-can-there-still-be-sex-difference-even-when-there-is

The scores of children on an exam such as further maths will not be normally distributed, they will be skewed towards the top end. To try to force a normal distribution of grades on them would be silly, and you could end up with 3 different grades separated by a handful of marks. Then you are not differentiating your best students according to ability but on silly mistakes or how closely their answers matched the mark scheme.

Noble
If all the kids in Further Maths are getting top marks, surely the answer is to make the exam even more 'difficult' to spread their marks out more and differentiate between them.
If what is now 90% became 75% because a bunch of extension questions were included that would be better for those who were capable of getting those marks.

If every exam was ideal for the children who chose the subject, the grades WOULD be a normal distribution because the paper would differentiate.

Talkin, actually the further maths qualification I'm currently teaching differentiates at the top end with an A** grade, which is similar to the new grade 9.
It's already a plenty hard enough qualification! But only the brightest of the bright will make it to the end and sit it, so of course the end of the tail at the bottom is cut off - they don't even enter - it's an optional qualification after all, why take it if you are headed for a C when all your other grades are going to be As?

Universities who moan that they can't differentiate between bright children need to sort out their admissions process IMO.

Universities who moan that they can't differentiate between bright children need to sort out their admissions process IMO.
But how, without getting into interviews where they will subconsciously discriminate .....

DD did the further Maths this summer
its hard, but for some of the boys it was easy and could have been made harder to spread out the marks a bit more
Chemistry and Physics ditto

it would be nice if we returned to "everything above a B is good"
as then the exam boards would be able to set papers that did differentiate properly : especially in subjects where there is a 'correct' answer

Talkin, universities are allowed to set their own entrance exams, have interviews, look at A-level results, extra curricular stuff. If they are saying that they can't decide who to let on their courses because their GCSE results are too similar, then quite frankly they aren't trying hard enough and want everything handed to them on a plate.

Also the further maths, chemistry and physics are GCSE qualifications. If you want a harder qualification, then they wouldn't be GCSEs any more.

The vast majority of universities don't use further maths a-level as part of their entry criteria because not all schools offer it.

Talkin, I completely agree.

The system has to work for every child.

The onus is on the universities to sort out their criteria, rather than changing perfectly suitable qualifications. If this 'level nine' is just going to be the top 3% then I can't see how it is different to the A*?

I'm totally confused as to why it was English that had its exams bulldozed, when it has been a pretty consistent 3-6% for A when there are clearly other NC subjects with very high percentages getting the .

Although that in itself is causing the problem because schools don't have to offer it and students don't need to take it because it's not part of Uni entry requirements.

Gah- that should say noble I completely agree.

I'm giving up and returning to my lesson planning. I clearly can't multitask.

I agree with Talkin. Having a system that stretches out the top end also stops DCs feeling as though they should be aiming for very high marks by a relentless pursuit of error elimination rather than increasing their problem solving skills and knowledge.
I think the present system leaves brighter teenagers feeling like failures if they can't answer every single question perfectly and miss out having A and A*s. It rewards effort which is good but the hard work these teenagers put in could be redirected to result in a better, less risk averse educational experience.
However the new system will need more highly qualified examiners to correctly allocate marks for attempts of harder questions.