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!

Hakluyt - DS is a Level 8C in maths and enjoyed the last few stages (when he was in the 7s level wise). I don't know if it was teaching him stuff he didn't know, but he found it fun. He likes puzzles. It didn't keep him occupied for too long though. DD2 - who is l6 but probably higher in some aspects of maths - zipped through it reasonably quickly and did learn stuff, and now goes back to 'play' it again - she didn't always beat the optimal number of steps, for example, so she tried to improve in that way. I enjoyed going through it and I have a maths degree, so...as I said. It's better than cut the rope, makes a break from sudokus, and is infinitely easier than cryptic crosswords (I didn't say that before. But it is. It's nice and makes sense and you don't have to wrench your mind through 270 degrees to get the sense of any of the tasks).

I do think it's better before you know it's algebra, otherwise you try to do it algebraicly (algebraically?) - but, yes, I've gone through it all :)

Well - but you do do it algebraicly....

Coming back to the new levels, I've been thinking more about this, and while I think yet more change is a bad thing, overall it is one of the few (probably the only) Gove policy that I have some sympathy with.

I look at it this way - GCSEs effectively have two functions - a levelling function, and a sorting function.

The levelling function - ie, showing that a person has a certain basic competence in maths, for example - they're pretty good at. As an employer, if I recruit someone with a C grade or higher in GCSE, I can be pretty sure that they'll be able to do the (basic) maths they'll need at work. Similarly, as I understand it, if a pupil has A or A* maths, the likelihood is that they'll be able to cope with A levels.

The sorting function is mostly relevant for high end employers / universities. Not 'is this person competent to a certain level', but 'is this person the best of their cohort. O levels were much better at this, both because much fewer people got high grades, and also because they were graded on a percentage basis (so you couldn't get the situation where 50% got A or A*).

By 'stretching' the available grade options, you should hopefully keep the levelling function (people will soon figure out if they need a grade 4, 5 or whatever to be equivalent to an old C), but improve the sorting function.

But not knowingly? Don't you think it's designed to do it as a puzzle, not to be consciously thinking "expand the brackets"? Or am I just taking it too seriously?

Um...no? But I don't know anyone who's done it without knowing some algebra. There's a younger version too, isn't there? Perhaps a whole generation of kids will fall in love with algebra as a result of learning this way. That would be good.

There's one aimed at very small kids, and an extended version that's aimed up to 12. Ah, well my 11 year old is playing it from a suitably naive starting point and it's fascinating watching her :)

Thank you herc- I ve bought the algebra one so we'll give it a try.. He's a couple of sublevel below yours so it'll be interesting to see what he makes of it.

Must go to bed now... no more dragon box... must sleep... work tomorrow...

I've been playing Elements (the geometry one) all evening, thanks to you lot!

Atia

review! review! review !

What do you think ?

Is it fun ?

ellen

welcome to my world.

Yes, it's good! Gets quite hard by the end, lol.

Doesn't have angles on a straight line adding to 180 (though if youhave one right angle you can make another), or at a point to 360, or angles in triangle adding to 180, etc - but I guess those things would be hard to do without numbers.

Has the idea that triangles can be isosceles/equilateral if they have 2/3 equal sides or angles. Has vertically opposite angles equal, corresponding angles and parallel lines. Covers parallelograms, rhombuses, rectangles and squares.

By the hardest level there was lots of having to work out how to prove two particular lines were parallel in order to make a square, that sort of thing. It's not as long as the algebra one, but it was cheaper I think.

Herc - you've undersold your old school - a four form entry comp in South London with the whole of the top set getting an A for O Level maths and 15 girls getting As for A Level maths in 1983-85? Those results sound better than my South London grammar. A bit of a stab in the dark but you didn't happen to go to a certain girls' Catholic school wistfully talked about by Penelope WB did you? Feel free to lambast me if I'm wrong but girls going off to conservatoire (plus 30 to uni/more to poly) has rather convinced me you did. I know you said you grew up on a council estate but then we had 4 or 5 girls in every class from the local council estates - there was indeed some social mobility back then. Not so great for those who didn't pass the 11+ though or those who failed the religion test.

Yep. I was the first comp year. We were good at maths and shit at French. And shit hot at music. :) were you there? Do I know you?

Incidentally going to conservatoire was a lot easier in those days if you lived in a borough with a free music lesson policy. Or just in London generally. I live a very long way away from south London now and it's insanely more difficult for ordinary kids to aspire to that sort of thing now (my DD has ambitions in that direction, all the music stuff I had for free costs a fortune to provide nowadays. :( )

Don't worry I haven't got a Catholic bone in my body and I've no idea who you are! I am the same age as you though and I knew your school reasonably well; my grammar was in a neighbouring borough. I did know some boys at the 'posh school down the road' though but they were more mc than 'posh' - direct grant I think. You do sometimes give the impression that you got to Cambridge in spite of your school rather than because of it (superior brains and family circumstances aside). We only sent 2 girls to Oxbridge that year (Oxford not Cambridge) but of course our catchment area was much smaller. The genuine comps in your area weren't very nice places to be I would imagine.

It was a genuine comp in my year. But we had really good teachers. The posh school down the road seemed pretty posh to me (and bizarrely, I work with a man who went there and he is achingly posh!). I've always said that everything I achieved was down to my schools (the primary as well as the secondary). I knew plenty of kids at the catholic comp to the south of us, that's where 50% of my primary school went. It had great music too. I didn't know anyone at the comp in the west of the borough though (it had a primary school connected to it so it was more like a 5-16 school really). Actually, no, I knew one girl older than me who didn't pass the 11+ which was still going when she was that age! and she went there. But I think it was a decent school. The school that was closest to where I lived though was possibly not very good. I've certainly never claimed to have a superior brain (I clearly don't have one) and although I had the best parents in the world my family circumstances weren't great due to my mum being ill for a lot of my life.

The only reason I mentioned my school in this thread was that another poster suggested that it was vanishingly rare to get clean sweeps and in my experience (and that of others on this thread too, evidently) it wasn't. Unusual yes, vanishingly rare no. Also I wanted to point out that French was far more difficult than maths in those days.

I'm guessing your school is still a highly regarded grammar and that you possibly lived closer to my school than I did! And that the bus that started near where I lived ended it's route somewhere pretty close to where you lived! They've changed all the buses these days though. :( it's an outrage.

noble you're the same age as me! First year of A*.

For maths, our school (high achieving comp) decided not to teach us the A* stuff (level 10?), so if that was what we aspired to, we had to go away and teach ourselves. I have fond memories of impromptu study groups learning about matrices from a text book in my back garden! Don't think that would happen now.

Would I get higher grades now? Probably - I certainly wouldn't have been allowed to get an F for my CDT coursework (hauled up to a D in the exam). Would I have got a better education? Not so sure. But I am the type to study matrices in my back garden!

Herc - My reference to your superior brain was a compliment! Alas, my worst result in 1983 (and my only C) was in maths - although I was stuck with the same doddery old dear of a teacher for 5 years - before and after we were set (I suspect the set below me did better). I did get a B for French though and an A for Geography which sounds the complete opposite to your school in the same year; I guess it does come down to the teachers - fab Geography teacher and scary French teacher!
You've not guessed my school correctly; it is/was a well regarded grammar but in the other direction. I did indeed live near your school as a child but we moved when I was 9 (so my older brother could take the 11+). We still had friends and family in the area of course.
I don't think I would ever call your old school a 'comp' - there's a variation in ability, yes, but my grammar had a wide range of abilities too although it's very 'super selective' now. Although you were the first 'comp' year you must have been interviewed (and your parents?) before admission and the catchment area was vast so they had plenty of girls to choose from. The year above you must have passed the 11+ and I think you merged with a private school whilst you were there too.
If you've moved hundreds of miles away now you probably don't know that your old school was referred to the Admission Authority by its own diocese only a couple of years ago - objecting to its points based admissions criteria. I remember reading in the papers that over 100 girls were on the waiting list to become altar servers in one parish alone - such is the madness of school admissions up here (they had 700 applications from Catholic girls for 150 places last year). They still have music scholarships at 11+ too but they don't advertise how many.
The 'posh school down the road' is very well regarded now and we looked at it for DS1 - it's a lovely school but very down-to-earth; it felt as though we would be paying for grammar school (with better facilities) having just failed to get into the free grammar schools nearby - he got a very good scholarship at a school that felt more like a private school instead.

The year above were grammar and we did merge with the other catholic girls grammar (it wasn't private, there was a private junior school but not the 11 and upwards bit) too. But our year was very firmly comp. The variation in ability was very markedly different from the years above - the tail was much much longer.

You clearly have a substantial axe to grind against my old school, I don't know why. I think this discussion is well off topic and I'm not going to continue it because you seem to have an unpleasant agenda going on. I can't believe that someone could still harbour grudges and bitterness about a rival school > 30 years down the line.

No grudge at all - I assure you - I've just re-read my post - there's no malicious slant to it?? I agree it's way off topic though - my fault with that. I loved the grammar school I went to and I've no interest in religion. My school wasn't a rival to yours - completely different borough. I guessed which one it was because I used to live nearby when I was 8. None of my old friends and family missed out because of it thanks to direct grant and the WF. Your old school is still in the not-so-local news up here and I was reminded of it because of the ruling only last week on the London Oratory School re its admissions criteria. Its just that in all your posts regarding your old school you say it was 'just a comp' when in reality it's never really been a proper comp - it was probably very similar to my grammar in education, outlook and social mix. I'm all in favour of selective education - I just don't agree with 'back-door' selection. You just don't like being found out.