Fascinating Archive - were O-Levels really harder?

[HPFA]

This:

www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/our-research/archives-service/past-exam-material/maths/

An archive of old exam papers -the link is to Maths but other subjects to the left.

As 1984 was two years after I did O-Levels this is particularly interesting for me. The paper did bring back memories of how I could sort of do some of it. (Got a C). I'm amazed at how difficult the 1957 paper is - is it just the different measurements and currency used which makes it seem harder? If noble has time to look at it her perspective would be very interesting.

Should provide plenty of scope for discussion. A-Level and GCSE papers also have links.

[Badbadbunny]

This is a specimen modern 11+ paper.

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/assets/195/CGP11+MathsTest.pdf

This is a recent foundation GCSE maths paper

qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/mathematics/2010/Exam-materials/1MA0_1F_que_20151104.pdf

Lots of questions are of a pretty similar standard.

[EBearhug]

There were certainly syllabus differences. I was the first year of GCSEs.

In one of my first A-level French classes, we went through an old O-level paper to get us back in the swing of things. There were things we'd never touched, like the subjunctive.

Some years later, I did an MSc conversion in Computer Science, and there was one assignment in graphics where you had to code the graph of a differential curve - I could do the coding, but I first needed to understand what I had to code, and I didn't know. I had the GCSE maths which had been the minimum entry requirement, but that had been based on O-level.

I would expect things to have changed since the 1980s and '90s, mind you. There should have been syllabus changes in a quarter of a century (it was a world without mobile phone or the Internet.)

I do think school-level maths is probably easier with metric currency and measurements. When you're learning arithmetic it must be easier with everything being decimal, rather than 12d in a shilling, 20s to £1, inches, feet, yards and so on. I know you get used to it, if you're dealing with it all the time, but it must mean there's a steeper learning curve, which just complicates things like learning how to calculate areas and volumes or interest rates or whatever.

[corythatwas]

I got an A in English Lit in the 70s after only a few months in the country, as Sadik says, it was a question of all-purpose memorised quotations.

[Muskey]

I am fascinated by this thread. I did my o levels in the early 1980s at the first sitting I got three o levels two bs and a c. I resat and eventually ended up with five o levels. I went on to do a levels and got two es. I went on to do a ba and ma with the ou and then went on to do a "proper degree" in psychology. Despite working my arse of I never got the results that I felt I deserved and tended to blame my teachers who really didn't care one way or another.
Can somebody please explain the term marking to fail. As I assumed you answered a question and got marks for content, knowledge etc especially in something like literature or history the marks were added up you were given a total score and then depending on the number of people who sat the exam you would be given a grade depending on how well you did compared with the cohort. Is this not correct?

[Redblankets]

I did O'Level Maths in 1984 and got an A. I'm pretty sure I'd have a good shot of passing it again. I have also got A level Maths and work in a Science-y type career though.
I remember different geographical English exam boards having very variable standards. For eg. Oxford was renowned to be the easiest to pass whereas JMB-Joint Matriculation Board-the Northern England board-was considered the hardest.

[noblegiraffe]

It's entirely expected that a bright student in Y7 (working at old level 5 or 6) would be doing similar questions to a foundation paper because old GCSE foundation went up to a C which was level 7. A bright 11 year old would be about a D grade GCSE.

[Peregrina]

My O levels were all JMB ones, requiring solid wodges of rote learning in all except practical subjects like Art.

[TawnyPippit]

Muskey, I was using the phrase in 2 ways (I think). firstly there was a very clear pass/fail boundary with O levels: below C was a fail. I think it got changed in later years so that D - E was a "lower level of attainment", but many of us were working with a very bright line of passing/failing in sight. And I think that pass mark was quite high in relative terms - there was none of this "I will be devastated if I don't get all A*/A's" - as I said I went on to Oxbridge and I certainly got some shaky C's in my mocks, plus 3 x C's in the real thing: failing was a real possibility if you were a bit shaky on some parts and had a bad day/difficult paper.

Secondly, as I understand it, the papers were graded on a distribution curve - x% would get an A, y% would get a B and z% would get a C. The rest would fail. So theoretically if the entire annual cohort was bright, you could actually fail at a reasonably high per centage. Under subsequent marking I think you are given marks if you get something right and that's it - as a technicality the entire annual cohort could pass if they all know everything and demonstrate it.

Because there was a "real" pass/fail boundary, a lot of students did CSEs instead, rather than risking O level failure. (CSEs were graded 1-5, with the idea that a CSE Grade 1 equalled an O level grade C). There weren't meaningful tables or statistics but I think the schools felt responsibility to the students not to let them walk away with no qualifications. If you were borderline, schools often entered you in both the CSE and O level. My sister, eg did a mixture of O levels in some subjects, CSEs in others and then both exams in further subjects. (They didn't always have the same syllabus!)

[bojorojo]

At our grammar school we took 9 O levels (early 1970s) but had quite a lot of choice. I only took Physics, for example, and dropped Chemistry and Biology. This is not considered Ok today. We had to do one science and one language and English Lit and Lang and Maths and 4 others.

Talking about the Maths; we did the Schools Mathematics Project (SMP) and we started with those books in 1966 from Y7. There was no calculus and slide rules were allowed! Also, we did the Oxford University exams (I cannot remember anyone thought they were easy and were widely used in my area!!) and they were graded 1-6 for a pass, 7-9 and U were fails. Very few people, even at a grammar school, got a hatful of grade 1s. (I cannot actually think of anyone!). In fact at A level, only a small number (2-4) a year got AAA either. My friend is a Doctor and got CDE at A level and DH is a Chartered Engineer and got D in Maths A level but never had a problem at a top university. Of course, far fewer students applied to university but grades were far less of an issue unless you wanted Oxbridge.

I did a JMB A level in later life and that was easy! I think it all depends on syllabus, who is teaching and aptitude.

[Bringmesunshite]

Do they still do Calculus at GCSE? My finest academic achievement was scraping a C at O'level Maths in early 80s. And the paper included Calculus.
Luckily, my primary age dd takes after her Dad in Maths. I tell her that "I'm not as strong at Maths as I would like". Which is parent speak for "I'm shit at Maths".

[Peregrina]

and they were graded 1-6 for a pass, 7-9 and U were fails.

The JMB was the same. No one in my year or above during the time I was there had got all grade 1s. In the year below us, their brightest student got 8 grade 1s and an 2. I think these were the best results the school had ever achieved.

[Foureyesarebetterthantwo]

One big difference I noticed when comparing A level papers a few year back with the ones I took 25 plus years ago was the format of questions.

The old ones were all essays, four essays in three hours (45 min each) without exception.

The newer ones had scaffolded part questions a) b) and c)- essays makes for better integration of the knowledge.

nookaI agree with you, my undergrad degree was not harder than my A levels- I was already reading texts critically, reading original books in social sciences and critiquing their arguments, and presenting alternative theories with a 'synthesis' conclusion. UG was pretty easy as a consequence. The jump up is much harder for 1st year UG now, I know as they haven't quite got the hang of it by year 2/3 which is what I teach.

[Badbadbunny]

It's entirely expected that a bright student in Y7 (working at old level 5 or 6) would be doing similar questions to a foundation paper because old GCSE foundation went up to a C which was level 7. A bright 11 year old would be about a D grade GCSE.

Noble Yes, but the 11+ exam is taken at the start of year 6, i.e. based on teaching to the end of year 5, so quite a long time earlier than those working in year 7.

[Muskey]

Thank you Tawney this makes sense especially your explanation about a bright cohort where you could fail even with high marks. That has made me feel a lot better about things. It's a bit like the old 11+ it was a cruel time for dc.

[PiqueABoo]

More emphasis on bias / advantages and disadvantages etc rather than purely regurgitating facts.

I'm not entirely convinvinced by that. Yes to the first part, but I get the impression a lot of it is regurgitating the sub-set of that stuff that will get you the marks. Once upon a time you regurgitated the facts, now you regurgitate the right package of this-but-that stuff.

Is this too cynical?

[TeenAndTween]

Pique Maybe not too cynical, but I do think the 'modern' emphasis on at least trying to think about possible bias and pros v cons, etc is good. I certainly found DD's history GCSE (which she dropped after mocks) far more interesting than my history O level (which I dropped after mocks).

[PiqueABoo]

Badbadbunny There's no great mystery. Grade C used to be aimed at the 80th percentile upwards, now it's 40th percentile upwards. The latter is where the bottom of CSE, grade 5, used to sit.

That is the rough take and there is obviously more nuance, but in a very blunt sense you either believe educational magic has pulled off serious step change in human nature, or just accept that a GCSE maths C has dropped down to approximate 11+ territory.

[PiqueABoo]

I certainly found DD's history GCSE (which she dropped after mocks) far more interesting than my history O level

Suspect you're right about that.

I didn't pick O-level History because the lessons were really tedious. That wasn't helped by an uncommunicative teacher who just scribbled away on one of those revolving boards: you were stuffed if you had some ink-catridge emergency during those copy-it-fast exercises because it would all get moved up and over the back.

Quite thinky analytical DD gets along OK-ish with History so it can't be too bad, but it's still Y9 and not so focused on model answers for the GCSE. Will be interesting to see how much that changes.

[noblegiraffe]

Yes, but the 11+ exam is taken at the start of year 6

It doesn't matter too much, the old foundation paper goes down to a G which was a level 2-3ish, the vast majority of primary school kids would have been able to attempt at least some questions on a foundation GCSE paper in Y6. It's how maths works as a curriculum.

[Peregrina]

The GCSE's were supposed to be a combination of O levels and CSEs, weren't they? I don't know much about how CSEs were graded or what constituted a pass, except the grade one being considered the equivalent to an O level. How would a Y6 child have scored on a CSE paper?

I gather that they were available in all sorts of subjects and the Mode 3 allowed for quite a lot of flexibility for the teachers to design their own course. It was of course, always dogged by being viewed as a second class exam.

[Badbadbunny]

or just accept that a GCSE maths C has dropped down to approximate 11+ territory

Which seems to be the truth of the matter. The thing is that I got a D in GCE Maths in 1981, so basically a "fail" for practical purposes. Yet, I know damn well that my ability was far higher than 11+ standard in those days, as I actually passed the 11+ some 6 years earlier!

But today, a "good pass" C grade at GCSE is about the same as the 11+. So it has clearly been massively downgraded as the 11+ seems quite unique in not being dumbed down over the years in the same way that GCE/CSE/GCSEs have.

[PiqueABoo]

I did a couple of subject exams called '16+' , a kind of early pre-cursor to GCSE.

The board may have been JMB, not sure. If a CSE-track child achieved a CSE grade 1 they got a certificate which formally said O-Level C.

English Lang had something like 40% based on coursework (I recall a dozen instances of a page or two of homework ) and that was very obviously being fiddled by some helpful parents, although fewer were so helpful back then. Given that there must have been some quite good poker faces hiding a lot of lies around GCSE coursework.

[bojorojo]

A top grade CSE was a grade 6 O level. Therefore GCSEs were supposed to amalgamate the two and overlap with the grades 1-6 O level being condensed to A-C originally. Many Year 6 children could never take a CSE paper and pass it, certainly none I knew. The 11 plus we took (arithmetic and "problems") was nowhere near CSE standard, in depth and breadth, but I guess the really clever children could have passed CSE without any teaching of the syllabus.

At our primary, all our teaching for Y5 and Y6 was 11 plus focussed. When we got to the grammar and it was SMP: we might as well have started from zero learning it was so different to the 11 plus. I think we had a terrible grounding for academic subjects when we were tutored so heavily for the 11 plus. We did not do Geography, Science, History, or any tech subjects at primary school. We did Art, Music and Sport in the afternoons plus self-stufy projects. As younger children we did study the weather, the local river and a few historical eras. Grammar school was a massive shock to a lot of us and teachers complained about our lack of prior knowledge, with good reason!

CSE was considered second class and very few children made it from secondary modern to grammar 6th form as a result. None into my 6th form at all.

[Sadik]

The ultimate question it seems to me is what the actual purpose is of 16+ exams in a time when almost all children (and essentially all of those who would have taken o levels) stay in education until 18.

Going back to the 80s, it was perfectly normal to be a pretty academic child, get a decent crop of o levels, leave school & get a job. Maybe 10% of the pupils in my year at school stayed on to 6th form, maybe another 10% tops went to the local fe college.
As far as I can see now, the main roles of an externally graded exam at 16 are (a) to serve as a gateway to a levels, btecs etc(though tbh I don't see why internal grading couldn't serve that purpose), then (b) to give an indication of a basic competence level for subjects dropped at 16 (mainly English & maths).
Evidently it's different for those who don't continue with academic studies, but they're not the 20% who would have taken o levels.

[bojorojo]

CSE grade 1 was the lowest grade O level grade pass - 6. At least with the Oxford Exam Board where it was numerical, not alphabetical. My results would look better with A-C grades because the grade boundaries would have been wider. If only!!!