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.

[noblegiraffe]

But today, a "good pass" C grade at GCSE is about the same as the 11+.

Not quite, a grade C would still be a grade higher than what the level 6 kids were achieving at the end of Y6. Also a lot of kids who pass the 11+ are not grade 6 kids, to be a 'high attainer' you have to get a level 5. Grade C is about bright kid in Y8 level.

Except that's all going out the window now anyway. Foundation paper ramps up much more quickly.

[PiqueABoo]

I don't see why internal grading couldn't serve that purpose

Because they can go elsewhere for A-levels etc? Some schools don't have 6th forms. Some might not offer the courses you want. Some might be much better than the local one etc. A national exam means you don't end up with lots of different d-i-y entrance tests.

[OCSockOrphanage]

Anecdotally, O levels were harder than GCSEs. I photocopied my Latin papers (Scipio and Catullus) from 1972 for DS's teachers to compare and their view was that the O level paper would have stretched their Y12 classicists' knowledge of grammar and vocabulary in 2012. (For the record, I got a C, which would have been sufficient to tackle A level Latin, but not enough to delight the teacher at the prospect.)

But the point made above, that there's not much point in examining at 15/16 if kids can't leave school before they are 17, is worth considering. Why does it still happen? Surely it would be better to have a school leaving exam certifying competence in English, Maths and maybe Sciences, plus alternative subject specific exams for those planning on higher education?

In the 70s, lots of my contemporaries left school to get jobs at 15 or 16 and became professionals via on the job training, a route that is now coming back in the form of Higher Apprenticeships.

[Bluebonnie]

Noble -
What's interesting is about the 1932 11+ paper is that candidates were allowed an hour to do it.

The 1957 O-level paper is a bit scary until it becomes clear that there are several papers on the one document, and a total of six and a half hours to complete three of them. I had completely forgotten how much geometry was taught then.

[HPFA]

The 1957 O-Level History paper has the following question:

Describe an English medieval manor

What are they looking for here? A description of typical architecture? The way it functioned as an economic unit? The role of the manor generally in society? It's easy to see how even the most intelligent and well-prepared pupil could lose their A Grade through simply having to guess what the examiner is looking for.

[Sadik]

Pique I guess I have this old fashioned idea that we might trust teachers to give a fair reflection of their pupils ability?
The way they levelled pupils at the end of yrs 2 & 6 (not sure if they still do end of ks1/ks2 levels?) with a teacher grading that was then externally moderated in a %ge of cases seemed sensible enough. I just think we're wedded to a system of exams that were really designed in a different world

[portico]

Were O Levels Harder. Yes, they were. So too were A Levels. But O and A Levels peaked in rigour around mid 70's.

I did O Levels in 82 and A science A Levels in 84, and it was acknowledge by teachers and examiners from some boards that our specs (JMB/AEB/LON/Nuffield) for O and A were relatively easier than up to the mid 70s.

I k now the rigour of GCSEs and A Levels slipped markedly in the Blair years. The interim GCSEs 2014 and A Levels 2015 are a step in the right direction. The new 9-1 specs and new A Levels are more rigorous, but do not compare in rigour to the current Int O Levels, A Levels and Pre_U. I think we should count our blessings that 9-1 and the A Levels have not been made more challenging. I think the only reason alarm bells have been raised is that GCSE and A Levels from the Blair years onwards have not been so difficult, no norming of scores and that teaching has undergone real step-change improvement since the advent of the NC.

[Badbadbunny]

Surely it would be better to have a school leaving exam certifying competence in English, Maths and maybe Sciences

Perhaps the 11+ test should be remodelled/renamed as such a general school leaving competence test. The maths 11+ looks just about right for real life, being quite basic/general, but without all the bells & whistles that most people won't ever need such as trigonometry, more complicated algebra, etc. The English 11+ likewise, as it's a mix of literature and language with comprehension questions etc. The only thing we don't have yet is a science 11+ but I'm sure that could be relatively easy to create along the same lines as a general "life skills" science test.

[HPFA]

The one thing we can't tell from the old papers is how they were marked.

There isn't a difference in the difficulty of the 1984 history paper and the 2000 GCSE - actually I was surprised at how similar they were although the GCSE paper rewarded you more on the "explanatory" question than the factual one, whereas the O Level did the reverse But without knowing how the answers are marked you can't really know whether one was more "difficult" than the other.

As many people have said, O-Levels did reward those with a good memory- many people have said on this thread that they passed O-Levels without understanding any of it.

[Witchend]

I think it's quite interesting. My experience was maths.

I was not many years down into the line of GCSEs and could (good mathematician) do o-level maths papers-in fact I rather enjoyed them.
There was also a noticeable step up in difficulty on A level papers when you went onto the ones who would have done O-levels, but I could still do them.

However dbr was 5 years younger than me, and was also considered good at maths (As in maths/further-before A* came in) and he not only couldn't do the O-level papers, and the equivalent A-level ones , he couldn't even get an okay mark on the A-level papers from my year. It wasn't that he hadn't covered the subjects, he just hadn't covered them in enough depth.

My memory of my observation on the paper from that time was that they totally spoon fed the questions.
So whereas my paper would say (eg). Integrate f(x) wrt x. from x=3 to x = 2 (6 marks)
His would say:
a) prove that f(x)= (something that made it easy to integrate) (2 marks)
b) show that integrate f(x) = integrate (something that makes it easy to integrate) (1 mark)
c) Show that integrate f(x) wrt x = (answer in x) (2 marks)
d) What is integrating f(x) wrt x from x = 2 to x = 3 (1 mark)

So although on the face of it, the same work is done, they tell you exactly how to do it (for the non mathematical there are several methods for integration and in most cases there's only one or two that are best, so choosing the right method is part of showing your understanding how it works)
You are given the answer for most of it. It's much easier working towards a known answer. You're much more likely to end up at it!
And the other thing. Even if you don't understand one part, you can just pick it up from part way through.

I've picked this example because I had an experience with someone in my year who was doing maths, he was B/C borderline, so quite reasonable, but not at top.
I came across him in tears over a exercise of integration. He'd been fine while doing single methods but was all at sea having been given a mixed exercise. As I was talking through with him, I found that if you gave him the method to do the question he was totally correct. ie he'd have been getting top marks on the later papers that dbro did. Thing was he could work through a method fine, but he didn't have the understanding why that method worked.
I spent ages talking each one through with him, and he understood most of the methods by the exam time, so as long as it was one of those he'd be fine!

My English however was the easiest ever. We were 100% coursework and did 10 essays total over the 2 GCSE years for language and lit. They all counted towards language, and about half counted towards lit. Was ridiculously easy and stress free.

Also the chemistry first GCSE papers I remember used to start with multi choice. The first question was something along the lines of. Is this a picture of a) Bunsen Burner, b) test tube, c) safety goggles d) next door neighbour's pet goldfish.
They'd stopped that by the time I got there, but I think the idea was to start off with an easy one all could get, but even so!

[HPFA]

Witchend That's quite funny because integration was the one thing I remember learning by heart for O-Level. Still have no idea what it is but I learnt that if I followed the formula it would always get a tick.

Yesterday I did Indices on My Maths to help DD with revision and at the end said "the good news is if you remember the rules it's quite easy, bad news is there are a lot of rules" So some things don't change.

[tobee]

I sent this thread to 17 year old ds. He says "the answer is no,"

[tobee]

Op the describing the medieval manor question immediately makes me think that exams were as much reflecting teaching to test as we think now, if you'd spent 2 years learning the syllabus you'd have known exactly what that question was asking and would have regurgitated your lessons.

[noblegiraffe]

Many Year 6 children could never take a CSE paper and pass it, certainly none I knew.

But it's a very rare Y6 pupil who could get a C at GCSE too.

I've just looked up CSEs, it seems that there were many children, possibly as many as a quarter who didn't sit O-level or CSE maths. GCSE maths is sat by almost every student.

[HPFA]

So far this is the only example I can find of any CSE Maths. I suppose that says something about how it was regarded. The questions here do not seem particularly easy - I don't have a clue how to tackle them

www.jstor.org/stable/30212453?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[TheSnorkMaidenReturns]

I think testing understanding is done far better by modern GCSEs. And the teenagers work much harder than we did. O levels certainly benefitted those with a good memory.

I have a large number of O levels from the early 80s, 10 of them with A grades, from the notoriously tough JMB. While I was very academically able it was the combination of exam technique and an excellent memory than enabled me to do so well. I (mostly) had good teaching too! Maths did of course include calculus but given that I'd started learning that around the age of 13 it was no longer 'too hard'.

I don't know enough about the new syllabus and grading as my children aren't quite there yet and it may be tweaked before we start. I'm going to start studying the boards for this quite soon though.

[GreenGinger2]

Bad bunny that wasn't an 11+ paper,just a CPG made up one.

CEM don't publish papers so they could have anything in them.

[GreenGinger2]

I'm a bit stunned at how much my brain has clearly deteriorated since I got my clutch of O'levels in the 80s. All bar English seem quite hard to me now. They seemed pretty easy at the time, A'levels were quite a jump up. Degree not so much.

[NotCitrus]

I was one of the first cohorts of GCSE, so we did lots of past O-level questions. It was clear that for history there had been standard textbooks with standard explanations of What Caused the Russian Revolution/First/Second World/Franco-Prussian War. There was total absence of evaluating sources but also a welcome absence of the 'empathy' questions - e.g. How would you feel if you were a starving Russian peasant in 1930? Our teacher pointed out that for 15 marks, you needed an essay on the peasant's possible political views, and 'bloody hungry' would only get you one...

The big change to GCSE from my point of view was coursework, which meant you were only allowed to do 9 or possibly 10, which took some explaining to my dad who was hoping I'd be one of the kids with 13 or so. As someone with an excellent memory for regurgitating facts, I was gutted and felt diddled out of a string of A's (I did get 9). For maths it was great and I really got into my three investigations. For English as someone else said it was a piece of piss as half of your 10 EngLit essays could be re-used for Lang. And I therefore escaped ever having to write about Romeo and boring Juliet.

German O-level would have been easier in some ways - no listening exam, translating formal neat sentences into English rather than badly-photographed random leaflets and signs - but did require translation into German, which was terrifying for us trying it during A-level until we got into the swing of what phrases and grammatical forms were expected. ('We haven't used a subjunctive yet; that must be where it goes').
For Chemistry, again we used O-level and old A,S, and Oxford /Cambridge exam papers during my A-levels, and again they seemed terrifying but boiled down to memorising more reactions and compounds - my dad was amused how many S-level ones hinged on recognising a substance called red lead, as being a research chemist he'd never needed to know about it! Often the S-level question said 'Figure out the mechanism' but our teacher confirmed no way would anyone actually do so - it all depended on whether you'd learned the mechanism for ozonolysis.

[Badbadbunny]

Bad bunny that wasn't an 11+ paper,just a CPG made up one.

Yes, I know, but it's very similar to the real papers. I've been through this with my son and purchased the specimen papers from the publishers as part of the preparation. They're very realistic and similar to the real thing used by my son's school.

[GreenGinger2]

Interesting dp looked at it and thought it was pretty straight forward. He's looked at a lot of our year 8 dc's maths homework and says in the areas they've covered it's pretty comparable. We get the same grade at O'level. In my defence he has computer science and engineering degrees so probably still uses it.

[GreenGinger2]

If it's CEM nobody knows the content so publishers can't claim they are similar.

[Badbadbunny]

If it's CEM nobody knows the content so publishers can't claim they are similar.

I never said it was CEM - it isn't.

[DapperDame]

Yes, they were. You had to be able to work out the route to answering the question and identify what the question was looking for rather than be spoonfed towards it in steps.

From my own recollection, O levels were designed for the top 20% of the population, CSEs for the next 40% (our was it 60%?). The average national attainment was CSE Grade 4. It was very rare to come across anyone taking more than 9 O levels at one sitting.

[ActuallyThatsSUPREMECommander]

As I recall you could game the exam boards. In my school top set English did one board but lower sets did another one in which actual essays were optional and you could opt purely for comprehension questions on chunks of the set texts. I worked out that I could have passed without ever having studied the set texts. Our very cynical Latin teacher had cherry picked the easiest possible syllabus and options to find us the one where you could get an a grade without ever writing a single word of Latin.