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.

I did Geography A level in 1969 and plate tectonics hadn't made it into the textbooks or onto the syllabus. The standard text was Monkhouse, Principles of Physical Geography, which had been going since at least 1954, without too many updates, as far as I remember.

Maths O level used log tables - which also had trig functions in. Pocket calculators hadn't been invented.

Don't these sorts of memories make you feel old!

I did O Levels in 1954. We had log tables for Maths.

I remember collecting a blob of mercury, after a thermometer broke in Chemistry. I kept it in my Rollex pencil box.

We made chlorine in one chemistry lesson-13 pairs of us. The lab was filled with greenish fog, and we spent the rest of the morning coughing.

When I teach logs at A-level I say 'back in the olden days they had massive books filled with numbers and they had to look this stuff up. Now it's just a button on your calculator'

So not 'back in the olden days ... for O-level" then?

We had log tables despite the quite swift proliferation of fx31s, but not IIRC up at A-level. They were slimmer than a 21st century exam board study guide, so definitely not 'massive'. That was the real text books, quite a few of which were Nelkon and Parker scale.

they had massive books filled with numbers and they had to look this stuff up.

This is one thing which has annoyed me about certain politicians being anti - calculator. They are a tool, and the tools have changed over the years. We no more knew how the figures in the log tables were calculated, than today's children will know how the calculator works.

I don't suppose for one moment said politicians still drive around with coach and horses instead of flashy cars.

Our Maths teacher used to get very annoyed with us using calculators instead of the log books. She pointed out that it was fairly obvious when we'd written in eight decimal places instead of the four in the log book (I think it was four).
Apparently it was so we were equipped to do the sums even if we had no calculator. Because there are many occasions in life when you need to do a sum using a log, don't have a calculator, but do happen to have an ancient old log book around!

Calculators can now take logs to any base so if you wanted to solve 3^x=9 you could just take log to the base 3 of 9 and get 2 straight away, instead of having to take log to the base 10 of both sides then dividing like you used to.

Were log books just base 10?

Maths teaching now is much better than in the 80s. DD1 did loads of stuff in primary school that I didn't do until year 10.

I think log books were just base 10.

I did O levels in 1982, I learned how to use log tables but they were an 'in case your calculator isn't working'.
I think my DB who did O levels 2 years before me also learned how to use a slide rule.

Omg log books I had completely repressed the memory of them.

I did a level biology did anybody dissect a rat? Is this something they still do? I hope not the smell made me want to boak

The only thing I remember from O Level Geography is oxbow lakes.

I think one of the starkest contrasts between O Level and GCSEs is in modern languages. I printed off the French O Level 1984 (on page 1 of this thread) to have a look at and showed it to dd. She was horrified! I am always banging on about how O Levels were harder (having empirical evidence because I did another GCSE language last year) but here was hard and fast evidence that the standard expected has absolutely plummeted.

I did O Level French back in the sixties, and GCSE Spanish as an adult a few years ago.

You are simply not comparing like with like any more. There is now much more emphasis on speaking and listening as well as reading and writing. Whereas before it was mostly the latter two. The results in our class showed that the older ones tended to be good at reading, but generally scared stiff when it came to speaking. The young ones in the class were the opposite, pretty good at speaking and communicating, but sometimes rather clumsily, and not very good at translating things.

I agree with that. I am terrified of speaking foreign languages, yet good at reading and writing. When I did the recent GCSE I scored 100% in reading and writing but in the speaking I was stuttering and stammering and had to start again. I just couldn't regurgitate the long piece I'd had to learn off by heart and my mind kept going blank.

Nevertheless, I wish there was a bit more focus now on grammar and less on recycling and fair trade vocabulary.

Nevertheless, I wish there was a bit more focus now on grammar and less on recycling and fair trade vocabulary.

I agree - we went from one extreme to the other, instead of finding a middle ground.

It seems that in Maths most people reach a point where they no longer know why they are doing something, they just apply the rules and hope it works.

Logs, sines and cosines, integration - all these things I knew how to do (a little bit) but had no idea why. Yesterday had DD complaining that whilst she'd finally grasped error intervals she didn't like them and thought them stupid. Was tempted to be honest and tell her that if she wanted to pass GCSE Maths she'd be better off not complaining and just accept she'll have to learn a load of stuff without knowing why! It seemed a little disloyal to the noble art of Maths though.

Weirdly, I've rather enjoyed re-learning Maths to help DD. It's a lot more fun without irritable Maths teacher (sorry, Noble) and trying to keep up with kids in the class all better than you. Just me, My Maths and pen+paper. In fact, almost all the learning I've done as an adult seems easier and less stressful than what I did at school. Maybe there's a lesson there.

Has anyone mentioned slide rules? 0r am I the only one old enough to have used one?

My father used a slide rule and taught me how to use it, but they weren't used at school. Possibly because sets of log books were cheaper than sets of slide rules.

We got shown how to use log books once, in 1990! Suspect our teacher was just trying to pass the time with a bunch of smart-arses. She was well out of her depth - every lesson from 3rd year on was just "do exercise 2 on page X, if you have a problem I'll tell you where you went wrong". So thanks to a good textbook I did fine at GCSE and then floundered with AS as the maths stopped being obvious.

Even more boring was the Deputy Head deciding she wanted to teach some A level biology and spending ages each lesson reading the textbook at us. And getting grouchy if we didn't take notes. Hadnt been so bored since 2nd year, after which they finally abolished lessons of Read Round the Class. Could never understand most people's monotones. The teacher who made us do The Snow Goose that way deserves a special place in hell as she never even explained anything about what was going on. People asked me where Dunkirk was and I said it sounded like Scotland. No hint it was historical either so we were surprised when WWII suddenly got involved. ..

Just did Hannah's sweets! Did GCSE and Additional / A/ O? Maths in 1989 and A-level in 1991. Hard to remember now, but I think that could have been one of the hardest questions on the GCSE maths paper back in those days. It's one of those questions designed to throw you, as you're not expecting a quadratic equation, but if you work through it logically as a probability question it's not too bad.

For the poster asking about Calculus, I don't think it was on the GCSE syllabus even back then.

The Snow Goose! Miss Miles read it to us in Form 1.We were 7 years old.

The Snow Goose is part of out "family glue"! Along with The Land of Green Ginger, Orlando the Marmalade Cat and hot milk with vanilla and sugar.

I agree - we went from one extreme to the other, instead of finding a middle ground.

That sums up educational reform over the last 50 years in a nutshell. Just lurks from one extreme to another.

I managed Hannah's sweets by brute-forcing the probability (1/3 chance of twice getting an orange sweet, so probablity a bit over half each time, let's guess 6 out of 10, oh look that works, plug n=10 into the equation below).

I suspect they hope you will factorise the quadratic, but I forgot how to do that and haven't got the formula memorised any longer!

N sweets, 6 of which are orange

P( first sweet is orange) = 6/n

If the first sweet is orange, we now have 5 orange sweets and n-1 sweets in total
So p(2nd sweet is orange if first one is) = 5/n-1

So 6/n x 5/n-1 = 1/3

30 / n(n-1) = 1/3

90 / n(n-1) = 1

Can't do squared symbol on my iPad but multiply both sides by n(n-1) and then rearrange equation.

I do love a good maths question

The national average score on Hannah's sweets for higher tier candidates was 0.2 out of 3 marks.
For A* candidates it was 1.49 out of 3.

One thing that O-levels definitely didn't have was all this data. After each mock exam now we have to enter every single mark for every single question for every pupil onto a spreadsheet which then generates a list of where they did badly so they can revise those topics.

After each proper exam, we can see exactly how the nation did.