Dumbed down national exams? What do older people think?

[Lucia39]

To get an A* pass for GCSE English Literature now requires a mere 56%!

How do those old enough to have taken 'O' levels feel about this?

Is the Government right and are 16-18 year olds getting brighter year on year? Or have the powers-that-be simply dumbed down the GCSEs and 'A' levels thereby allowing candidates who would have failed 'O' levels (i.e. not gained a grade C) to now believe they are actually competent in their subjects?

Starlight, more likely it depended on the subject studied.

I was certainly not spoonfed at Cambridge, like abraid you got on with it, and if you couldn't cope with the fairly mountainous pile of work, then tough. I remember being aghast when I visited friends at other unis and how much lighter the workload was. I wonder if it's still so heavy now, or if it's been dumbed down too.

I went to an ex poly before I threw it in and did an OU course and OMG the difference in workload and expected level was HUGE.

Whatever they might say, - the uni world is not a level playing field.

Interesting point about spoon-feeding, although it should be noted that not all students need this. There's also a huge variance between universities in terms of workload and tutors' expectations. (This is based on my own and my friends experience as mature students at different universities.) I agree that it's not a level playing field, my friend at an ex-poly has far fewer assignments/essays than me

It is silly to say that different courses are the same level of difficulty when cearly they are not, at all levels of education.

i remember taking a break at uni from my quantum mechanics book to see a friend. She was about to start watching a sci fi film and I said "ooh can I watch". She said "oh OK I've got to watch it anyway, it's my homework". I was

I think that if you are used to one sort of subject you just have no idea what the others are like. Up until that point I had assumed that all uni courses were equally challenging, a theory I managed to maintain even when I found out that some people only had 2 hours lectures a week, as I thought they would have to work really hard at home the rest of the time...

I did O and A levels in the 80's and attended a state comprehensive. I remember them being really challenging. You had to study hard to understand the subject and memorise all the facts /equations etc. Coursework counted to 10-15% of the final mark in a few subjects but in most subjects the final grade you got was based on how well you did in the 3 hour exam you took at the end of the 2 year course.

Only 20% of my year took Alevels as you had to have grade B or higher at Olevel in the subject you wanted to take at Alevel as well as Grade C or above in English Language and maths if you wanted to do any A level. 2/3 (15% of my year group) of those then went onto university or higher education so much lower than the current 40%. I remember about 3 people in my year made it to oxbridge and they were exceptional instead of Alevels they did "S" levels which were the equivalent of the lst year at degree level. I do remember however that Alevels prepared me well for the 1st year of my degree course.

It was interesting that a couple of years ago Channel 4 put a class of very bright kids through an olevel course and none of them passed. One of the boys said that he thought gcses were designed to pass you while Olevels were designed to fail you. IMO I think thats the real difference.

I have a pet theory that girls have outperformed boys in all subjects since they placed greater emphasis on coursework and girls are on the whole more concientious. When I was doing O and A levels boys outperformed girls in nearly all subjects as imo boys tend to be better at final sudden death exams.

I think that's true, mumzy. When I did o grades and highers in Scotland in the eighties there was no coursework - it all hinged on the exam at the end, which meant a lot of swotting throughout the years for the majority of us, as it was the only way we could keep on top of things. Of course, there were some who could simply cram at the end, and it did seem to be the boys in the main.

Coursework is not a bad thing up to a point, but I still feel the exam at the end should be what assesses how much you know and have retained. Until we move away from this emphasis we as a country seem to have placed on going to university and getting any old degree at all, then I don't think we'll move away from this perception that every child has to leave with a clutch of exam passes. There needs to be far more importance placed on vocational qualifications and apprenticeships IMO.

What depresses me is that every so often, and more and more recently, the private school sector toy with the idea of doing different qualifications rather than GCSE etc.

If that happens it truly will be a two tier system.

some are already sham.. iGCSE.. it puts them bottom of the league tables but they don't care

If the private schools all start to go down the IGCSE route it will be interesting to see if they still all get As. I think it may backfire on the less 'academic' schools who have perfected getting the average student up to A grades.

That really will be a 2 tier system then as presumably the top universities will start looking for the new qualifications as opposed to the ones being done in the state sector...

universities will always be far more interested in A-levels than GCSEs. I don't think they'll care if applicants have done GCSEs or iGCSEs, but the iGCSE people may have a headstart with their AS levels as they are supposed to be a better preparation.

I think universities are quite interested in GCSEs (they certainly used to be interested in O Levels) as it shows your ability to juggle a lot of things at the same time. In some ways, that can be a good indicator of how a student will handle a degree course.

Isn't there an alernative to A-Levels as well though - don't iGCSEs lead into the international baccelaureate or something?

What saddens me is that kids come out of school, and in some cases out of university and they don't have an education, they just have some qualifications, which is entirely different and does them a great disservice.

In my day, there was still the idea that you were taught stuff because it was assumed that the ideal was a broad base of knowledge that would prepare you for adult life. You were examined on a cross section of that knowledge, and the more you'd learned, the better you did, and your results were a decent representation of your ability as a student.

Nowadays the idea of an actual education has fallen by the wayside, with teachers forced to teach narrowly for the sole purposes of getting people through the exams (which have undoubtedly got easier).

I was in the second year to sit GCSE's (1989). We had very few GCSE past papers to practise from, so we had to use O'Level papers. The exams which we sat were so much easier and we felt very fortunate. It was quite easy to get straight A's even back then just by working hard. You did not need to be amazingly bright. I got straight A's, but was not the top of my good comprehensive, and I could not replicate this at A'Level (which were still the old fashioned type).

The only difference was that back then, most students sat 8 GCSE's, maybe 9 if they were really bright. AFAIK, it is not uncommon for students to sit 10 or more now, so in terms of breadth of study perhaps things are more demanding now. However, the grade inflation is just silly, but it is not possible to turn back the clock now. The crazy thing is that A* was introduced to combat grade inflation, but I suspect that this grade is now also being over awarded.

I have not read all the replies, but I am finding this thread very interesting.

My Father in Law showed my the GCSE science Qs in The Guardian last week and he was raving (he is an industrial chemist).

I do believe that GCSEs and A levels are getting easier. I am also an old fart - was last year of O Levels. I am a physics graduate turned civil engineer, and I am quite heavily involved in graduate recruitment for a large public sector organization. As part of the recruitment assessment, graduates have to take a maths test. Calculators are allowed. I find that I can always do the test and get the answers right, without a calculator in about half the allocated time. I am not under any pressure sure, but I am certainly not a maths whizz by any standards. When we do get graduates in, often their written English is so bad that I can barely understand their work.

I don't know what we (UK Plc!) can do about this, it s just an observation. I had to explain the dofference between "Their", "There" and "They're" to a 23 year old graduate recently - something that I would expect anyone out of primary school to know (and no, he was no dyslexic, had just been taught English very badly)! Gives me no confidence I my DS's future education .

I do wonder if the spelling and grammatical problems are as a result of computers and spell checkers etc, and we would have the same problems even if O-Levels were still in place and no changes had been made to curriculums etc.

The maths stuff bothers me. Personally I feel that maths is a very beautiful thing, that elegant proofs are tremendously satisfying etc and if you like maths you feel a special relationship with the numbers and symbols.

The idea that children are learning how to get the answers without understanding why makes me sad. And of course without good maths you will never get anywhere with engineering, physics, medicine etc.

We are dropping the basics in pursuit of... I'm not sure what...

I don't know about relative standards of academic difficulty in exams between now and when I did them (A levels in 1989, degree in 1993, last year of O levels) but I do think there is a real difference in attitude in young people: I think when I was in education we accepted that it was risky, not set up around "me me me", things could go wrong, a trick question could trick you, you could fail, you could get less than you did in class when you took the exam. If you worked hard and were bright, you were in with a chance, but it was an impersonal testing ground set up not necessarily to your advantage - and certainly not intended to be compassionate or child-centred.

Nowadays when I work with (that is, am persuaded against my will to accept into my team) young people directly out of education, no matter how bright they are, one thing they don't get is that the world is not all about them. Things can be unreasonably hard, they can be unfair in that they can have to work harder against a competitor who has some sort of other advantage, a project can require researching information in counter-intuitive and labour intensive ways, whereas they think they "should" be able to look things up easily in obvious places and if this can't be done, it is "unfair" to expect them to work harder. In other words, they think that their boss is like the teachers and tutors they have had to date and is there to do the stuff they don't feel like doing, and make sure they only have to attempt things once the bar has been lowered to a "reasonable", safe level - and they get resentful at having to work hard towards success that is not guaranteed and with no clear outcomes and can be very stroppy and obnoxious about it as these challenges are all so new to them.
In the real world you can't make every goal achievable or every challenge fair and I don't find these young people prepared for this.
Two years later they get it, but I don't want them on my team till someone else has dealt with them!
I am sure I was pathetic and immature in a million ways in my first job, but not in exactly this way. And certainly not aggressive about it, as they can be so very entitled.

I have to come back to this discussion (given that I started it)!

Reading the comments I think there is some agreement that qualifications have been 'dumbed down' (for want of a better term). This raises serious consequences for the future and several contributors have mentioned some of the problems already being encounted as a result of present day education.

IMO education is no longer valued for its own sake any more. I hear colleagues regularly complaining that sixth formers have approached them saying that they need a certain grade in that subject and what is the minimum amount of work they need to do to achieve this! This raises the question about how much work those individuals will be prepared to do once they get to university, given the pressure on lecturers to award higher degree passes than the work actually merits!

We know that plagiarism is rife - hence the reason why course work is being adapted and/or scrapped. We see plagiarism and atrocious grammar, punctuation, and spelling at both under and post-graduate level and we have degree courses which, previously, ran for three years now including a "foundation" year (basically teaching the students things they should have learned at school). I have had undergraduates who have absolutely no idea how to write an essay or do independent research despite being awarded As and Bs at 'A' level!

I also despair at the number of so-called degrees being offered today! Since when was Tourism and Leisure an academic discipline? When did The Beatles warrant their very own MA course?

We need to accept that not every child is academic just as not every child can play Premier League football or become a world famous fashion model. Sadly far too many pupils are being led to believe that they can do any of these things (viz the motley collection of cliches and platitudes that are now plastered on school corridors).

It seems we are are setting up a generation to be mightily disappointed and, in many respects, ill-equipped to cope with the problems that life will throw at them.

StarlightMcEggzie said

^I went to an ex poly before I threw it in and did an OU course and OMG the difference in workload and expected level was HUGE.

Whatever they might say, - the uni world is not a level playing field. ^

I am doing an history degree at an ex poly now herts uni. I was wondering what StarlightMcEggzie thought was easier. I am struggling with full time degree as single mum of three delinquent kids and was thinking of doing ou instead next year. Not sure if StarlightMcEggzie meant OU was harder or easier? Has any one got any ideas?

I think that some courses are perceived (or may be) 'easier', due to the fact that different universities have different entry requirements. Have you thought about going part-time, if that's possible?

BTW, it would be a good idea to ask your question about the OU as a new thread in 'Student Parents', as you'll find a lot of knowledgeable people there who are doing OU degrees.

I think the problem is the notion that all children are equally academically able. My DD is doing 'child development' GCSE at her (very good) grammar school. I have seen her homework/coursework and past papers. Its not an academic subject and should not under any circumstances be given the same value as her physics/maths/english literature/Latin GCSEs. The school is very open about the children doing am 'easy' subject where pretty much every child is guaranteed an A*.
Now in my opinion there's nothing wrong with doing child development, it has taught her the value of breastfeeding, how expensive babies are etc, but it shouldn't be a GCSE.

The same goes for degree courses, I'm sorry but how can a 3 year English degree from Oxbridge or even Durham/UCL/Exeter or any of the redbricks etc where the entry requirements are AAA, probably with another A or B at AS level and an A or B in general studies or critical thinking thrown in for good measure be worth the same as a 2 year degree from Staffordshire University, where the entry requirements are 200 Ucas points (about DDD with an E at as level)

I think that the students at any halfway decent university will be of a similar calibre to the students there 20/30/40 years ago. Its the ones doing 'Golf course management' at Thames Valley who wouldn't have got anywhere near a unversity 30 years ago. And to be honest its not doing anyone any favours, why go to university for 3 years to gain £20,000 of debt when you could have gone into work at 18? We'd be better off if university was for the very bright and not a half-way house to adulthood with training courses and work being a respected and viable alternative.

Poppylover

Sorry, I meant the OU was harder in terms of level.

FWIW It suited me better though. The WAY the course was structured expected more from me in terms of automony and general adult behaviour and responsibility. I think that is suffers rather unfortunately from having to 'prove' it is as good as a redbrick university and so perhaps sometime overcompensates. But, I got much more out of studying and came away feeling enthused for my subject.

Uni of Herts has always been one of the better Polys iirc (I think it regularly used to come top in the league tables), so I imagine less of jump for you from that to OU than from the poor imitation of a Uni that I went to (Leeds Poly if anyone is interested).

The OU is fantastically structured and there are pointers throughout if you need additional help/reading.

Hope that helps.

peapod I'd be interested to know whether you feel a degree in Media Studies from Oxford (yes, I've checked - they do them) was worth more than a Physics degree from Cranfield (ex poly).

Also, can't you buy A grades at A-levels, rather than achieve them through intelligence? Private schooling, private tuition etc.? Lot of students who don't get A's are not necessarily incapable.

Oooh this has got me thinking!

Maybe I should do something through the OU...

Right.

What's not as hard as Physics (my existing degree) but sounds impressive and is very interesting?

To StarlightMcEggzie and SubRosa
Thank you, you have both been very helpful and encouraging.