University A-level plan challenged

I don't think they have been getting any easier over the last 10 years, I do past papers from 2000 onwards and there is no change in difficulty.
It's really hard to say if they are harder or not because of different syllabuses.
 
Dolph said:
something needs to be done to address the plummeting standards in our education system, and moving a levels back to universities is a good start.
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Ending grade inflation would be a good start... remove incentives for exam boards to make exams easier over time - select a distribution, set grade boundaries and stick with it.

An A then actually means something i.e. top 5% or whatever the boundary is set at.
 
RomanNose said:
I don't think they have been getting any easier over the last 10 years, I do past papers from 2000 onwards and there is no change in difficulty.
It's really hard to say if they are harder or not because of different syllabuses.
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I've said this on a different thread before, but I also used 1980s and 1990s past papers as well; if anything, they were easier.
 
RomanNose said:
I don't think they have been getting any easier over the last 10 years, I do past papers from 2000 onwards and there is no change in difficulty.
It's really hard to say if they are harder or not because of different syllabuses.
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Try comparing pre and post 2000 syllabi and papers...
 
PermaBanned said:
I don't know about your parents, but mine taught me to read before i went to school...

Exams are not getting easier. There is no reason to even believe that. Most people with that opinion have either heard it from somebody else or looked at one or two exam questions and thought 'hey, i could do that' without any understanding of what the marks are for. And probably people who did most of their exams open book.
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It's funny, i don't remember mentioning YOUR parents, by thanks for bringing mine up.

Do you think all the illiterate kids in the education system currently were, A/ taught to read, write and do pretty simple maths by their parents or B/ are part of the current rapidily expanding generation of kids left by crap parents to be taught by schools who are failing miserably?

The system is being made easier so "no kid is left behind", when you consistently set the bar so the worst kids, who aren't taught a thing by their parents and act out at school, can pass... you're taking something away from every other student and this has been happening for 20 years.

As for exam papers, there are simply subjects on old gcse maths/science papers that are now there on a-level papers, or later, etc, etc. There are many bits that are still taught in the same bracket, and will be found on old and new papers and as with anything else, some years a paper is particularly easy and other years a paper is stupidly hard.

We used to be taught more in most subjects, but not tested on everything we learned.

A history subject could today, be identical give or take to a paper 30 years ago but the difference being a student 30 years ago was taught a far broader range of topics within the course, and could have answered and passed other papers with entirely different questions while a student today might get an exam paper on the same subjects and have never of read about the period ever before.

ultimately exams are still generally speaking 1.5-3 hours and you can only test a certain amount in that time. Some people will have better knowledge in some area's and therefore find some papers extremely easy and others extremely hard.

There is the simple fact that, on a world scale just about everyone else in the world see's the UK moving backwards and says the average graduate isn't both, anywhere near as good as they used to be and, no where near as highly regarded, this isn't because our education system is improving.
 
RomanNose said:
I found a 1972 paper
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?p=5679460
It's really not that bad at all, I haven't seen some of the stuff but I can do some of the questions.
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Here in lies the problem, you can do some of the questions doesn't make it easy, or hard.

Some of those questions are of the style I did at level two on a MATHS degree.............

and that isn't even close to the hardest paper listed in the thread. I did some of that stuff before I even took my gcse, yet some of that is now coming up in degree level maths, so yes, I'd say the education system has dropped off to an embarrassingly poor level.

This stuff is on lvl 2 maths exams at uni, is stupendously easy(for the level) and yet is difficult for many of the people doing the courses, there is a HUGE problem here. I'm wasting my time doing this crap when I could be working hard, and getting a degree that means something.
 
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Dolph said:
Exams are getting easier, a quick comparison of past papers demonstrates it quite well, as does the skyrocketing pass rate and average grade.

for a levels to be meaningful, they should return to the % banded marking that used to be used. (and is still used on most degree courses) rather than simple pass marks.
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Do you have any examples of these comparisons to hand?

Percentage grading is still used. I'm not sure where you got the idea that it wasn't. I mean, you can look at the grade boundaries for the previous years and, depending on the subject, assume they'll be close to that because there's such a large sample that they're not going to move that much. I guess the case against percentage grading would be if there was an anomalous year. Do you think it's fair that if an entire year does slightly better then everyone should be punished for that? What if the entire year does worse, and less-skilled people get through because they're comparatively the same?
 
drunkenmaster said:
Here in lies the problem, you can do some of the questions doesn't make it easy, or hard.

Some of those questions are of the style I did at level two on a MATHS degree.............

and that isn't even close to the hardest paper listed in the thread. I did some of that stuff before I even took my gcse, yet some of that is now coming up in degree level maths, so yes, I'd say the education system has dropped off to an embarrassingly poor level.

This stuff is on lvl 2 maths exams at uni, is stupendously easy(for the level) and yet is difficult for many of the people doing the courses, there is a HUGE problem here. I'm wasting my time doing this crap when I could be working hard, and getting a degree that means something.
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That stuff is in a maths degree? I did practically all of that at A-Level and in my first year of undergrad mathematics we haven't even discussed maths that simple.
 
lukeharvest said:
That stuff is in a maths degree? I did practically all of that at A-Level and in my first year of undergrad mathematics we haven't even discussed maths that simple.
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Yes, its truly embarrassing for a maths degree, its called "get everyone to the same level" maths by relearning the same crap over and over till even the dumbest kid gets it. Okay its not on the most complex maths module ever, its "early" level 2 crap, and an entire joke. Some of it isn't, as I went through education I just saw certain aspects of maths get punted back from gcse- a-level - uni. Meh, a couple bits will be in lvl 2 exams and a couple bits in lvl 1 exams.

I FULLY except there are great uni's out there that wouldn't dream of teaching this crap at lvl 2 or lvl 1, and only a few people don't realise that a degree from one of the top 4-5 uni's means something entirely different.

Problem is the UK churns out more 2.1's and 1st's from "crap" uni's than good uni's, there should be some differences between the best/worst uni's, but not even close to this much difference.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Yes, its truly embarrassing for a maths degree, its called "get everyone to the same level" maths by relearning the same crap over and over till even the dumbest kid gets it. Okay its not on the most complex maths module ever, its "early" level 2 crap, and an entire joke. Some of it isn't, as I went through education I just saw certain aspects of maths get punted back from gcse- a-level - uni. Meh, a couple bits will be in lvl 2 exams and a couple bits in lvl 1 exams.

I FULLY except there are great uni's out there that wouldn't dream of teaching this crap at lvl 2 or lvl 1, and only a few people don't realise that a degree from one of the top 4-5 uni's means something entirely different.

Problem is the UK churns out more 2.1's and 1st's from "crap" uni's than good uni's, there should be some differences between the best/worst uni's, but not even close to this much difference.
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Well, employers do know the difference. I mean, if you wanted to go into front-office banking, they generally don't even consider you unless you've gone to Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, Imperial or LSE (for mathematics).
 
This is a little anecdotal but appropriate none the less. Somebody I know very well marks A-Level History papers and was categorically asked this year to give full marks to answers that were worth at most 75% by the chief examiner. This marker has had their papers adjusted down once in eight years by a nominal amount and that was in their first year of marking.

I appreciate the defensive nature that students take over the issue of dumbing down but they are missing the point. The exams are there to differentiate them from their peers and prepare them for the next level of education. Once they cease to fulfill either purpose their use is at an end. The fact that they currently do neither is a clear sign that change is needed.
 
There is less content to learn, I can tell you that straight away.

Lots of people that I know got B's and the odd A by just doing exam papers and rarely looking at the textbook outside of class.

Some of them have very little common sense as well. If I asked them for some help they would just state the answer not the reason or working behind it, just to accept it.

Also the exams in the past 3/4 years have been harder than they were early 2000's. Teachers have mentioned this as well not just me.
 
I think the first thing that needs to change is the board system - surely it is inefficient, drives standards down, and means students don't have a common base to work from (admittedly differences are usually small, but they still exist). There should be a single A level course syllabus, structure, and exam for each A level. Also, if all the boards were coalesced they would have more resources per subject to put into improving the qualification, checking papers for errors, and so on.

If some group really wanted to run their own qualification then they would be able to, but it shouldn't be called an a level.

After that, who should run it? that's difficult - if we say that the only reason to do A levels is to prepare someone for university (which at the moment it may not be, but let's assume it is), then it would be logical for the universities to have a say in what each A level includes... But then I suppose you'd have problems with the Engineering department of a uni wanting different things in the maths A level to what the Economics department wants, and I suppose somewhere in the university administration compromises on what to ask for would have to be made. I wouldn't like a system where A levels become more fragmented than they already are - you could have a 'maths for engineering' and a 'maths for economics' A level, but I wouldn't be a fan - I think students already have to specialise too soon, and specialising further at A level than they already do would just trap people as well as giving them a very narrow education.

So, universities should definitely have some input into A levels, but shouldn't actually run it imo - they should be allowed to, it should be the responsibility of the state to properly define education for students while they are still in state education (or a non state parallel). The A level body would need to somehow rank universities requests, and decide if any background knowledge was missing. I think the best system for that would simply to be ignore universities who take an average student who gets grades lower than the top ooh, let's say 40%, then employ whoever currently sets the syllabus to put it all together in whatever fashion they wish, and then the universities would have a vote and if a certain A level got less than 50% approval then they'd have to rejig it until they did approve it or some overall director comes along and breaks a deadlock.


But yes, that system or any other system I think a single A level board should be the first priority, and there should be some system by which universities have an input.
 
Having a single 'exam board' would work better in theory, but the question is could it be done in a way where it could be trusted to do it right? At least with the current system you have the option of changing when one exam board starts to go crazy (which is one of the many words i've heard used to describe AQA of late). Sure, the universities should have some input. But personally i think the teachers need the most. And if you take away the choice then you take away what little input they already have.
 
Moses said:
Why should the teachers have much input? Especially more than the universities? The universities know what they need the end product to be, whilst the teachers do not.
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The teachers know what the universities want, and they know what the kids need. My problem with letting the universities have the ultimate authority is that they tend to be run much more like a business than a school or college. If you send the task to a school then you can be pretty sure it will be done by somebody who teaches regularly. Send it to a university and what's to stop it being done by exactly the same sort of people it's being done by now? People who haven't so much as been in a classroom in the past ten years.
 
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