GCSE's and National Curriculum Scrapped by 2014.....O levels to replace them

Ksanti said:
Useless argument. Grades are given relative to the rest of the country e.g. top 10% of marks get As etc. stuff like that. If an exam is easy then who gives a ****? If you're not all getting full marks then it's not too easy because an exam's role is to differentiate.
Click to expand...
No, they're not, otherwise 50% of people would get a 50% mark and above, and 50% less than that.
 
King Damager said:
I suspect the same will occur once I do my professional qualification to my degree. The degree may still be important, but not as much any more..
Click to expand...

I went back to doing a second degree for fun (first was an LL.B, second PPE), after completing various professional exams - BVC, then Advocate, then ACCA, then ICSA. All I can say is that the degree was hilarious by comparison. I'm sure my first degree was far more difficult.
 
Last edited:
Panzerbjorn said:
It's not as simple as that – A child could have a photographic memory but under perform on the day. There are a whole host of reasons why judging a child's educational career on a single 2-hour exam is a bad idea and this was part of the reason for the introduction of a modular system.
Click to expand...

I did O levels, I dont think any of them relied on one single exam. Maths I remember was 3 exams, I think most were 2 exams. Some may have been one exam, possibly English lit was one exam, but in a 2 hour written exam on a subject like that I do not think a good or bad day would make mush difference.

Personally I wish all exam bodies would move to open book. Much harder exams but with the information available should you need it. Much more real world, I am professionally qualified, I often check facts, figures and data to ensure its up to date. Having an open book wouldn't allow you to pass anything as it can be timed to ensure that you would not have time to be able to go in read up the section then apply it to the subject your taking the exam in. But it would allow you to check what a certain letter mean't in a complicated formula, or even to check the formula was right you were applying.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
No, they're not, otherwise 50% of people would get a 50% mark and above, and 50% less than that.
Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure what you're proposing? Are you saying that the marks should reflect whereabouts a candidate scored relative to everyone else?

That's pretty much impossible to do.

If you set a paper worth 100 marks, there is NO way that you can guarantee that the top 10% of marks will be >90 marks.
 
TheCenturion said:
I'm not quite sure what you're proposing? Are you saying that the marks should reflect whereabouts a candidate scored relative to everyone else?

That's pretty much impossible to do.

If you set a paper worth 100 marks, there is NO way that you can guarantee that the top 10% of marks will be >90 marks.
Click to expand...
Look at the IB - the average result is 50%. The average GCSE result is well over 50%, with 70% of people getting a grade*above 50%.
 
I wouldn't worry, GCSE's were already useless.
This just makes them slightly more so.




I was ashamed to even put them on my CV but i had so little work experience i had to fill space... they're just easy useless exams that don't particularly show anything to potential employers.

If Chavs who're thick as **** could pass at C+ then whats the point.
trust me.. you wouldn't of wanted to employ the people im walking about.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Look at the IB - the average result is 50%. The average GCSE result is well over 50%, with 70% of people getting a grade*above 50%.
Click to expand...

How do you propose that is changed though?

Let me give you an example. Let's say you set an exam paper worth 100 marks, and 100 students sit the exam. You make it quite a difficult exam. Luckily, the students have prepared well, and it just so happens that 12 of the students get 90 marks or more. That means that if you got above 90%, you're in the top 12% of students, not the top 10%.

I think the main problem with this is that although it allows comparison of students within a cohort, it is very difficult for comparison of students between cohorts.
 
King Damager said:
It's interesting from my perspective....

I thought the national average for GCSEs are like 5 C's... Which well, says a lot about the failings of the British Education system....

As someone who came out with 12 GCSEs, and 5 A Levels, I still feel they're all pretty much useless, the second you do a degree...

Generally speaking it went like:
GCSEs - Panic
A Levels - Panic - wonder why the hell I cared about GCSEs, as they clearly didn't matter for University.
Degree - Panic - A levels still seem slightly important, but again, pale into comparison against importance of Degree...

I suspect the same will occur once I do my professional qualification to my degree. The degree may still be important, but not as much any more..

My general consensus is that after obtaining a certain qualification, the previous one is basically rendered pointless...

kd
Click to expand...


5 A levels...

See when I went to sixth form you would have been top 0.01% to do 5 A levels, 4 was considered a lot. Uni placements were around the 28 mark for the TOP uni's and this was when you still had Polys. You couldn't take 5 A levels to make up easy points as they would only take the result from 3...
My sixth form you couldnt even do 5 A levels, taking 4 would have had you full time studying so to do a 5th it would have had to be outside normal school hours.

I was aiming for 4 A levels but dropped to 3, I still found 3 was quite a demand as did everyone else around me. Most that started 4 dropped one around the end of the first year due to workload, and the fact it wasn't massively going to help to study 4. 3 good results were "worth more" than 2 good and 2 average.

My younger sister did GCSEs. Typical girly swat always got awesome marks for project work etc, never managed to finish her professional qual. I was always marked down during school, I showed the teachers with my exam results. I would certainly have suffered doing GCSEs as I was not the sort of student teachers like as I didn't creep around them and look to boost their egos.
 
TheCenturion said:
How do you propose that is changed though?

Let me give you an example. Let's say you set an exam paper worth 100 marks, and 100 students sit the exam. You make it quite a difficult exam. Luckily, the students have prepared well, and it just so happens that 12 of the students get 90 marks or more. That means that if you got above 90%, you're in the top 12% of students, not the top 10%.

I think the main problem with this is that although it allows comparison of students within a cohort, it is very difficult for comparison of students between cohorts.
Click to expand...


I believe but cannot say for sure they had expectations under O levels. So they would expect say 5-10% to get an A. If this was well out they would review the paper and potentially move the grade A point up or down. Same for the rest of the grades.
 
Surely the main problem is not with the qualification but the fact that there are multiple exam boards, each one a private company. Why do schools go with one over another? To get better results so that they are bumped up the league tables. And so we have a "race to the bottom" where the exam boards are lowering standards so that more schools pick them over the others.

Keep the GCSE but have one state-run exam board.
 
Morbius said:
Surely the main problem is not with the qualification but the fact that there are multiple exam boards, each one a private company. Why do schools go with one over another? To get better results so that they are bumped up the league tables. And so we have a "race to the bottom" where the exam boards are lowering standards so that more schools pick them over the others.

Keep the GCSE but have one state-run exam board.
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
Limiting the exam boards would be useful (I see AQA have messed up this week's Chemistry A Level paper) so long as the variety of subjects remain. But GCSEs do need to be reformed.
 
I do hear things about the foundation GCSE papers that make them sound like parts of it are basically nursery level, but the difficulty for higher tier papers seemed about right. At least, after doing them i was right where i needed to be to start A Levels (as in, prepared to forget everything and start again ;)). Well, apart from maths.

Some people have said that you don't get a good appreciation for the subject because you spend all your time learning how to pass exams. Which in a way is true, i guess - but it's not really intentional. You only just have enough time to cover the course material, never mind anything extra. So the only way to get people through it is to teach mostly the relevant stuff. Perhaps fewer subjects, and more time per subject would help. But then you're limiting your options a bit too early i think.

What i don't want to happen is for the only route to A Levels to be through O's. As in the knowledge from O to be absolutely necessary for the A Level course in a subject. When you chose your GCSE's is far too early to drastically influence such a large life path, and it might not be a perfect balance for all subjects at the minute but it's workable. People's interests can and do change completely over the time you do GCSEs.
 
The problem that we had is that instead of sitting every part of a GCSE at the end of a course, bits of it were taken along the way. Those bits could be resat. That meant instead of concentrating on teaching and learning you had people who were being trained again and again to clear the hurdle of the examination along the way. That meant that unfortunately less time was being spent developing a deep and rounded knowledge of the subject.
Click to expand...

How right he is here. I've just sat my college exams for this term and have already forgotten most of the stuff I learnt last term as it is relatively useless for the second term.

Sin_Chase said:
At GCSE I got A+, 2 x A, 6 x B and a C.

0 revision.
Click to expand...

My results were similar, 7 A*-C grades, all with 0 revision. Some of the students to my college were discussing this matter on the bus and one was saying how the stuff she was learning at a-level her dad was learning at early GCSE/late primary school.
 
Last edited:
mollymoo said:
To Castiel, I wouldn't worry, if your son is going into further education then I see no problem.
Click to expand...

I am not sure what my son will do...his talents really lie in his creativity rather than his academic potential...he is dyslexic (the actual diagnosed condition, rather than the excuse for not trying hard enough or being a dumbass) so he finds some things more difficult to express than others on paper, although he is improving now he is getting the right education and tools he needs to compensate, so we live in hope.

I just don't want him to feel that any effort he puts in is wasted before he begins and whether it might be worth considering Private Education so that he takes a Baccalaureate instead.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom