Just wandering a clients site and found that it is now 150 years since Cambridge Assessment started writing exam questions.
Examples of 1858 exam questions:
Obtain the sum of forty-six times seven thousand and twenty, seventeen times one million and one, and thirty-three times thirty-three.
Name in order the Queens and the children of Henry VIII. On what grounds was he divorced from his first wife?
In what three ways was our Lord tempted in the wilderness?
The comments that were given by the examining body 150 years ago
“Their answers, even when accurate, showed a general uniformity of expression which seemed to imply that meagre handbooks had been placed before the Students to be ‘got up’ and that little attempt had been made by their instructors to excite the interest of their pupils by questionings or remarks of their own.”
“There was little indication of an acquaintance with the best elementary mathematics works.”
Source
http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ca/Keynotes/Article?id=116803
Found it quite interesting as these actually look a lot easier than the questions I remember from GCSE. So actually maybe we have been teaching kids a little better after all!
That said those comments could just have easilly been a quote from this weeks papers rather than a quote from 150 years ago!
Examples of 1858 exam questions:
Obtain the sum of forty-six times seven thousand and twenty, seventeen times one million and one, and thirty-three times thirty-three.
Name in order the Queens and the children of Henry VIII. On what grounds was he divorced from his first wife?
In what three ways was our Lord tempted in the wilderness?
The comments that were given by the examining body 150 years ago
“Their answers, even when accurate, showed a general uniformity of expression which seemed to imply that meagre handbooks had been placed before the Students to be ‘got up’ and that little attempt had been made by their instructors to excite the interest of their pupils by questionings or remarks of their own.”
“There was little indication of an acquaintance with the best elementary mathematics works.”
Source
http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/ca/Keynotes/Article?id=116803
Found it quite interesting as these actually look a lot easier than the questions I remember from GCSE. So actually maybe we have been teaching kids a little better after all!
That said those comments could just have easilly been a quote from this weeks papers rather than a quote from 150 years ago!
