I agree with Gove. The amount of people I saw at university who had no idea how to write a decent essay or the formalities of one (including myself), who couldn't study independently, or had large gaps in knowledge was quite shocking.
The number of people with 'PhD' after their name who can't do that is even more depressing.
Two of my A-levels where physics and economics. You can see that A-levels have become easier over the years by reviewing past papers for physics. Compare the exams from the past several years to the ones from the mid to late 90s. Massive difference in terms of how questions are presented, the range of material covered, the expectations of the quality of your answers, and how well you had to explain and know the material. Set expectations by universities in A level exams would go a long way to halt this process.
During my A Levels I had to study for the STEP maths exam for Cambridge and while looking through some REALLY old (like mid 70s) A Level past papers I came across
exactly a question which had appeared in a recent STEP exam! What used to be for everyone had, over time, migrated into the STEP exam instead. Sure, it was STEP I, not Step II or III, but still, the STEP are more about problem solving on your feet, something A Levels seem terrified of testing for.
Seems a strange situation where i'm arguing for less regulation and Dolph is arguing for more, but regardless - it's the teachers that should control what they teach. That might mean being stricter in terms of employment, but that can't be a bad thing for the kids (especially when they have a say in who gets picked). They know the subject, they know the kids and they know what will be useful later on, be it in uni or work.
Do you mean the teachers in the sense of the NUT or do you mean teachers themselves, for a particular class? It has to be standardised and at present there's a large disconnect between A Levels and undergrad 1st years. I once had to teach a physics 1st year course in basic calculus which was really just a review of A Level stuff. Except some of them barely even knew any calculus, despite having done the required A Levels (else they'd not have got on the course).
The difference between some universities is quite noticeable. Oxbridge (I'm talking about maths and physics here, I can't speak from experience otherwise) 'reviews' A Level material in about a single lecture, with comments like "You should know all of this, if not then get yourself the relevant textbooks and get up to speed". Other places spend much of the first year reviewing the material. I dread to think what some foundation courses cover....
And a second issue is that some teachers don't have much understanding of the university material's requirements. In most cases a teacher needs to have a degree in a related subject to what they want to teach at A Level but that doesn't mean they have a good grasp of it. I can think of a few teachers I had I wouldn't trust to know what to teach me.
To be honest we don't have enough teaching hours, it should be a 30 hour week and not a 15 hour week.
Personally I think there's too much emphasis on doing example after example till you're blue in the face (again, for maths). I'm sure we all remember lessons where the teacher explains a new equation/method on the board for about 15 minutes then you spend the next 3 lessons doing problems 1 to 87 trillion from chapter 5 in your dog eared textbook. At university you're given the general formula, perhaps the lecturer does a single example and then if you want more examples/walk through you're go read a book yourself or be particularly vocal during a problems class. Of course I'm not saying examples should be removed from A Levels but rather the amount of them should be altered. Part of university is about doing things off your own back, less hand holding is provided, so it's not unreasonable to start some of it pre-university. After all, if someone is doing an A Level subject their either enjoy it so they shouldn't mind too much doing work themselves or they need it for their planned future course in life so they'll have to get used to it.
The only thing we have is regulation, we "regulate" education with exam results, and we cheat the system by making exams easier. Right now the government controls the level of exams and has a vested interest in easier exams giving them better results to spew out while campaigning. Universities don't campaign for office, their life gets easier and THEY get better results if the kids they get are smarter to start with. Government setting exams and what kids learn for political gain is the reason our system is crumbling.
I look forward to the day this year on year unbroken for something like 23 years improvement on pass rates stops. The statistics are being manipulated by these "Mark it out of 70 and multiply by 120/70 to give the score out of 100" nonsense. Mark out of 100 and your score is your score, don't allow a fiddle factor! When a government has the balls to stop manipulating the system so that we get the true behaviour of the grades over time, ie sometimes up, sometimes down, then I'll be very impressed. Right now no one wants to be labelled the first government since Thatcher to allow a drop in exam passes to happen under their watch, even though everyone knows results go down sometimes.
Part of the problem is that a lot of people who go to university wrongly believe that it's an extension of school and the university teaches you. Whereas the actual case is you teach yourself and the lecturers are there to assist you.
Precisely. If someone is doing a degree then either they like it or they need it for a job, either way they should be mostly self motivated. If a degree then pushed them, as if aimed at
slightly better students, then it might pick a fork in more people's backsides so they get used to having to run to keep up. If you can sit in 2nd gear and swan into a 2.1 then you've missed a little of what university is about, you haven't learnt to push yourself and put in effort for a palpable reward. I'll admit I didn't really learn the art of proper self motivation until perhaps 1.5 years into postgrad but then it was because my supervisor had ****ed off on maternity leave and no one in the department understood what I was doing so it became a sink or swim situation. Of course we shouldn't be putting everyone in such situations but a little more learning to put some effort into their work would help a lot of students, at university or otherwise.
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