Why have an exam where more than half the students get the best possible grade?

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Soldato
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I don't wish to take anything away from the people who received their A-levels today, but I've just been having a look on the BBC website and came across the results by subject.

This immediately stood out to me
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/education/07/exam_results/a_level/html/mathematics_further.stm

56.8% of people acheived an A grade in further maths?
What's the point of having this exam if getting an A tells you that you may not even be in the top half of people who sat it?

Regardless of the fact that people may be getting cleverer (I would like to keep that out of this discussion) surely the exams should be graded on a percentile basis.

What happens in a few years when 90% of the people sitting exams acheive the top grade? They will become absolutely meaningless.

IMO an A grade should be reserved for the top x percentage of people sitting the exam. Even if no-one gets above half marks in actual terms, it should be graded so as to give the top few an A and then lower grades at fixed percentiles.
 
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Moses99p said:
I'm confused????

In most subjects you get a certain percentage getting each grade because nationally you get clever people and thick people (+ all in between).

In crazy subjects like further maths you only get the top people studying it so the results will look crazy (lots of A's and B's). In my school they offered further maths and it was the really clever and dedicated people that did it, giving up free periods etc to do the lessons.
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But by having an exam where most people get an A it gives little indication of how you stand up next to your peers.
How is it possible to see where the very top students are in this case?
If every single student gets over 80% should we give them all A's?

Surely you must see that we need a way of differentiating the most able? Grading is the way to do this, but it falls flat on its face when most acheive the top grade.
 
DaveF said:
Because it tells a university that you've covered the material in the A level, so that the courses can assume you know what a hyperbolic substitution is, or how to solve linear differential equations.

In fact, Further Maths isn't 'designed' to be harder than the Maths A-level - it's just supposed to cover more ground. In practice it is harder, because you can't do a lot of the topics in FM without being fluent at calculus, trig manipulation, etc. In other words, you really need to be an 'A' grade student at normal maths to really have much chance with FM.

I took my FM A-level over 20 years ago; in my class 75% of people (3 of 4) got a grade A. (We'd all taken A-level Maths a year earlier). So it's not like this is a new situation. Having looked at the current exams, they don't cover as much material as our exams did, but to be honest I'd say they are actually harder. (Basically because you have to answer every question now; in my day you could pick and choose, which made a big difference).

To recap, FM is only taken by "the best of the best", but it is not really designed to differentiate between them - merely to give them the chance to learn additional maths that will help them in their degree. If you want to really challenge the best, there are other exams: the obvious one being AEA Maths (11% distinction rate, 70% fail rate).
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I see your point, but then why bother with grading the exam at all in that case? Surely the whole point of assigning a grade is to differentiate the abilities of the students, and when the majority get the top grade I fail to see how this is being done adequately.

I never got the opportunity to take further maths (thanks to my school :rolleyes: ) so can't say if it is a hard exam, but IMO this point is moot.
If it were art where most people got an A then the argument could be used that it's just people who are good at art taking the exam.
I still say that regardless of the abilities of the people taking the exam it should be graded so as to adequately differentiate the candidates.
 
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