A level grade leak

Well said, Maw. I couldn't agree more.

MawB Standards of teaching in the UK are already good. Hence the competition for UK trained teachers overseas. Obviously, it is always possible to improve. But that won't happen until teacher workload reduces.

I couldn’t agree more Maw.

Thanks Maw.
gagajo I don’t think Maw was criticising individual teachers. I took her last paragraph to mean that if more resources were available for teachers in schools where pupils were ‘disadvantaged’, there would be no need to require universities to have quotas for students from such backgrounds.
Apologies if I’ve got that wrong, Maw.

Maw I am sure/ hoping you are not implying teachers,in schools serving disadvantaged pupils are lesser teachers than those teaching advantaged students. On the governing board that I currently chair, we have the Second Master ( Deputy Head!) of a very well known public school. He is astonished at the amount of data we have to have & public / 'in school, scrutiny and accountability that our small state infant school undergoes. He has only worked with boys of a certain ability and is always in awe of how our school manages the range of ability / experiences our young learners have & get the vast majority, regardless of their background/ experiences to at least the standards expected of 7 yr olds by the time they move on to junior school. I know it is not A level but the princple stll applies... easier to teach the kids who have always had advantage to support academic success than a more mixed group who have other challenges (poverty, overcrowded conditions etc etc) to overcome as well as that of A levels!

Sorry! me again..meant to add that I agree with Maw on her view that, if properly financed & structured, the preparation & marking of external national examinations would begin to have better status as would the confidence of the public in the results.
In 1969 I took exams set by different exam boards..so it is not a new issue. Some people appear anxious about their own results from years ago.. really they do not matter or prove much! A levels are another stepping stone on a journey..once they are behind you they have little value. It is what you do next that matters...always!

Many apologies if I put things badly regarding the quality of teaching! I meant resources of course (and adequate inset training which is for some schools too expensive to provide because of the cost of supply cover)
It is also true that good and well qualified Maths teachers can be like hens’ teeth so class sizes even at A level can be eye wateringly large.
As a former HoD and with a formidable daughter who is a secondary Maths teacher I would not dare!!

Maw is right, sadly we have too few properly qualified maths and science teachers leading to maths classes being taught by qualified teachers, but not qualified maths teachers, and pure sciences being dropped in favour of a more general ‘science’ classes. This in turn leads to fewer students sitting A level maths/sciences, which in turn leads to fewer science degree courses being offered. A degree in David Beckham Studies (I kid you not) may be very worthwhile, but it doesn’t help with scientific research (ie with climate change) or help provide the much needed doctors/dentists for the NHS.

I have had two sons taking a level maths recently. The eldest took six individual modules three per year and apart from the final two he had the option to resit to try and increase the module mark ( he didn't but many did). There was also a choice of modules depending on which other subjects were taken. The younger sat the recent Edexcel controversial paper - he was not happy after the papers. The questions took a lot of reading to understand what was required and started off with two very hard questions (maths and science papers often start easy then ramp it up). Funnily enough they ended up with same overall grade (same school same teachers and I feel similar ability and both worked hard)

For the mathematicians on here...

I recall when I first worked in China, the children laughing at the primary school level GCSE work. Their maths is so far advanced to ours that they ridiculed the GCSE & A Level maths UK students do!

I worked with a Chinese lady who told my husband that the trigonometry (1960s Grammar school O level standard) that he used setting out on a building site, was something she’d learned at their equivalent of primary school! Now tell me standards haven’t dropped.....

I don't think it's that maths standards have dropped (that was 1960 level you're quoting), it's just that the Chinese are far far ahead of us in Maths.

It was 1960s GagaJo but those standards have dropped because my nephew couldn’t do what my DH could in spite of obtaining A level maths in the Noughties.

Tillybelle thank you for taking the time to expand your post, explaining your thoughts.

Getting the right 'personality' for medicine is, as you note, also very important. The med schools my dd applied to had rigorous systems for assessing character as well as academic achievements. I think the modern training is very different from previous times, with much more focus on the patient and their needs. My dd's med school gives them patient contact from the very first term so by the time they qualify, they have met many patients and learnt a lot about the variety of life out there!

Coincidentally, one of my sons is a psychologist, though his forte is organisational psychology, not clinical. He was offered 2nd year entry to medicine but it wasn't the path he wanted to follow.

That difference between subjects is interesting, Pantglas1. When I was at school in the 1960s, they'd completely dropped the nuts and bolts of English. It was all free association and 'expressing yourself'. I'd virtually dropped out of school but took my exams and, frankly, winged it with my English O Levels and still got great grades.

Yet now, students have to be able to enter into fairly extensive language analysis for GCSE and be able to create writing demonstrating a range of sentence types and functions, not to mention sophisticated vocabulary and text structure.

I agree GagaJo when I was sitting O Levels spelling and grammar were more important than imagination but things have moved on to the point where submissions are not marked down as long as the creativity is there.

Really Pantglas1?

sorry..posted too soon! The critera for assessment is clear in this document... obvs to be read in conjunctin with the curriculum expectations. www.gov.uk/government/publications/gcse-english-language-and-gcse-english-literature-new-content

Thank you PECS! My current school does AQA. The least bad IMO. OCR is awful, Edexcel only slightly less so.