A level grade leak

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

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

Really Pantglas1?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.....

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 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)

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.

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!!

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!

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!

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.

I couldn’t agree more Maw.

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.

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

To me the nub of the problem lies in the commercial nature of the exam boards which are profit-based. The result is that the exam boards are in competition with each other. Can you imagine them selling to a school the line: “I want your students to sit a harder exam, which will be more difficult and make it harder for them to gain a top grade”. It is not a sales pitch that will appeal. Competitive pressure on exam boards to get more students taking their exams embeds dumbing-down in the system. This is not the case in Scotland.
So the power over standards lies with the exam boards and not with the Government, and is the ability of the boards to set grade boundaries – the mark at which certain grades will be given. Regardless of whether or not the content of the examination can be made harder, the actual results are decided by these grade boundaries, set by the boards and not mentioned on the Ofqual website. Bragging about exams being made more difficult is pure noise unless the Government has control over grade boundaries.
Another major problem is the poor status afforded to those who mark the examinations. Payment for this is verging on derisory. University lecturers have virtually vanished from the system. A terrifying number of essay-based exam results are sent back for remarking, with one estimate putting this at 40 per cent.
Advocates of the separate boards argue that competition is good for the system, and that it gives teachers a range of choices to fit the exam to the individual needs of their students. The truth is that many decent and honourable teachers will see their first priority as entering their pupils for the exam that will give them the best result. That pressure is increased by heads and governing bodies having an increasing eye on league tables, and hence their school’s standing and reputation.
If A-levels are to be saved we need a single exam board for the UK, with standards as its priority, and which is merely required to break even rather than make money. We need a carrot-and-stick approach to universities so that they reinvolve themselves in A-level setting and marking. We need to raise the status of markers and to ban the offer of unconditional places, which have been shown to have a disastrous effect on motivation. For our disadvantaged students, we do not need to lower the standard of the A-level results they need, but rather to improve the quality of teaching in their schools, so there is no need to make excuses for them.

Thanks Janeainsworth for your explanation.. I still think it would make more sense for tbere to be a natjonal exam board.

You'd think OCR would really but I think they're totally separate.

I've never understood why there are so many different exam boards in England. I suspect schools chose the boards on the basis of which exams they judge to be the easiest option. Should there not be national exams for England and Wales?

Varian historically the exam boards were linked to universities - the main boards being Oxford & Cambridge but there was also the Joint Matriculation Board, which consisted of examiners from Northern Universities - Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool & possibly Durham.
In those days most pupils who took A Levels were aiming for a university place and the universities had an interest in specifying the curriculum and monitoring the results.
At that time, schools certainly didn’t choose boards with a reputation for easy passes, the JMB which many schools in the north took, had a reputation for difficulty, but that gave their results more value & kudos in some people’s eyes.

I know it’s very different now & have no idea if the universities have any input into A Level syllabuses - does anyone know?

When I was at school taking term exams , we were told that no matter how good we were , we would never be scored higher than 45%. Term reports look abysmal but I know why.
I would guess that they do something similar A levels, doesn't mean that the student got a lot of wrong answers.

SueDonim

I think I have upset you and I sincerely apologise.

I congratulate your youngest and wish her well.

The answer is not straight forward. To become a Doctor is an enormous commitment, takes years of study and exams and working under pressure at all hours. It is no holiday! I did say earlier how much i admire my two neighbours now doing their GP training and still doing exams while they are nearly thirty. They are not sure when they will be able to start a family.

The "easier to become" was not the best way of expressing the situation that came about when there was a shortage of Doctors, and I sincerely apologise. I used to know several people teaching in the Medical School and I taught the students on the Medicine path too. I am a retired Neuropsychologist. There was a move encouraging other Professionals, such as qualified Dentists to convert to being Doctors. Even I, who was quite old at that time, was asked if I would consider doing the extra top up and become a Medical Doctor! There was an expansion in the intake of Medical students, an opening of new Medical Schools, and even I noticed the drop in educational level and ability to discuss among my students on my part of their course. It looks as if that may have been before your daughter's time, possibly around or just after the time your eldest's pal was accepted. To be accepted through clearing suggests it was the time the medical schools were expanded.

I am really sorry I did not make it clear as to when my medic teaching colleagues were complaining about the "expansion situation".

I think, however, that the profession is so rigorous, it actually has its own method of shedding those who are not going to make the standard. However, some people are capable of learning for exams and can get through to qualify when they do not have the personality and attitude that this very special career requires. There still are those who like the money and the status. I am sure, at our age on GN, we have nearly all met one of these at some point.

Anyway, whereas entry to a pathway to train as a doctor may have eased at one time, the rigorous demands of the studying are extremely tough. Also the majority of medical students are wonderful, vocation-led young people and for these people I have my unreserved admiration.

Please accept my apologies for not saying all this in the first place. There are so many aspects to this topic it is difficult to give a concise answer without hurting someone and I would never deliberately do that.

I really do admire your daughter and it is so good to hear of a highly motivated bright girl entering Medical School today, when so much negativity has been around the training and life of Junior Doctors in the not so distant past. I genuinely wish her a very rewarding career.