PeteBrant

I don't know, you tell me - Assuming the exam is the same, then the answerr , is presumably, the second


What do you base that on?

Why are you trying to overcomplicate it.

The people with a higher mark performed better than the ones with a lower mark.

As the exam remain fairly consistant over, say, a 10 year period, you can compare anyone from any year with anyone else. Coffin dodgers sytem relies on you having accurate comparative information for pupil with in each year, which you then have to compare relatively with a performance index for any other year.

In other words, over-complex, doesn't give you anything extra, and never going to happen.

stilover

Yeah, I heard that too. I'm sure when I was at School, a 51% would only get you a `C` grade.

No wonder every ******'s getting `A's`

OllyK

Which IIRC is kind of how it used to work, there would be some degree of normal distribution re-adujustment. But NL don't like kids to compete at school, nobdoy can be disadvantaged, the ideal for them would be for everybody to have 10 grade As, despite that being useless to Universities and Industry.

PeteBrant

Bear in mind that

(i) The 51% has its source from Radio 1
(ii)Not all exams will have the same pass score.
(iii) The relative difficulty of an exam has to be taken into account.

PeteBrant

But "51%" own its own is meaningless. Perhaps the exam is much much more difficult.

I certainly know from my oldests maths coursework that the Maths GSCE is no easier than O-level was, and probably harder.

Coffin Dodger

You seem to be missing the point

If someone gets 80% in year 1 and they are rewarded a D then that indicates that the exams were a bit too easy that year. Therefore make them harder the following year. Now from that perspective someone getting an A for 75% in year 2 makes total sense as the exam was much harder.

The person with the D grade will still be in 20%-40% band, the A grade in the 85%-95% band therefore rewarded consistently.

The curriculum itself may be identical but the exams can and will differ form year to year and clearly the trend is to make them easier. Therefore we get this skewed view of GCSE results where a high percentage of students get A*/A/B

That's how they did it at Uni when I did my degree, if there was one consistently bad / good module in any given year then the results for that were skewed to give the usual spread of 3rds, 2:2s, 2:1s, 1sts, etc. Our signal processing lecturer set us a particularly tortuous paper in our final year, I think the year average for it was about 22%, didn't mean everyone got thirds as a result of taking that module. They skewed the results to make it consistent with the other subjects where some of the lecturers would have set easier papers.

Comprendre?

PeteBrant

Quite possibly!
Right, of course that makes sense, you mark relative to the exam diffficulty. Which I think is exactly what happens?

I the the confusion has set in because I am coming from an angle where exam diffculty for a given subject is fairly consistant. Where as you are coming at it from an angle of wild variation.

F

Devildog

Agreed, however for comparitive purposes, especially from employers who left school a few years ago, whe trying to judge achievent when faced with more than one applicant for any given job when a pass was 50%, the issue is entirely relevant.

And lets be honest Pete, these are exams for those at school. If they are so hard that 50% is not achievable there is something far wrong. This is not some post degree ******* of a professional qualification examination where a pass mark may well be "averaged" down.

If radio 1 is correct, then there apears to be very little that the brightest kids can do to differentiate themselves. Its just that same old "no one is allowed to "fail" crap that sees sports days having no winners and no losers.

In Scotland kids of differing abilities now sit exams of differing levels of difficulty, so no one feels upset by "failing"

According to friends kids, at the lowest level, simply turning up to class and filling out your name on the exam paper practcally gets you a pass.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

It was this years Maths GCSE that a few presenters of the Chris Moyles show took.

BTW A* maths people, you got over 65% , all according to R1 so usual caveats apply!

Scooby-kid

Not all exams are 51% for an A. For example, in on of my science papers, I (I think) had to get 70% for an A and 89% for A*. however 20% of the total grade was coursework. compare that to one of my maths modules where I did indeed need 51% for an A. however that module was M10, the hardest of them all, to sit this paper I had to get through M7, M8 and M9, where 51% would not have even allowed me to take the next module up. So 51% for M10 is relative to me passing the other modules (in one of which I atained full marks). Therefor, If I get an A in Maths, that does not mean I got almost half the paper wrong, it means I got (roughly, at least) 80% in one paper, 80% in another paper, 80% in another paper, and at least 51% in an extremely hard paper, consisting partly of questions up to and including AS level work.

Scott.

Holy Ghost

ask the employers. always a good way to judge the quality of those arriving in the job market for the first time.

here's what the IoD had to say in early august 2008, in a survey of its members conducted by NOP.

- 71% believe the writing abilities of new employees has worsened
- 60% believe numeracy has worsened
- 52% report a worsening in the basic ability to communicate
- 60% believe GCSEs and A-levels are less demanding than in 1998
- 73% believe that the overall quality of schooling has worsened

only 24% believe the supply of skills has improved since 1998. compare these figures with the top line from 2005 - when 40% of IoD members believed literacy and numeracy skills had worsened. the average figure for 2008 is up by 25% over three years to 65% - a significant shift by any evaluation.

judge the figures and their implications for yourself.

RyanSTI

iTrader: (1)

lol you old timers

exams are easier than years ago, however there not massively easy to kids of today. you dont need results on a piece of paper to suceed anyway, everyone knows that.

Holy Ghost

**

sure - but you have to have a benchmark and if the benchmark appears to be failing - or is in doubt - then it is not properly providing the essential skills that drive our economy. everyone knows that.

OllyK

I think one of the big indicators is that alot of Academys (that we supply IT services to anyway) are ditching GCSE and moving over to the International Bacalaureat.

RyanSTI

iTrader: (1)

i agree on needing a bench mark, what i meant was, its easy to teach yourself to pass exams. most of the kids who get straight a's these days never end up being sucessfull because the only way they can learn is with testing.

if you see what i mean.

DYK

GCSE mmmm yep i have to say,I'm not convinced by all the pass rates.I mean in one way it's good that kids are passing,and that the pass rate has gone up,it makes everything look good doesn't it..Are kids just trying harder to pass,or have the exams really become that easy to pass now.It seems to me that A grades are just being handed out like sweets.

Lisawrx

iTrader: (1)

It appears the general concensus is that exams are easier now, than in the past, however, that is by and large just opinion. Unless we had the time to go and actually study for and complete these exams/coursework, we can't know for sure if they are easier or merely different and the way of teaching and what people are taught is different to the past.

I couldn't dismiss, that the way grading works is right or wrong, as I'm not privy to absolute fact on how that all works, so I couldn't say that doesn't need altering, or that it works just fine. My Auntie is a teacher, she has also marked exams in her career, and she has recently been studying for additional qualifications recently, so it might be worth me asking her, as she could possibly offer information from all sides.

jjones

Idiocracy (2006)

jods

You've achieved an A star grade. Wow! You're in the top tier of the country when it comes to current GCSEs. You're either a brainbox, an exam question setter, or just plain lucky. Well done!

Hmmmm.

Maybe I should sit a my GCSE's and A Levels again.

Fancy having 18 "O" Levels and 8 "A" Levels?

jods

I don't agree with this stupid situation where no-one is deemed to have failed to "Spare their feelings" - utter ****e.

Although, someone turning up with a pass in an exam from the
"Managed to sit still without sh1tting themselves - Board of Exams" is gonna get pidgeonholed damn quick.

jasey

Maybe they should scrap grades and just put down percentages.

Clears up all the confusion and lets us know how bright everyone really is.

lozgti

I did 7 O levels and also got a CSE grade 1 in Physics.

The CSE was a joke.

GCSE seem to be the joke now.

Actually the whole system is a joke now however much people want to defend it.

PeteBrant

Any of you are welcome to come and tell my oldest that his GCSEs aren't worth ****, and the hard work and effort into getting his grades was a waste of time.

Or just save it for when your own kids come to take thier exams - I'm sure you'll let them know how thick they are

dpb

I got a CSE grade 4 in woodw**k


- iv been a bit sh*ite at it ever since


I reckon we should go back to CSE's

lozgti

This is the whole problem.Proud parents unwilling to accept

I give mine a hard time now and they are three.Sure I will change later and be exactly the same as parents now.

I still say the bottom line is schools are churning out kids with more qualifications than pebbles on a beach.When they come for jobs,spelling,adding up and going to the toilet on their own seem beyond them.

What the heck happened? They are brilliant on paper and the government looks good.Thats what. Even the University graduates just don't seem clever anymore.

Not putting your kids down Pete.Problem is,we are not distinguishing between clever and not so clever kids and I think that is a bad thing

PeteBrant

Doesn't the bar just adjust accordingly though? I think we can still distinguish - The top universities/employers will still only take/sponsor the top 10%

Holy Ghost

**

nobody's advocating that pete. this is about whether or not the 'system' is sound. if independent, public domain research by an august and respected business organisation like the IoD is indicating that, despite record exam grades, standards in numeracy, literacy and basic communication abilities appear to be falling in new employees, then something, somewhere in that system ain't right.

i'd add to that recent figures from the university of durham that found 41% of tutors from 100 universities questioned believed that the educational quality of candidate undergraduates was either static or declining. again, hard findings like these do not gel with the government's line that the quality of education is improving year-on-year and has never been higher.

would you not say there's some sort of contradiction at work here?

[as an aside, i don't believe there is any place in GCSEs or A-levels for multiple choice as it enables the lucky guess to be passed off as knowledge - immediately diluting the intellectual rigour of the examination].

speedking

Exactly

How are employers to decide who out of the top 45% that got an 'A' are actually in the top 10% that they want.

Refer to post #17.

SVVG

iTrader: (1)

Grades are often simply a way to try to sift through the chaff - the firm I work for offers 80 placements for new joiners/uni leavers each year and we get inundated with well over 4,000 applications - you need a cut off point as you simply can't interview everyone. We then have assessment days, and pretty much take only from oxford/cambridge/ red-bricks, with 2.1 degrees and above, and with straight A stars from GCSE and straight As at A level - and a significant number of them are still comptete and utter fcking morons.

Holy Ghost

**

i think the real truth (as opposed to government spin) lies in statistical and anecdotal evidence from employers - after all, employment is what people are by and large educated for.

if you're in business and have a stake in the recruitment process you may have noticed a change for the worse in the literacy of graduate job applications over the last decade or so. the proportion of those composing clear sentences with correct spelling and correct punctuation has, in my experience (for what it's worth), decreased.