97% pass mark in A levels. How are todays children doing so well yet it is stated about 60% cannot write or ?

Question

read properly?

Answer 1

The structure of "A" levels has changed so as to make passing easier. I saw two newspaper articles recently, one said that on average grades for the same work are two higher now than they were in 1988 and the other said that in a selection of subjects studied (including maths, 3 sciences, English and French) "A" level exams today are at a similar level to GCE "O" level exams in the same subjects for the last year that "O" levels were sat. The second article did go on to state that there was also some new material in today's "A" levels but that it wasn't particularly challenging: today's exams are a broader but less challenging test.

I do think that there has been a collapse in standards of basic numeracy and literacy, the things one should know long before GCSE. One of the reasons I think is that teachers oppose learning by rote. Unfortunately, a certain amount of learning by rote is necessary for basic literacy and numeracy. We may have calculators and spell checkers today but all but the least able should know basic arithmetic, spelling and grammar before they begin GCSEs.

I would advocate a new 13+ exam in absolute basics that everyone must pass before being allowed to begin studying for GCSEs, let alone "A" levels. It would comprise arithmetic, spelling, the use of synonyms, using the correct homonyms and understanding basic sentence structure. The pass mark would be set high, perhaps 80% because these would be basic things that everyone should know.

Answer 2

Yeah, but what about other continents? Like Africa...

Answer 3

A level papers are printed on bog roll. The exams are held in the toilets, and to send your paper to edexel, you just have to be able to flush.

Answer 4

It doesn't add up, does it?

I see little evidence of the surging growth of the teenage academic elite, quite the opposite really.

Increasing numbers of univerities and large employers consider the A level to be worthless and set their own examinations.

An exam that 97% of people pass offers no reliable indication of ones knowledge or ability

Answer 5

I think 97% of those kids studying in private school are brainy.. While people that dont know how to read nor right. Because they dont have money.. Or maybe corruption?

Answer 6

Those two percentages are taken from two different groups of people.

First you have the 16 yr old school leavers, the 60% comes from this group.

Then you have the rest that stays on and presumably can read, here is where you get the 97%.

Hope this answers your question.

Answer 7

I have no idea! hmm.

extra teaching support and stuff I presume.

Answer 8

I looked through one my youngest son's test papers for English, a GCSE paper and it astounded me. The exam paper was equivalent to something akin to my 12 year old school class days. It's all gone to pot . . . everyday spelling is dreadful, grammar is worse and the government continue to dumb things down for the sake of numbers. If 97% of  people can jump over a stick on the floor, do we enter them for the olympic high jump ? . . . no, we place the stick higher so that we can recognise the higher achievers and allow them to progress. 'Pass' is the stick on the floor, so perhaps it's time to return to 'surpass' as the level to recognise for the sake of the future of our country. I lay no blame on the children . . . it's the government policies to suppress the better and place everyone in the average box that I find very counterproductive.  

Answer 9

Seemingly the quality of the exams has dipped causing concern among the teaching staff and the public. Future employers will be dismayed if this is indeed the case. Either that or there is something in the water.

Answer 10

Well anything up to an E is a pass mark. But it really annoys me people going "it wasn't like that in my day", "A levels are so easy now".

Shrinking Violet, would you like to have a crack at some of my A level papers then? How about a three hour exam comparing Alan Bennett's 'Bed Among the Lentils' and John Betjeman's 'In Westminster Abbey'? Two hours to write one essay on Tennyson and another on Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale'? How would you like to have an hour and a half to write two essays (that's 45 minutes each) on the history of the media over a hundred years, where you must cover the whole hundred years and mention all three of the mass media (that's newspapers, radio and television in case you didn't know). You would obviously be brilliant at writing an essay on Chamberlain and appeasement, you could probably do it in ten minutes, right? And you could read through fifty studies on gender and religion and learn them in a second, because you're apparently so superior to everyone else.

Answer 11

I would guess the 60% is the people who finished high school and decided to get a job whilst the remaining 40% who chose to go to college want to do well as opposed to people in high school who arent bothered as they are going to get a job

Answer 12

The benchmark has been reduced.  Less is expected scholastically today than 20 years ago.  In other words, a C by yesterday's standard is today's A.

Answer 13

because we are smart. i hate the people who keep saying a levels are too easy.

anyway you can't trust the government figures!

and the kids who cant write drop out after y11 and get a job. they dont want to go to uni so they dont take a levels.

Answer 14

The ones who can't read or write, never get as far as "A" Levels.  The brightest young people are as clever and well educated as ever, but learning is much easier than it was 20 years ago.  Now you can get information from the internet, from BBC Learning Zone and texted to you phone.  In my day it was just books and lessons.

The curriculum is as tough as ever, but the system of marking has changed.  Today's marks reflect how much the candidates know about the subject.  In the 1960s and 1970s, it was more about how good you were at exams.

We do have a problem with kids who don't want to learn.  My old Irish Mathematics master used the Thompson method. (If you don't pay attention, I'll Thompson sense into you.)  But now that's considered to be child abuse - although releasing them into the world illiterate isn't.

Answer 15

Sorry, Angel (and doesn't your keyboard have an apostrophe?) but they don't even compare to what I did for O-Level. Today's GCSEs and A-Levels - well, 99% of the GCSE questions I could have answered at 7, A-Level, well, probably 12 or 13.

Kids aren't becoming smarter - exams are getting easier. Simple as that. What subjects did you take, Angel? I'll send you my old O-Level papers in those subjects - I bet you won't even scrape a U! The only question you'll be able to answer correctly is your name!

To the questioner: - Today's is possessive so an apostrophe is required.

Answer 16

Don't forget that this is 97% of those who are entered for A-levels - a proportion only of the total coming through the system: If you look like a bad risk you won't be entered.

The ones who fall by the wayside don't seem to feature on the league tables, `which is rather typical of a government obsessed with massaging the figures to show they are hitting 'targets'.

I found A-levels the hardest thing (harder than post graduate level) mainly cos I did not find the subjects at that level remotely interesting. So I take my hobbit hat off to those who did well.