A-Level Exam Results.

['daiking']

But going back to exams and dumbing down or not, I don't recall universities ever having to spend their intakes' first year making sure they could "reed, rite 'n ad upp".

It would be interesting to know how the influx of foreign students to UK universities and inherent "multi-culturalism" of the modern UK population has affected the need for more emphasis on, for example, basic English skills.

But again and again we get back to the premise that you recall a time when only 10%, who were likely to be the best academic candidates, went to Yoo-nee compared to today when 3 or 4 times the number of school leavers are direct entrants to university (We're not upto 50% yet I don't think and there are also the part-timers and mature candidates to discount). Of course the quality of undergrads will have fallen, it is inevitable.

[Lance]

I'm not sure if they are easier or not, however my gut feeling is that most of the 'anti' stuff is spite, with many being unable to find the good in someones success, much rather picking holes!!

Personal view, well done to those that achieved good results....easy or not, the passes are still there and they can only do the exam they are set.

One thing that is definitly a worry, is the over dosing on MWAH'ing and hugging at such times.

['daiking']

This might be true at "fake" universities which shouldn't exist (ex-polytechnics) but it most certainly was NOT the case at the University I attended and have just graduated from.

The first year did not count towards the degree but the reason for this was to get everyone up to the same level as some had done politics A-Level and some had not. It also served to get rid of anyone at the end of the first year who really shouldn't be there at all.

Personally I think some, most certainly not all, but some of this grade/ university/ a-level/ young people bashing comes from sections of the older generation who are simply jealous that they were not able to go on to higher education, whatever the reason.

In my time at university most people I met were well-rounded, intelligent and hardworking young people, most did some sort of volunteer or paid work whilst at university.

I find this whole picture of university and university students as bums who go out get drunk and never do any work quite frankly insulting.

To me its no wonder that the highest unemployment is amongst 16-25 year olds when everything they achieve is either ridiculed or written off as "chance" or "the system" :thumbdwn:

No offence but try considering a technical degree. You can take a roomful of students from all over the country with a Maths A-level at a reasonable grade and the difference in abilities will be vast and not just becasue some are better than others. Different modules taken, different exam boards etc.

You do raise an interesting point regarding the expansion in courses availabel and variety of input qualifications. More and more of both of these will vary the previous experience of the candidates who enrol and universities need to spend more time bringing everyone to a standard level. However this should not be the case for basic skills from UK candidates.

I don't think anyone is denigrating the performance of young people. The majority can only study what is put in front of them by people they trust, it's not their fault the system has been perverted in this way. They are only children after all.

[ap0gee1978]

How about adding this into the debate, from up my neck of the woods:

Affirmative action, anyone?

[LouisTsui]

It would be interesting to know how the influx of foreign students to UK universities and inherent "multi-culturalism" of the modern UK population has affected the need for more emphasis on, for example, basic English skills.

All foreign students (non-English native speakers) has to pass an English test (International English Language | Home) in order to be accepted into one of the UK University. And most Universities provide additional English support, such as academic writing, to foreign students.

['daiking']

How about adding this into the debate, from up my neck of the woods:

Affirmative action, anyone?

Eng Lit? They've done her a favour

All foreign students (non-English native speakers) has to pass an English test (International English Language | Home) in order to be accepted into one of the UK University. And most Universities provide additional English support, such as academic writing, to foreign students.

I know but in my experience, what the paperwork says and what actually happened was not always comparable

[swedishskoda]

It would be interesting to know how the influx of foreign students to UK universities and inherent "multi-culturalism" of the modern UK population has affected the need for more emphasis on, for example, basic English skills.

But again and again we get back to the premise that you recall a time when only 10%, who were likely to be the best academic candidates, went to Yoo-nee compared to today when 3 or 4 times the number of school leavers are direct entrants to university (We're not upto 50% yet I don't think and there are also the part-timers and mature candidates to discount). Of course the quality of undergrads will have fallen, it is inevitable.

[my bolds]

Is it, really? By which law - logical, physical, psychological?

Firstly, that only a small part of the population went to uni in the good old days was IMHO more a matter of family background than of abilities. That also meant that a lot of gifted kids never got the chance to develop their ability for theoretical study.

Secondly, there are students that passed tests easy at school who fails at uni - they're good at recalling facts and formulae read, but they have no training in independent reasoning. The entry tests at (many? all?) UK unis can improve selection, but we don't have it here in Sweden, school grades counts.

Thirdly, mature candidates... in my experience many of my best students come from that group. If you're 40+ and have raised two kids besides working "IRL", coursework (including planning your time and muster up self-discipline) is easy - and that's not always the case with students in their early 20s So even if their formal qualifications are questionable, their actual performance is not.

One quality (or lack of) in today's students irritates me, though - it doesn't come natural to them to read non-fiction works of 300 pages, and even less to read a number of them. But I don't think the school's to blame here. It's a habit you make (and a pleasure you discover) outside school. And probably much easier in the good old days without computers, an endless stream of cable/satellite tv programs &c.

Edited 24 August, 2009 by swedishskoda

[ScoobyChris]

I can't really comment on whether A-levels are getting easier as I've not seen a recent paper and nor do I have any desire to. I remember when I did both GCSE and A-Level the teachers used to set us papers of yester-year to stretch us so there may be something in it, especially coupled with how entrance requirements for the same Uni course are going up and up.

One thing that is readily apparent though is that spelling and grammar are on the decline and I'm amazed at some of the silly mistakes that I see in technical documents I'm asked to review before they're published. Perhaps it's not seen as a priority in schools because to pass the exam you only need to know the subject matter, but in the real world it can be the difference between a customer signing on the dotted line or not and that has a big impact!

The other thing that is readily apparent (and this was happening when I was applying for Uni) is that people are doing courses without any idea of what career path it would take them down. I have three friends who achieved good degrees in Physics and then struggled to find any work at all. One of them went into local politics, one went to work for his Dad at a plant nursery and the other dossed about temping for a couple of years and then retrained to be an accountant. Hardly seems to have been worth the cost in both time and money, and effort, imho

The x A-levels at A grade people pop up every year to have a moan about not being accepted and how life's not fair (probably due to diversity/disability quotas) because they have a whole string of qualifications. In fact, when I was at school we had someone similar who got 4 A-levels at A grade and an A/S at A grade who was turned down by all the Uni's he applied for. Why? The simple reason was he didn't have a work/life balance. He went to work in a ski-resort for a year too before re-applying

Chris

['daiking']

All quoted posts are in italics

Is it, really? By which law - logical, physical, psychological?

Firstly, that only a small part of the population went to uni in the good old days was IMHO more a matter of family background than of abilities. That also meant that a lot of gifted kids never got the chance to develop their ability for theoretical study.

Take a small sample of a population and give quite a large degree of selection bias to a particular attribute of the whole population

Then take a much bigger sample of a different population whilst lowering the standard required in your selection bias.

Would you expect the average person from Sample 1 or Sample 2 to be better?

Secondly, there are students that passed tests easy at school who fails at uni - they're good at recalling facts and formulae read, but they have no training in independent reasoning. The entry tests at (many? all?) UK unis can improve selection, but we don't have it here in Sweden, school grades counts.

In my time, entrance exams were not typical, almost unheard of, offers were based on predicted grades 6 months+ before sitting the final exams. You must have a very high opinion of the British university education system if you think many graduates are capable of independent thought.

Thirdly, mature candidates... in my experience many of my best students come from that group. If you're 40+ and have raised two kids besides working "IRL", coursework (including planning your time and muster up self-discipline) is easy - and that's not always the case with students in their early 20s So even if their formal qualifications are questionable, their actual performance is not.

I know, that’s why I discounted them from my statement about school leavers. Lets just say the the part-tmrs on my course got 2:1s to a man, the full-timers, didn’t.

I have a huge amount of respect for the 40+ (year old) engineers I work with who started out as apprentices and now 20-30 years later are degree qualified chartered engineers compared to the school/uni/grad programme/tiny amount of real experience expected of myself by my professional institution.

One quality (or lack of) in today's students irritates me, though - it doesn't come natural to them to read non-fiction works of 300 pages, and even less to read a number of them. But I don't think the school's to blame here. It's a habit you make (and a pleasure you discover) outside school. And probably much easier in the good old days without computers, an endless stream of cable/satellite tv programs &c.

Can’t argue with that, I don’t read even a tiny bit of what I should.

[ednmra]

[my bolds]

Firstly, that only a small part of the population went to uni in the good old days was IMHO more a matter of family background than of abilities. That also meant that a lot of gifted kids never got the chance to develop their ability for theoretical study.

Not so. It is true that only a small percentage went to university but that was not to do with family background generally. I came from a poor family with little educational achievement. - this in common with many of my class mates from Dagenham and Barking. (Not exactly Hampstead Garden Suburb!)

Because I got a good 11+ pass I went to (my choice) a technical college school that was equivalent of going to grammar school. That immediately gave me a chance that is getting less and less available now with the near-demise of the grammar schools.

That progressed to a lot of O levels, followed by good enough A levels to get into the Royal, then part of Uni. of London. Many of my equally working class mates went to good universities for the same reasons.

Yes, I got a small council grant, lived at home and commuted etc., but it was all available to me if I worked at it. And it was hard work. Like I said in an earlier post, recent A level students with an A* grade in physics failed or got an E doing the papers of all those years ago, when, with all the supposed advances and progress, they should have sailed through them. Anyone who says today's exams are as hard has not looked at the relevant papers and compared them - that is not spite, it is fact. That is also why many employers now look for a second degree like an MA before they start to get interested.

[ap0gee1978]

One thing that is readily apparent though is that spelling and grammar are on the decline and I'm amazed at some of the silly mistakes that I see in technical documents I'm asked to review before they're published.

That's certainly true!

[KenONeill]

One thing that is readily apparent though is that spelling and grammar are on the decline and I'm amazed at some of the silly mistakes that I see in technical documents I'm asked to review before they're published. Perhaps it's not seen as a priority in schools because to pass the exam you only need to know the subject matter, but in the real world it can be the difference between a customer signing on the dotted line or not and that has a big impact!

Chris

Can't argue with that. One of my friends is a lecturer at a real University, and one of her complaints is the amount of time she has to spent correcting the spelling and grammar of her Post-Grad students (particularly the PhD students).

[ap0gee1978]

Actually, that reminds me of when one of my former employers got the marketing person to produce a report writing guide that was - as was the case for all documents - sent out for peer review before issue. Trouble was, while there was nothing wrong with the stylistic points it made (e.g. don't use anything other than TNR or Arial; use the cross-reference tool to make sure reference lists are correctly numbered), the grammar and spelling were appalling! Oh, how the ironic red ink flowed from my biro that day...

Edited 24 August, 2009 by ap0gee

[ednmra]

grammar and spelling were appalling! :

But the kids have been taught (it seems) that none of that matters!

The point is, if it doesn't matter, how far away from "correct" still doesn't matter?

Could you do an exam in, say, mobile phone texting language? Why not just ignore vowels and use phonetics for everything???

It is just sheer laziness. They prefer to teach 5 year olds about domestic violence rather than their times table.

The practical trouble is that this teaches (or, rather, doesn't teach - it just informs) kids that near enough is good enough. It isn't. The old cliche' about the devil being in the detail is right, especially on important things.

Imagine a surgeon saying, "Well, I have to cut one or other of these arteries. What the hell - they're all arteries, this one will do."

Can you put 4 + 6 = 9 because it is nearly right?

You can't nearly get something right - if it isn't right, it's wrong. Or is that spiteful?

[swedishskoda]

You can't nearly get something right - if it isn't right, it's wrong. Or is that spiteful?

Not spiteful, but not the whole story either. It's valid when it comes to grammar (in a given time frame, that is), maths, pure logic, a lot of science.

In my own field, History, it's a bit more complicated. "Give three causes for the French Revolution" is a possible task. "Give the three reasons..." or even "the three most important reasons..." - well, History professors could go on arguing for some time which answers that could be deemed correct, if any.

It is true that only a small percentage went to university but that was not to do with family background generally.

In that case the UK differs (or differed) from Sweden, which surprises me a bit since I've always been under the impression that class matters more in the UK than here. I don't think your life story is unique, but neither do I think that uni students 40 years ago (or today) represent an average sample of family backgrounds. Intelligence and ability to learn, however, is most likely spread evenly. And I'm sure that a lot of incompetent youngsters from the upper classes have gone to Oxbridge during the last century. Maybe they never took an exam, but they forged important bonds, made friends in the right societies, bought the ties...

Take a small sample of a population and give quite a large degree of selection bias to a particular attribute of the whole population

Then take a much bigger sample of a different population whilst lowering the standard required in your selection bias.

Would you expect the average person from Sample 1 or Sample 2 to be better?

Yes

And OK, saying that higher education was more a case of background than of abilities was maybe stretching it a bit.

And I don't deny that A-level tests from the past could cause today's students a lot of trouble (IIRC I've said that earlier in this very thread). The importance of that fact remains to be discussed, though. Can tests of the past be relevant today? Are tests of today relevant? What do they measure - apart from the capability to pass the said test?

You must have a very high opinion of the British university education system if you think many graduates are capable of independent thought.

Well, judging from the very small sample I've met I know that at least some of them are. Not all, of course, and I don't think the UK and Sweden differs much in that respect.

[ednmra]

Can tests of the past be relevant today? Are tests of today relevant? What do they measure - apart from the capability to pass the said test?

One thing they measure is what the student knows about his chosen subject!

[swedishskoda]

One thing they measure is what the student knows about his chosen subject!

Yes, but then the next question is: What is it to know about a subject? It works OK with a clearly defined syllabus: After x years of maths studies you should be able to do the following. History (or Eng Lit or Philosophy) is a bit different.

If the subject is clearly defined and fenced in, so to say, in the syllabus it works. But even so learning outcomes are sometimes difficult to assess. Example from QCAs booklet on History, keystage 3 (school year 9), module 16: "The Franchise, why did it take so much longer for women to get the vote?" A good topic IMHO and so are the learning outcomes:

Pupils

• analyse three nineteenthcentury/early twentieth-century women’s struggles according to purpose, method, and compare with today

• demonstrate knowledge of Victorian private and public spheres of activity by deploying information correctly in a Venn diagram

Yes, it can be tested in an exam. But the task can be done in a lot of ways, and there are a lot of facts to choose among. And it can be very hard to pinpoint down exactly the border between pass and fail.

[VWD]

Pretty much yeah; partial differentials and matrices were covered at O-Grade in Scotland in the 1970s.

Tend to agree with you Ken - know that lot of that was in the Advanced sylabus ( Advanced maths and Dynamics ) in the late 60's ( remember a lot of it from SCE Higher days ) .Strangely enough went back to college early 90's to do HND electronics and the maths ( once I'd dug out my old math notes ) were not that far advanced from what I'd done at school some 30 odd years earlier .

[Soot1e]

Well done for getting your grades for Uni entry. I don't know whether the exams are easier, the same or harder but the fact you will be going to Uni is the most important point. Now the real work starts and a Bsc or Msc is now down to you.

My daughter got her a, b and c grades and is starting a maths/meteorology degree at UAE Norwich in a few weeks time.

She was 1 grade away from her 1st. choice uni at Exeter but is still overjoyed with her 2nd. choice, Norwich and only 13 places available for this degree course in the country. I'm pleased too of course.

[cheezemonkhai]

All foreign students (non-English native speakers) has to pass an English test (International English Language | Home) in order to be accepted into one of the UK University. And most Universities provide additional English support, such as academic writing, to foreign students.

Yeah and nobody offers a service to do the test for you.

Sorry but when I was at uni there were people on the course that could barely speak english.

[Loz]

I've seen alot about this too. Comparing the results from years ago to the results of now, it's hard to put it down to anything else really.

Of course, it is down to bothering to do the work aswell, but I definately think it's made as easy as it possibly can be. Same for GCSE's.

I did A levels and I did hardly any work as I hated college, but I still passed with good enough grades.

[Lady Elanore]

This makes very interesting reading.

[Loz]

Yup. I still can't do long division, as I never learnt it at primary school and then by high school I think they assumed we could just do it....so by then it was too late and for some reason I could just never pick it up!

This is why no one can spell anymore, or use the language proprly, because they aren't taught it properly. Just taught random irrelevant cr4p to pass 'exams' with.

[Babs]

What Loz said... kids aren't taught subjects, they're taught how to pass exams, by learning things verbatim.

[Loz]

Like I said in an earlier post, recent A level students with an A* grade in physics

Theres another point - they have now invented a new grade - when I did A levels it wasn't possible to get an A* - it didn't exist - so how is that fair?

Also, from listening to Radio one - the DJs did a GCSE paper each. One of them got 57% and got an A - or was it an A*? Either way I think that is utterly diabolical! You know just over half the answers and get a top grade?! what a joke.