Honest Exam Results - At Last!

[acman]

Owe..Sadly true your opening rant, I know a lad who's taking languages for his uni course, he has to get a job in Spain soon, when I said 'best of luck with that, he asked why, 'Because the young unemployed rate in Spain is just over 50%, so it'll be higher in real terms', he had no idea, when I asked what will happen if he doesn't get a job, tells me he'll fail his degree, 'so that'll be money down the drain' I say, 'Don't say that' he says, I asked why did he take languages in particular, he hadn't a real reason, so goodness knows how much this degree has cost, a degree he may now fail, and whether there is a job at the end of it, not sure, he'll be in a lot of debt though,

Regards acman.

[MrSmith]

Perhaps many do not understand that there is only a specific element of the English GCSE examination for which the marking has affected this years results.

 

It is that part which is termed a "Controlled Assessment" which was introduced to replace "Coursework".

 

The pupils are told the subject matter in advance. They research and prepare notes in advance and may even have a dummy run at a question.

 

Then they have to sit, under exam conditions, and write an answer to the question. They are allowed to have their notes/plan with them.

 

That answer is marked by the school and a sample will be externally checked for comparison.

 

That piece of work can comprise 60% of the total GCSE Mark and if people are bitching about whether it should be a C or a D under those circumstances, we are scraping the barrel.

 

Under those conditions they should all get an A.

Back in the day you studied and then took one exam at the end to see what you had learnt, how nice it would have been to be able to take notes into the exam.

[gnvqsos]

The whinging teachers, people who left school to go back to school, and with all the life experience of ....... er, a school kid, come out in force after a twenty years delivering dumbed down exams that gave everyone an inflated grade, unrealistic expectations and made a university place available to people who should have been butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, if there were any jobs. There aren‘t. So keep the numbers down for 4 years and pack off the unemployed to uni . At last we get fair marking that shows not everyone is A star and what do they do? Scream, shout, whinge from the roof tops. Very mature response. The kind of behaviour they've been handing out detentions for. If anyone needs locking up it's the teachers!

 

Well, well, little Mary has a ‘D’ and not a ‘C’ - big deal. May be little Mary should have been reading books instead of texting garbage. And if the teachers had enforved some discipline instead of wanting to their best friend maybe this wouldn't have happened.

 

We've had years of useless exams where grades have gone lower and lower - you literally can't fail! G grades are counted as a pass! % as low as 25 get you a pass. And throughout all that time the teachers have lapped it up and basked in the praise of raising standards year upon year. False praise matched by the false hope they engendered in their pupils who we know were unemployable as they can't read or write and certainly can't speak and get by on som e form of 'txt.' speak.

 

The whole exam system needs to be returned to a testing of knowledge and not a collection of 20 drawings, 8 photos, 3 DVDs and 130 words that they call course work. And that’s in Maths!

 

Everyone can go to university. Yeah, like everyone can walk on the moon.

 

At last we see sense and the modern day parents can’t take it neither can the ‘be my best friend’ teachers.

 

This a brilliant summation of all that is wrong in contemporary education from someone the system has clearly failed.I think you have done really well to disguise just how embittered you feel.

[I1L2T3]

So basically this tinkering with the grading is a feeble right-wing publicity stunt to make it look like they are trying to repair some of the damage caused by the Tories when they messed up a perfectly good exam system in 1988.

 

Tories took O levels out of the English exam system in 1988. Then they moan about the current set up while failing to mention it was them that took a decades-old internationally admired system and took it apart for no good reason at all.

[MrSmith]

So basically this tinkering with the grading is a feeble right-wing publicity stunt to make it look like they are trying to repair some of the damage caused by the Tories when they messed up a perfectly good exam system in 1988.

 

Tories took O levels out of the English exam system in 1988. Then they moan about the current set up while failing to mention it was them that took a decades-old internationally admired system and took it apart for no good reason at all.

 

It appears that both Labour and the Lib dems like the system we now have and think Margret Thatcher did the right thing getting rid of the O level system, I think getting rid of the old system was a mistake and watered down our education system in an attempt to make all pupils equal.

 

Conservatives admit Thatcher's mistake in scapping O-levels.

 

Labour’s schools spokesman Kevin Brennan said: ‘They want to bring back a two-tier exam system designed in the 1950s which will separate children and close off opportunity.’

 

Lib Dem president Tim Farron called the plans ‘madness’ and said: ‘Let’s kill off immediately any talk of returning to the divisive two-tier system that Mrs Thatcher wisely ended in the late 80s.’

[Scare]

They will have dumbed exams down because the teachers are getting thick

[gnvqsos]

They will have dumbed exams down because the teachers are getting thick

 

And their ineptness is evident in many SF posts,don't you agree?

[Anna Glypta]

Didn't read most of your rant but got the basic premise.

 

They're probably upset for a reason along the lines of (and the example i use could apply to any number of professions but i'll use a salesperson as an example);

 

Gerald/Geraldine:

 

Jan 1st - If you sell £50k between Jan-Dec you will have satisfied your role as a salesperson. All you need to worry about is getting to £50k and that's you done.

 

 

December 31st - You managed the £50k but we've decided it should have been £60k so you've failed. Please improve.

 

= Unhappy salesperson

 

You've certainly missed the point. Your analogy should be folks continually running the 100 metres quicker year by year because the metre is getting shorter.

[epiphany]

We've had years of useless exams where grades have gone lower and lower - you literally can't fail! G grades are counted as a pass! % as low as 25 get you a pass.

 

Which is about as meaningful as a fail. Who is going to take anything lower than A-C or equivalent seriously in the real world?

[I1L2T3]

Which is about as meaningful as a fail. Who is going to take anything lower than A-C or equivalent seriously in the real world?

 

Exactly. In the old 'O' Level system the A-C at 'O' level was a pass.

 

Grade 1 at CSE was regarded as equivalent to an 'O' level pass at grade A-C as well. And was taken seriously by employers too.

 

In practical terms it never really was a two tier system anyway. Many pupils were dual-entered for 'O' level and CSE exams in a subject. Even if they did CSEs there was always the chance of gaining a Grade 1.

 

I think the current system is worse and more dangerous. We still have students split into different streams according to ability. They still have predicted grades according to levels of ability. We now have a rubbish situation where exam boards dumb down papers to win business, allowing less able students to get pumped-up grades. In my day exam boards used to sell themselves by setting tougher papers, e.g. Oxford maths 'O' level used to have a strong selling point of being tough, e.g. versus the standard for AEB maths 'O' level. The multi-tier system still exists, probably worse than it ever was, but much more hidden.

 

The system is a shambles. The Tories took apart something that worked. Labour were happy to run with the replacement and misuse the system for political gain. LibDems seem to think everything is rosy in the garden. All the parties are a shower of crap when it comes to education. They should all keep away from it because they don't know what they're doing.