It's a fact

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8223855.stm

Well done all

* to C grades = 67.1% of whole
A and A* grades = 21.6% of whole, up from 20.7% last year
N Ireland A* to C – 75.1%
England A* to C – 66.9%
Wales A* to C – 65.5%
Overall pass rate (A* to G grades) – 98.6%

Of the three the country with the highest achievers A-C is the one with grammar school education – strange

Fact = supposition: fail

Is it August again already? 🙄

Our dept at work achieved an A*-C pass rate of 88.5% 🙂

My personal class of 23 achieved 9% A*-C 🙂 🙂

Pah! Anyone can limbo under a bar if you set it sufficiently high.

yea yea yea

Has the bar not dropped somewhat, because kids are as thick as shit nowadays.
Back in the day ( blah blah) only the real clever kids got the top grades now a A grade is almost the norm, my lad got a B in maths and he cannot count without a calculator

there was a girl on the radio the other day who had got 10 A Levels at grade A

now don't get me wrong, this is a big achievement but does it not indicate that perhaps they need to be updated. When I did A levels you did did 3 + general studies if you were human, 3 + an AS level and GS if you were brainy and 4 + GS if you were really brainy (sometimes with AS level further maths as well)

now the people who did 4+A levels had no life at all and worked every hour god sent to get them done, how you do 10 is beyond comprehension

Does anyone else think that the whole thing is becoming a farce? I mean…if I recall correctly the whole point of an exam is that it's supposed to be competitive, therefore once all the results are compiled there will be a 'bell shaped curve' so to have 20% of the population gaining the A* and A grades seems to me to be indicative of manipulation?

Please…someone…explain this to me?

Oh…and for any 16 year olds reading this, yes, maybe I have just written 'sour grapes from not quite good enough' but for you people I have nothing but congratulations. It's 'The System' that I am questioning.

Our dept at work achieved an A*-C pass rate of 88.5%

My personal class of 23 achieved 9% A*-C

Are you a Maths teacher or Oxbridge graduate? Or heaven forbid both? 😉

me thinks you misheard – not enough time to teach 10 A levels in 2 years

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/10-agrade-alevels-but-turned-down-by-oxford-1774688.html

ok so she took some early but still seems a bit odd

actually she did half of them early

as you were

i'd id been educated THIS year maybe i would have read the article properly in the first place

1 A, 2 Bs and a D by the way 🙂

Ooops typo – was meant to read "92%"

Ooops typo – was meant to read "92%"

Will let you off, it is a "stressful" time for you at the moment 😉

Does anyone else think that the whole thing is becoming a farce? I mean…if I recall correctly the whole point of an exam is that it's supposed to be competitive, therefore once all the results are compiled there will be a 'bell shaped curve' so to have 20% of the population gaining the A* and A grades seems to me to be indicative of manipulation?

Please…someone…explain this to me?

Seems almost oxymoronic doesn't it? Essentially saying that 1 in 5 are in the top band, which in my view should be a lot narrower than 20%.

Of the three the country with the highest achievers A-C is the one with grammar school education – strange

Strange indeed, not that it'll remain a grammar school education system for much longer mind. 🙄

It was a whie ago when I did my O'levels (showing my age!). It wasn't pysically possible in the school timetable to do more than 8. Ten does seem a bit extreme.

Though looking at the CSE physics paper in those days, "Name three things that float" hardly inspired me to think it's being dumbed down now. It it has heaven help us all.

Please…someone…explain this to me?

Don't forget, you should never tell a child he/she has failed any task. Its just a deferred pass (or something like that).

There is going to be a generation of kids getting a rude shock in the real world pretty soon.

Targets aren't helping either. My mates kid was pretty much bullied into doing a subject he didn't like or want to do, but was good at (thus getting the grades up for his school).

Used to be that it worked off a bell curve with x% attaining A* etc. But now is banded. So the limit is XX% and everyone with that mark and above gets A*.

My whole set passed at A and A*, mind you they are top set at a scottish independent school. and the only reason i support us studying gcse's is i'm still on holiday. 🙂

I heard on the radio today that they're dropping coursework in maths to help improve the maths grades of the guys as they prefer to just do exams and not coursework. Sounds rather a lot like manipulating the system to get the wanted results out of it.

Some kid on TV this morning was celebrating 17 GCSE A*s, As and Bs…

…there aren't even 17 real fooking subjects – so doesn't that just speak volumes?

My eldest is at secondary school and about to start his 2nd year.
As a rough rule of thumb I would say that his form are a good example of a bell curve – a small number who are flying, the majority who are more or less there and those who need watering.
The bit that gasted my flabber was the number of kids in my youngest school with a Statement of Special Needs, if that is a true assessment of them, all bar 3 will need potting out before they go up to secondary school

Of the three the country with the highest achievers A-C is the one with grammar school education – strange

Now if I've interpreted this right (your suprised that the top three counties with the best results all have grammar schools) I'm not as most counties with grammar schools I imagine are quite high up in the socio economic stakes. These kids tend to be better motivated.

Aye Kev, that technician of yours is a **** brilliant teacher. 😉

Helios – Member
Fact = supposition: fail/quote]

Sarcasm is lost? No?

Of the three the country with the highest achievers A-C is the one with grammar school education – strange

Potential for the old ecological fallacy there. Correlation doesn't = causation.

After teaching in some top schools and poo schools I think the teachers(some anyway) are teaching better in methods of what will be in the exams instead of the pure syllabus.

Coursework is easy and I have cought out many parents and kids cheating.

The exams are easier-GCSE and A'levels but the teaching is better and parents are pushing the kids in this competitive world.

Some kids have worked hard to some extent and these are the top end A-B.

I tried an A'level ecology paper over lunch and got 87% and I know nothing about ecology!?

I have scanned pappers from early 90's to now and the exams were tougher before I did A'levels in the mid 90's.

But we need a filtering system to separate people otherwise everyone will have a degree and go for every job etc.

Why not keep coursework but teach the kids about referencing sources etc.

Why not keep coursework but teach the kids about referencing sources etc.

Doesnt matter what you teach them the parents do it anyway!!

The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade

url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect][/url

Mathematical literacy (most recent) by country

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_mat_lit-education-mathematical-literacy

Some lad on the radio earlier said he got 12 A* grade GCSEs. Now, back in the 80s that wouldn't have been possible (you could only take 9 or 10 GCEs), but apart from that, it says to me this kid is perfect at everything. He hasn't got a specialist subject, as he is perfect at everything.
Meaningless really, isn't it?

Edit: In addition to this, my wife is a college lecturer and I've seen the work these kids produce. They can't even spell. I really do wonder what the f%$k is going on.

Ahhh Mr. Tankslapper – it was the "Well done all" that threw me – Thank god…

Also the fact that the article you pointed to didn't actually say kids were getting brighter (even the to$$er from the Dept. of Educashun said it was because the government is better – not the kids) – so I'm afraid that I assumed you were just an idiot using it to prop up some bizarre delusions about your offspring…

My apologies…

And many of these A* grades will be in statistics, oh the irony.

Well…radio 1 DJs have been doing GCSE's and got their results yeasterday.

Producer Aled did Geography & got an A. To get an A, his %age of correct answers was 57%!!
So you can get almost 1/2 of the answers wrong and still get an A!!

Comedy Dave did Biology & got a B & a D (there were 2 papers). For the B, he got 18/45 answers correct!! That's 40% to get a B!!

That just seems plain wrong to me. If you are setting your grading so low, surely the exams become meaningless? Someone mentioned to me yesterday that there has been an improvement in grades every year for the last 17yrs. If standards were really staying the same, surely that is statistically an almost impossibility?

I feel sorry for the children. I did my GCSE's early 90's and 12 subjects was considered a lot. 4 A-levels were considered the absolute max that anyone could do well at.

Used to be that it worked off a bell curve with x% attaining A* etc. But now is banded. So the limit is XX% and everyone with that mark and above gets A*.

The trouble with banding is that you end up with little real distinction in performance, which is kind of the point of exams. As a result, it's no wonder that A levels are becoming increasingly meaningless in terms of entry to University because they provide increasingly little evidence to those Universities as to who the 'top' students are. Rather than awarding grades, they'd be better off reporting actual % scores.

I'm less than convinced that the standard of education is better, looking at the aility of younger people to do basic maths without the assistance of a calculator or computer, or the ability of many people to write grammatically correct sentences. Look at the apparent inability to distinguish between 'they're', 'there' and 'their' as a simple but telling example. I am convinced that the ability to teach students what they need to know and do to pass the exams has improved markedly, but whether that gives them the skills and attitudes they will need to succeed later in life is a different question.

I saw this with other students at University quite frequently; they knew how to pass the exams, but did not ever fully understand the underlying concepts so applying them to real world problems was often difficult.

Producer Aled did Geography & got an A. To get an A, his %age of correct answers was 57%!!
So you can get almost 1/2 of the answers wrong and still get an A!!

Comedy Dave did Biology & got a B & a D (there were 2 papers). For the B, he got 18/45 answers correct!! That's 40% to get a B!!

Is that really true? Bloody hell. When I was doing the equivalent exams in NZ you had to get 80% to get an A. Which seems far more appropriate.

Well, that's what they said AdamM…..

Seems crazy doesn't it?

Do you know what I can believe that. Dons flameproof suit.

i really don't believe we are getting brighter so quickly

i truly believe the teachers are simply better at training the kids how to deal with examinations and how to score higher marks out of the system

don't the school league tables encourage this to spin good pr for the school?

from some of the school leavers and graduates I have seen at work i cannot say that they are super intelligent….! their grammar and letter/report written work is terrible! 😉

Plenty getting their As and A*s, but comparatively few are able to do it in maths/science/English etc.