[Closed] 29 Years of Things Being Made Easier

Bloody annoying. I did my A-levels 9 years ago, but i'm applying for graduate jobs at the moment (i did a degree and a phd). As well as degree classifications, most employers now also stipulate a minimum number of "UCAS points" - i.e. A-level grades - required. Mine look a lot worse now than they did when i got them.

Just goes to show that the youth of today are getting cleverer every year, in line with OFSTED recommendations.

I got my A-levels before they brought in all this AS rubbish. I was only allowed to do 3 subjects, and they were sodding hard.

I pity the people who did theirs after the new system of doing loads came in, but before they got dumbed down a lot - their CVs must look pants!

Dave

the youth of today possibly [i]are[/i] getting cleverer though..

with more competition in the market place and ever better access to resources I don't see why not..

the kids I know doing their A-levels now, are about a gazillion times more motivated and conscientious than 20 years ago when I took mine too..

Did mine 28 years ago and got 2 A's - I must be off the scale now! 🙂

I'm sure that much may have improved but 29 years of an upward curve with never a glitch? Let me know if you believe that and I'll send you details of my Nigerian bank account I need a little help with.

unki - Member
the youth of today possibly are getting cleverer though..

with more competition in the market place and ever better access to resources I don't see why not..

the kids I know doing their A-levels now, are about a gazillion times more motivated and conscientious than 20 years ago when I took mine too..

Have a couple of sons - one got is his AS level results today, the other finished last year. So I can compare their results with mine. What I have observed

- teaching is 'better' in that teachers know what has to be taught to pass the exams i.e. students are taught to pass the exams
- the syllabus is tighter - less scope to cover
- the pupils are expected to work a lot harder than I did
- Exams are not designed to stretch the top pupils.

When I did my A levels (30 years ago) they were in effect University entrance exams. This means that they were very academic, generally theory based and not much in applied work.

I really don't understand all the fuss about creating an A*. Just make the exam harder and less will get the top grades and you will get a better spread of results. The top pupils will shine through. When I did them a C was not a bad result - now it almost a fail!

I was only allowed to do 3 subjects, and they were sodding hard.

Most people today are only allowed to do 3. I did 4 (and a half), but I was a very different, I only knew one other person who was doing what I was doing.

FWIW, I've talked to a few adults who have gone back to college are doing A levels, and they were finding it pretty hard.

So if you haven't done an A level course in the last few years or so, your opinion is worthless. But don't let that get in the way of having a good old moan about how things were better in your day.

😉

I really don't understand all the fuss about creating an A*. Just make the exam harder and less will get the top grades and you will get a better spread of results.

The A* is a very good invention, as it separates the somewhat intelligent people (who get around 85%), from the properly intelligent (who get around 95%). And it does all this without effecting any of the other results. And it's of course, very simple to do.

So if you haven't done an A level course in the last few years or so, your opinion is worthless. But don't let that get in the way of having a good old moan about how things were better in your day.

I can sympathise with this view, but...

This still stands...

I was only allowed to do 3 subjects, and they were sodding hard.

I did A levels in 1985. The sixth form I attended consistently achieved the best A level results of any school west of Bristol, yet three A grades was "almost" unheard of. Most got Bs and Cs, the bright folks might have had an A in the mix

I think there were 2 students in my year who got straight A's(guessing out of 100+?) - and they didn't need them as they both had unconditional Oxbridge offers. Both were truly academically gifted. I remember one being so far ahead (in terms of lateral thinking) that our organic chemistry teacher could do nothing much with him.

Every year the scales used to convert raw scores in IQ tests into an IQ score (where 100 = average) have to be modified because people are scoring more highly on the raw tests. Ergo, we are getting more intelligent.

[i]So, A-level results have 'improved'.
Again.
For the 29th year in a row.

I'm finding it very difficult to believe[/i] that I'm so old.

Fixed that for you Grandad.

Another question - since when has it been normal for kids to go into school to get their A level results? Mine were sent in the post so there was just me and the kitchen table to celebrate... but that was in 1984 mind.

And do 'S' levels still exist because they were the bee's bollox of properly hard exams back in the day. I see they're now doing 'A*' but an 'A' with distinction/merit at 'S' level was probably more of a fine grade (sic) discriminant that.

Improved access to information must count for some of this. I remember trawling books in a library for hours for coursework / revision etc. Its a 5 minute job nowadays.

Dosent make them any more use to employers though. You can teach people to pass exams but its pretty hard to teach them to be clever.

meh

not sure what the point is of grades - wouldn't "pass" to show a minimum competency standard, followed by decile do better at showing relative ability ?

A friend who is a 6th form teacher reckons that modular exams have made a huge difference - the questions are no easier, but doing them straight after the module has been taught, with the possibility of a re-sit the following term, has got to be easier than doing the whole lot at the end of upper 6th.

Access to information is much, much easier.

Teaching is smarter, in that it is geared to passing exams.

So whilst I don't think that the subjects are any easier, passing the exams is, if that makes sense.

On the IQ test stuff.... this does all assume that IQ tests actually test intelligence, but then, what is intelligence?

I think there were 2 students in my year who got straight A's(guessing out of 100+?) - and they didn't need them as they both had unconditional Oxbridge offers. Both were truly academically gifted. I remember one being so far ahead (in terms of lateral thinking) that our organic chemistry teacher could do nothing much with him.

Not many people get straight As now a days either. Interestingly enough I got rejected from Oxford - probably because I got a C in one of my AS results, but I got A*AAB at A level, plus the C at AS. It's very, very, difficult to get into Oxbridge - probably like it's always been.

And do 'S' levels still exist because they were the bee's bollox of properly hard exams back in the day. I see they're now doing 'A*' but an 'A' with distinction/merit at 'S' level was probably more of a fine grade (sic) discriminant that.

If you average 90% or over, you get an A*. 80-90% you get an A, 70-80% a B, and so on. I don't know what an S level is.

Dosent make them any more use to employers though. You can teach people to pass exams but its pretty hard to teach them to be clever.

Does teach them how to access information efficiently, and then work through it to a conclusion. Which some would say is useful.

Another question - since when has it been normal for kids to go into school to get their A level results?

We did in 1988

Another question - since when has it been normal for kids to go into school to get their A level results?

Results are posted on the internet, are mailed, and can be collected in the college. Most people go in to [s]make fun of[/s] congratulate each other.

Face it, you lot are all thickos.

Most people today are only allowed to do 3. I did 4 (and a half), but I was a very different, I only knew one other person who was doing what I was doing.

Lies! I did 5 and a half and I wasn't special. And that was GRIMSBY.

Yep. My daughter has just started S4 and I'm stunned at some of the stuff they are doing.

That's a fair bit of statictics to sleep thorough to get that far. Must be a Further Maths student to be doing that much?

Lies! I did 5 and a half and I wasn't special. And that was GRIMSBY.

There's some A level equivalents that do about 7 subjects, doing 5 and a half subjects is pretty impressive though, that's about 25 contact hours in one year, and 30 in the other? Unless you did it over 3 years? What subjects?

Yep. My daughter has just started S4 and I'm stunned at some of the stuff they are doing.

Some of the maths modules are a bit weird, and differ between exam boards. I only ever did up to FP2, but some people I know did up to FP4 on a different exam board, but we covered pretty much the same stuff, to the same level. I haven't even heard of S3 before.

I got 3 As in 1997. I am not particularly intelligent, and am monstrously lazy[EDIT] (as I have come to realise from university and 7 years of practice as a lawyer).

Thing is, it doesn't actually matter all that much. Exam results stop being important once you have some work experience or further education, you'll not be comparing today's exam results with those of someone in their 30s and saying "We should employ this kid because he got 1 more B at A-level" And university entrance criteria have gradually increased too. I understand why people don't like it, but the fact is it's unimportant whether it gets easier to get an A.

If anything it works slightly better to devalue the pass marks- the current grading structure isn't all that useful for lower achievements, the fail range is too wide. And people leaving school with few qualifications are the ones that the detail of exam results matters most to- if you've got 1 A-level and 2 fails, suddenly it's quite interesting whether you got 10% or 40% in those fails.

Teaching is much better than it used to be.