GCSE Results

yes, you have to write your surname now.

Whenever any minister tries to implement a more rigorous exam system they always do a good job of knifing them and undermining any changes such that no self respecting business now trust the results of genuinely gained achievements.

BBC seemed absolutely disgusted that the Tories and Gove attempted to reintroduce academic rigout to our schools.
Apparently too stressfull for generation Jnr Snowflake.

*stressful

*rigour.
6/10 must try harder ;)

You have just been awarded an A* for English JC (under the new system of marking).

Fank U, Teechur!
I is gonna thell al me besties awn instaface!

even the kids that failed last year are passing this year, on the harder exam.

seems an odd system and always has done

why not just set exam and give kids a mark , or percentage

let all kids sit same exams instead of exam boards competing to make it easier for
schools to climb league table.

seems odd that our gcse papers for 16 year olds are about 13 year old standard in se asia though

The dumbing down of the UK.

Exactly donny.  It makes much more sense to give 10% A+, 10% A, 20% B etc.  (I know they have changed to numbers but same principle).

A school year must be about a million, so you have a massive sample size.

No sense at all in setting artificial, prescribed levels of attainment (OTHER THAN FOR ULTERIOR MOTIVES).

Any efforts to address this gets obstructed by the teaching unions and 'professionals'.

The problem with grading on a curve as I think they call what Jack wants is if you are in a year of thickos you get a better score with the exact same exam as if you're in a year of smarty pants. Not saying they weren't handing out qualifications like sweets for dumbed down courses but I think you have to be fair year vs year.

21% TO GET A PASS IN PROBABLY 1 of the 2 main subjects maths, the tv media should name and shame anyone who failed the exam,after leaving school in all exams to do with work you need 60% minimum to get a pass and in some cases 80%, the snowflakes are in for a shock in thr real world,

HTF do you get less than 20% in an exam you,ve been entered for

Just Checking - My point is that with a million students, you aren't going to get a 'clever' year or a 'thick' year.

IF the objective is to rank, or categorise students, you would do as I suggest.

IF you have other agenda, you use the current system.

Agreed Jack. Daft they don't award grades on comparative performance - much fairer and clearer.

Well the entire thing is what is the point of the exam?
If it's to prove their knowledge then you give a grade on their mark which is what I think it should be.
If it's to compare them to other students then you compare them.
Perhaps there should be two marks, I've not problem with that like

"I got an A/B" which means you got and A on the mark (like say above 80%) but were statistically on the 60-80% segment of grading by the comparison with other pupils.

That's sounds a decent system, why not.

Well, under your proposed system, how would you determine what grade to award a student scoring 76 out of 100?

Think it through and you will see how meaningless the grades are and how easy it is to manipulate the system.

Which is why the year on year improvement in exam results is so laughable.

And, the headline 'grades continue to improve despite tougher exams' is so self-evidently wrong it is astonishing.

My system is you grade firstly on whether they knew the course or not. That to me is the important thing.
If the knew the course well but everyone ELSE know the course very slightly better they should not be given a crap mark for it when they know their onions.
Which is what you guys seem to suggest. I realise this is a philosphical point if you believe there are enough people
to average things out perhaps but it's an important point as it's the starting point as to the entire system.

So to clarify you might under my, it would never float idea (!), get a like ... well for 76% a "B" but if the exam was relatively easy and that was a comparative mark you might call that a B/D or something. B on raw score, D on the grade curve. I can understand that, if I was interviewing someone I'd get that. It's not less stupid than the decision recently to grade marks the OPPOSITE way to everone else in the universe and go 1-9 with 9 the highest! How stupid is that.

Does it really matter? GCSE passes and A-levels make a difference when applying to university -- but then they are only competing with their own year so it makes no difference whether exams were easy so they all got As and Bs or hard so they all got Cs and Ds. They are not competing with 30 or 40-year-olds whose exams were more rigorous.

Five or six years later and it makes no difference what exams you passed because employers are more interested in your work record.

JC, Yours is a very interesting system.

Thinking it though, it is a perfect measure for how the figures are fudged.

If someone did get a B/D it would show that they did really badly in their exam, but for, whatever reason, the authorities decided to give
the student a B.


From The Telegraph....

GCSE pupils who failed the new tougher science exam have been handed a free pass by the watchdog after it moved the boundaries, it has emerged.

Just days before students across the country pick up their results, Ofqual has taken the highly unusual step of intervening to save science students from failing.

The move follows warning from exam boards that a number of students would be given a U, standing for “unclassified”, in their science GCSE which would "misrepresent" their ability.

The exams watchdog disclosed on Monday that it has introduced a new “safety net” to prevent too many students walking away with a U, the only grade that signifies a fail.

Ramruma has a point though.  Does it matter?  Maybe, in a sense that 18 year olds think they are clever and should go to university.  They are sold a dream by interested parties (universities, schools, government) but when it comes to the reality of the workplace, the jobs aren't there for them and they end up in minimum wage jobs or call centres.

My daughter got her results last week.

First of all, I can’t get my head around the fact that there are different exam board giving exams of differing degrees of difficulty. IMO the exam should be standard for all pupils across the board.

I also believe the grading should be  in set bands every year so that a “B” one year is equivalent to a “B” the next. Somebody made the point earlier that it doesn’t matter if they move the boundaries every year as kids are all applying for uni from the same year but this isn’t true as lots of kids now take a gap year.

Good point.  Different exam boards!  Another method of muddying the water and more Interested Parties.

My daughter did igcse's...Another thing to add to the mix

According to her, they are harder! I can't see any evidence they are one way or the other!!

There have always been different examination boards offering differing levels of difficulty.

Back in the 1970s at my grammar school we were all entered for O level and A level papers set by the Oxford board, precisely because these were advertised as being the hardest. The attitude in the school was that its purpose was to provide a full education, and that exams in themselves were a just a bit of a distraction. The fact that you'd attended Slough Grammar School for Boys was thought to be proof enough that you'd be able to handle yourself in later life, and if you were going to take exams, they were going to need to be as hard as possible in order to be meaningful.

This was long before the introduction of school league tables and so forth.

In all honesty sfbtw is there any point in going to school after the age of 14 ?
people never seem to leave school now

You can't enter betting shops until you're 18, so you have to do something to pass the time.

On the other hand, afternoons in school were bloody interminable. There wasn't a morning when I didn't turn the corner into Lascelles Road praying the school buildings had been razed to the ground overnight.

So, yes. You do have a point.

I mean, I took my maths O level when I was 14, and an 'A' pass from that board in 1976 would probably be worth a degree now. So it would have been much more worthwhile from a career viewpoint if I could have spent the next four years at home watching Julian Wilson and John Rickman of an afternoon.

Haha , good point , but you should be working at 14 imo

Of course not everyone should be working, not everyone is suited to it

I honestly believe that until governments change and put a little less emphasis on achieving high exam grades, we are doomed.

We need children who find exams and academic rigour difficult,to feel they can leave school and learn a trade that floats their boat, picking up relevant qualifications along the way and in turn, through their hard work outside of a school environment, be a tremendous success possibly earning good money while many of their graduate peers are still paying back their loans and working in jobs they never intended when they set out on their particular journey. There will be many exceptions but that is my general feel.

Schools also need to put more effort into communication in this day and age and by that I mean learning how important it is to look someone in the face and hold a conversation as I know many teens who could not perform anything near 'good' in any sort of interview.

Until the government set up a system whereby the kids coming out of school/college/university have skills and qualifications that meet the jobs market, we
aren't going to do very well.

Main problem, as I see it, is the Universities are a law unto themselves.