"Frank Erskine" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 19 May 2011 08:43:02 +1000, Tony Bryer
wrote:

On Wed, 18 May 2011 11:40:22 +0100 Mark wrote :
She's a bright lass though, sitting her GCSE Maths this year at the
end of Year 9. I have a sneaky feeling she has yet to come across
anything that has really been "difficult".

Y9! Yikes, that's early. Our school lets the brightest students do
GCSE Maths at the beginning of Y11. My eldest has also yet to come
across anything really difficult.

BTW There's a news article recently about how schools are putting
students in for Maths too early you may be interested in:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13351933

Not quite sure how Y9 translates, but in my 1960s grammar school the
top stream (overall, no streaming by subjects) took O-level Maths at
the Jan sitting of the fourth year (i.e. after 3 years and one term at
GS) and then Additional Maths in June (which would normally mean an
extra year's teaching).

I still remember that out of 32 pupils in my cohort the Maths grades
(in an era when pass grades were A-E) were 24 A, 4 B and 4 C.

In the mid 60s when I did my O-level GCEs the grading was 1 to 9. 1 to
6 were passes and 7 to 9 failed.

Its the way they were graded that was different to now and is what made
older O levels harder.

It was assumed that the pupils taking O levels didn't vary much from year to
year and that any variation in the marking was due to the questions being
easier or harder ( I think this was and is a valid assumption). Then the
results were scaled so that the top 105 got a 1, the bottom 40% failed, and
various bands in between (I also think this was a valid way to mark them).

Now some group of teachers decides how hard the questions are and if lots of
kids pass its because the teaching is far better than it was (the only
evidence being the pass rate for the questions they set BTW). If lots of
kids fail then they decide they have made a mistake and make allowances for
the error in the exam papers.

The same applies to A levels except they even dropped the old S level exams
which put you in the top 2% or 5% if you got a 1 or a 2.

As it is now you get nearly everyone passing even though a lot of them don't
have a clue. You also get the situation where 4A's at A level is going to
get you into the best Unis as they now run their own entrance exams to
actually separate out the really good from the chaff and most of the other
Unis don't go on grades but use the actual marks as the grades are of no use
to grade the applicants.

Then there is the increasing bias of course work influencing grades, the
Unis and employers have no idea how much effort a pupil has put into that
course work, or even if the pupil is the one that has done the work.

There are a lot of bright kids out there but the GCSE and A level exams do
not separate them from the chaff and it really is easier to get grade A now
despite what the educators will insist on telling everyone. Employers now
this and they are more important than the educators ATM.