Gold is now bronze im afraid (Are 'A' levels still the educational gold standard?)

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Product:	Are 'A' levels still the educational gold standard?
Date:	27/04/01 (37 review reads)
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Advantages: University is good for the soul and sex life

Disadvantages: Dumbing down big time will bite us in the ass

I think it’s pretty obvious that its easier to pass A-Levels than it ever was. But on the other hand I don’t think that’s such a bad thing as kids get more confidence and independence from three years at a new Uni, than they would working in a call center or Sainsburys checkouts with the grades they should and would of got ten years ago.

I think now its gone a little too far with grade increases, perhaps do to league tables and pressures for institutions to produce results, with ever decreasing revenues in the public sector.

Math’s is the subject in which grade inflation can be measured most accurately. Whilst marking A-level papers for Coventry University, we learnt that the they had set the same 50 multiple choice questions to first year students since 1991.

The results suggested a “dilution” of one A-level grade every two years.In other words,those kids who were awarded an A in 2001 would have warranted an E in the 1993!,somewhatscarey.
A colleague of mine was marking Physics papers at York who were also set the same multiple choice since 1979 this time. The average mark out of 50 has declined from 38 to 27.Yet!,over the same period ,the proportion of students awarded has steadily increased.Hard evidence im afraid.

If they are watering down the classic subjects, how easy are sociology and media studies. My brother is doing computer science in Nottingham and whilst the top students are scoring high %70 marks, the bottom ones are almost delinquents with 6 and 7 percent.

The advantages of some sort of university degree out way the disadvantages of dumbing down students, although lecturers spend most of their time trying to get interns up to the expected degree standard. Sadly some of the lesser students are being swallowed up by debts and not being able to handle the intellectual regime.

In reality though, unless you are training for a specific career,A-levels bare little r
esemblance or use to the job you may do.As long as the kids can read and write whilst imbibing that surreptitious arrogance University injects you with,they should eventually be able to get on in the big bad world.

I think the vast array of new subjects gives kids from poorer back grounds more incentive to stay on, rather than make a small salary and drink a lot of beer.
Working class kids will never have the discipline instilled on them from a young age like middle England can towards education, but can have a small slice of the forbidden fruit.

Remember that normal State schools (not in middle class areas) have 65 percent of all A-level passes, but very rarely infiltrate the top Oxbridge and red brick universities. So its critical to take you’re a-levels at the “right schools”who have vulgar rejection rates for the scruffy urchins.

Theres this Laura Spence debate about to be whipped up again before the election, saying that Oxbridge and the like take the bulk of their A-level students from the 7 percent independent sector. Again, if you get straight As from a “bog standard” comp, you are three times less likely to get into a red brick if you come from a middle class selective comp. Let alone the stats for the top public schools.

They say that its teachers who are not putting their students forward for them, when in reality they don’t bother as they know that the Laura Spences of the worlds places are taken by rich affluent kids with lower grades.

So its clear that A-Levels are easier to pass, but where do we put the ever increasing number of kids who want to go to Uni., regardless of cost and drop out rates.Will we see the top ones charging the working class kids out of the picture,second grade Unis for dimbos………….I digress.

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