A level of Competence? (Are 'A' levels still the educational gold standard?)

Name: tuftyclub

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Product:	Are 'A' levels still the educational gold standard?
Date:	22/08/01 (65 review reads)
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It seems that every year the question of 'are secondary school examinations getting easier is asked' This query is always coupled with a report that A-level results are getting higher
and higher. Yes it seems that every year our schoolchildren excel, teaching is getting better and that this is the only reason that results are going through the roof.

The first thing that I would like to say is, that as an outsider to the education system I
cannot say yay or nay with full confidence- I have not sat the recent A-Levels (in fact, being Scottish, I sat Highers) so cannot say without shadow of doubt whether the exams are easier or not. But I can analyse the situation and provide my opinion based on this.

it always irritates me when I see biased comments on this-, you really have to have gone through the entire education system to compare and constrast. I recently read (in 'Metro' that oustanding media great)that A-Levels were much harder than professional exams and that they were the hardest exams that anyone would sit. Signed P.Lonker aged 18. Not exactly a well matured and rounded view. Then contrary to this you read ' Oh they are so much easier - that's why the pass results are improving. Equally invalid.

When I sat my school exams it was a quota for each grade. Regardless of the score you had to be in the top 10% to get an 'A'. Now - anybody that hits the sweet spot gets an A. But can an A mean as much- not really. You were guaranteed to be in the 10%, whereupon now, you are not. That isn't neccesarily a bad thing. Our education system has chamged from being elitist where generally only those that were middle class or above were educated, to somewhere where most people from varied social backgrounds can have a crack at university. So we shouldn't be examining on quota- hard work should give reliable results, but you can't really compare the results. My problem with the existing syste
m is that it seems hard to cream off the outstanding students. For years the system failed the average student, now it seems to fail the outstanding one. 15 years ago your starry A implied that you were in the elite- now you have just worked hard and learned well- and as anybody who has met a really bright person knows, there is a difference.

Intelligence is a constant, as a society I do not think that we are getting any smarter- we may know more, more people may sit more exams, but that is not intelligence. The flavour of knowledge changes too, when I sat my higher Maths I had to memorise mathematical proofs, pretty useless for my skills as a mathematican - but part of the exam. Does the fact that these things aren't deemed to be neccessary today means than the new qualification is lesser- no just that other skills are thought of as useful for today. I work in an industry with a lot of apprentice and graduate employees- and a lot of them don't strike me as particularly bright- they know things, they can spout theory, but they don't make connections, and they are full of confidence about their own ability. Many times misguided. But maybe it's always been like that and it's only now that I am old enough to notice!

In short I feel quite sorry for those sitting school examinations today- they are being told that their hard work is worth nothing, which is patently not true, but I don't think the exams are similar enough to those of yesteryear to make any valid comparism, not everybody that gets an A now- would get an A then, but if we are moving to a less elitist society that
should be the case, I understand the frustration of those who sat exams in the past- they are seeing their results dwarfed by todays schoolchildren. I don't like thinking that my perfectly acceptable B's at Higher are looked upon as dimbo qualification when I was in the top 30% to get that, and I suppose that's where the problem really li
es. Society has changed, exams have changed and if we accepted that and the fact that the current exams structure is too different to compare, we'd stop all this constant fuss that happens every results time.

It's interesting that there are always comments about how those with lesser A-Levels go into the new university system -I've written about this at length elsewhere and won't rehash it here- but, think upon this- lots of new university go for subjects that you can't study elsewhere- so they are competetive and get students with good results, also lots go into old universities through clearing, so we cant say 'old good results, new poor results with much clarity- but, had we not had the new university sector there would be more students- with better grades crowding into the old sector- and as more students would be competing for less spaces with the newer grades which , through luck or design tend to be better. So we might end up where the average university student has 5 A's compared the the 1980 average of 4 B's (in Scotland this, not sure of English averages). So higher results for the same places. An unkind person would use this to say that the exams are easier- but it could just be that available spaces are reducing. Basically it's not a level playing field and cannot be compared as such.

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