And I thought examiners were to be trusted.... (Are 'A' levels still the educational gold standard?)

Name: Sarah_Louise

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Are 'A' levels still the educational gold standard?
Date:	20/09/02 (631 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They look good, they're still the educational gold standard in my opinion, great for getting you in to University

Disadvantages: Exam board discrepancies, this years grade boundary changes have resulted in ALL A-level grades being lower than what they should be, we all have to wait to see what happens to our grades, some people will have missed out on a University place.

According to the BBC news website 67.79% think that they are getting easier (you can vote at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2189325.s tm)

The pass rate for this year's A-levels has shot up by 4.5% to 94.3%.

The high pass rate has, once again, led to accusations that the "gold standard" exam is getting easier.
Having just sat my A-levels this year I can vouch for the fact that it’s not getting any easier. Of course I never sat my A-levels in the 70’s but I have heard from numerous mature students who studied my courses for the past two years who all say the same thing. A-levels have changed but they’ve not got easier.

The new government initiative, the new Curriculum 2000, now means the A-level is split up in to two distinct years. First, aged 16-17 you sit your AS levels. Then, aged 17-18, you take these on (if you wish) to sit your A2 level.

Teachers should have the final say on the matter. They will have sat their A-levels and will have taught at A-level for many years. Surely they’ll be able to say, one way or the other, as to whether A-levels are getting easier. None of my teachers thought they are. They all agreed with the mature students.

The format of the exams have changed dramatically over the years. GCSE and A-level exams have gradually become more alike in the terms of their layout.
When one of the students in my physics class last year originally sat her A-levels (she was 60 something so I guess she sat them around about 1960). She sat two exams per subject right at the end of the course. The A-level exams involved one or two large essay style questions. The style was a bit like the more wordy subjects today, e.g. languages. ALL subjects involved these essays though. There weren’t any short questions involved. She taught O’level and A-level Chemistry all her life. She’s completed a degree BSc in Chemistry, Zoolo
gy, Statistics, a MSc in Chemistry and numerous computer related HND’s and the likes. She has taught all age ranges at numerous schools/colleges/universities. She was still under the impression that A-levels have NOT got any easier. She’d know wouldn’t she? She brought in some of the past papers. She brought those in which she sat originally and about 8 other papers throughout the years. I could clearly see the difference in format, not standard. From about 1980’s onwards the questions have been following the GCSE trend. I.e. a lot more questions spanning over a wider area of the syllabus.

The old A-levels required you to be competent in a few topics from your syllabus (after all, you could choose which questions to answer). Just so long as you revised 3 or 4 topics in detail you’d be pretty safe. Nowadays we don’t get a choice. We have to answer all of the questions. The questions span the entire syllabus meaning we have to revise the entire syllabus because we just can’t predict what questions will be asked.
Plus you’ve got to remember that the new Curriculum 2000 now means we sit far too many exams. For my A2’s I sat 9 exams. I also re-sat a module for chemistry. I therefore ended up with 10 exams to revise for. This isn’t bad in comparison to other people though. Remember that aged 16-17 when doing your AS levels most people do at least 4 AS levels. They tend to have 12 exams as a minimum in June. Many students sit their module 1 exams in the January of the AS year. Most will still be 16 and they are expected to complete an AS level exam. This isn’t the problem though, between September and January you tend to just be getting to grips with the level of work needed to succeed at A-level, then, all of a sudden you are thrown into the exam. I’ve seen plenty of people run out crying from the exam rooms. I’ve also seen plenty of people throw their pen dow
n and storm out claiming ‘I don’t know a single question’ on their way to the door. Of course they could/should have revised more but then they’re just from GCSE. I hardly revised at GCSE, I knew I didn’t need to revise much to get decent grades so why bother? Plenty of people get through their GCSEs with barely any revision. I was under the impression that the exam in January would be the same. How wrong was I? Its far too early to assess all but the brightest students.

Just because the number of students passing their A-levels is increasing doesn’t mean they’re getting easier. I don’t believe we’re getting much brighter but what I do believe is that we are prepared better for them. I.e. our GCSEs follow a similar trend. We have to answer all the questions, the questions span the entire syllabus, etc. Hence we are used to the format of how the exams are structured. Teaching will have, inevitably, got better over the years too. Another aspect why I believe more people are now passing is that people now have a MUCH wider choice of subjects.
In the ‘60’s you couldn’t do half the subjects now available. You could only do the more old-fashioned subjects which means not everyone particularly enjoyed their subjects/were not very competent with them.
Today you do your AS levels. If you don’t like the subject or can’t do it you drop it, it’s a simple as that. Hence those people doing their A2’s have reached a required grade to take them on and, in general, like their subjects. Its inevitable then, more people will pass their A-levels.

I don’t see how anyone can say that they are getting easier without actually sitting an exam themselves.
You can’t say they’re easier than when you sat them in year ???? without sitting an exam of today’s standard.
Of course each year is different, some years the exams a
re easier than other years. Its just luck of the draw as to whether you get an easy year or not. In my opinion, my A2 exams this year were harder than any of the past paper’s I did before the exams. I’m not saying that they were, I’m just saying that *I* found them more challenging than the past papers I did. I was predicted a B for biology, in all of the past papers I sat for it I got about 70-80%. I came out with a D. I was expecting a C for biology. I thought the A2 exams went reasonably well for biology. Another person in my class who was predicted an A came out with a C. He was a low C grade though and so surely something has gone wrong? He also thought the exams went OK.
I have heard this morning that OCR (the exam board that I did biology with) had put the grade boundaries up in order for their exam results to not be dubbed ‘too easy’. Some students with A grade predictions received a U for some of their modules bringing their entire grade down considerably. Of course this might not be entirely true but if it is, surely this isn’t fair on anyone?
For more info go to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2259594.s tm


Last year’s AS Maths exam was reported to be particularly difficult. 28.6% entries failed the course. This is alarmingly high considering other years this number is more in the region of 15%.

For the past 5 or so years the media has constantly been slagging of exam boards for making the exams too easy. How do they think it feel’s to students who get their A-levels? Those who get the A and B grades will think they’re not actually that clever, those who get E’s or fail will think they’re really dumb. It can’t do us much good hearing this year in, year out can it?

I think the best issue we need to address is the difference in exam boards. Some claim Edexcel to be the hardest exam board in general while OCR is the eas
iest (perhaps that’s why they raised their grade boundaries this year? Perhaps they’ve got sick of being dubbed the easiest board?).
I studied Chemistry with AQA, Biology with OCR and Physics with Edexcel so I can’t really comment on whether there is a difference. I found chemistry the hardest subject, this doesn’t mean AQA is harder than the others though.
With varying papers each year though I do think we would benefit from equal papers for EACH exam board. Ideally the exam boards should all collaborate, therefore no board’s exam is more difficult than another’s. One year someone should study one subject with the three main exam boards, that way it would show up the differences between the difficulty level that particular year, highlighting the fact that its not fair that some boards exams are easier/harder some years than others.

Back to the way exams have changed over the years, apart from anything else, students today have to study a lot wider breadth of topics for their chosen subjects than students used to. This is also inevitable. As subjects become more widely researched, topics become more widely available. The old A-levels used to test their students on a narrow range of topics. Today, with more research being done, we are expected to learn a lot more widely around a subject. Take physics for example. The mature student I mentioned earlier stated that her A-level physics in the ‘60’s involved a narrow range of topics, most of the subject was just going in to detail about the atom, Newton’s laws and light. Today, seen as we know a lot more about all of the above topics and have discovered much more since, we had to learn about not only the atom but its fundamental particles (quarks, leptons, muons, pions, etc.) (One module involved quantum physics). These haven’t even been seen yet and possibly never will be. They hadn’t even been imagined in the ‘60&#
8217;s. One fundamental thing that has changed with the likes of physics is that it is now made more accessible to students not studying maths at A-level. It used to be a requirement that you studied maths along with physics so the maths involved *would* be harder. I was relieved to hear this was no longer the case when I embarked on my AS levels because my maths wasn’t the best subject - I only got a C for GCSE maths.
The strange thing was that even the AS physics course had aspects of maths that were above and beyond that of GCSE. For example, we had to do logarithms in AS physics, these aren’t on any maths GCSE board.
The A2 contained, for one thing, circular motion, of which, the maths involved is on the A2 course of the mechanics option in maths. So, not only did the AS Physics contain AS maths, the A2 physics contained A2 level maths. If we hadn’t studied AS maths, never mind A2 maths surely A2 maths shouldn’t have been on the syllabus for physics? After all, we were told specifically that we DIDN’T need to study maths.
We needed a pass for GCSE maths and science and that was all.
I therefore assumed that the exam wouldn’t have any maths of such a level. In fact the teacher told us it would be highly unlikely because of the reasons stated above. Sadly though the synoptic exam (the very last exam which tests us on the entire two years) involved quite a number of questions with maths above and beyond GCSE (as would be expected, but A2 maths for students who’d not even done AS Maths?). As some of you will know, I’m now back at college doing some extra AS levels (maths being one of them) and in this very first week I have learnt maths that would have greatly improved my grade for physics.
I don’t propose the syllabus for physics is changed, after all, physics is a mathematical science. I do however think the entrance requirements should be higher, either that or they should
insist that you do AS maths. Of course this isn’t going to happen though.

As more subjects become available, more and more people are going to pass. People are going to study the subjects they enjoy and are good at. People no longer have to study the ‘old-fashioned’ subjects, which are all dubbed as being the hardest. 16 year olds view the ‘old-fashioned’ courses as being too difficult and really boring. Is it any wonder that computing, media/film/TV/theatre studies and modern languages are on the increase?

More people are now dropping the studies at AS to go on to University. 70% of universities are now using a points scale and so, with 2 AS levels being equivalent to an A-level you can get into University with 3-4 AS levels. Hence quite a few students don’t take the subjects to A2 level. After all, why waste a year when you could embark on a degree a year earlier than you would have before?

Again, according to the BBC news pages, the following % increases/decreases have been noted:

(Please note, I’m not listing them all, I’ll just list the larges increases/decreases):

~ Increases ~

Computing/IT is up by 23.2%
Media/film/TV/theatre studies is up by 27.6%
Modern languages is up by 118.3%
Music is up by 10.9%

For the very first time in years, physics has increased. Admittedly, only by 2.7% but it’s a start!


~ Decreases ~

General Studies down by 33.9%
Business Studies down by 24.9%
Mathematics down by 18.6%
Chemistry down by 5.1%
Biology down by 1%

In general though I and 32.21% of the voters on the BBC board agree that the exams have changed but have not become easier.

A governor of the Joint Council for General Qualifications, Mr John Milner, stated the following:

“The standard required to get an AS is less than half an A-level - whereas the second part of
the course, the A2, is pitched at a standard higher than the old A-level. Yet an AS commands half the tariff points of a full A-level.”

There’s your answer then. With AS’s being easier than half an A-level and A2’s being harder than the old A-level, surely it equals out to being EQUAL to an old A-level?
For more info check out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2193169.s tm


So, to conclude. If you are so sure they are getting easier why not put your money where your mouth is? Your local college will still allow you to embark on an AS level just so long as you’ve got the correct GCSEs/O’levels. Go and enrol and give it a go.


I’ll list one question for some of the ‘old-fashioned’ subjects, then, those of you who studied the subject(s) before say 1985 you tell me whether they are any easier. Many of the topics will not have been studied then (maybe not even discovered?!) You decide.


BIOLOGY
Outline the stages in the Calvin cycle and Krebs cycle and relate them, explaining their similarities and differences.

CHEMISTRY
When aqueous ammonia is added to a solution of copper II sulphate the pale blue solution changes to a dark blue colour. What is the formula of the complex formed?

PHYSICS
· Using the following constants:
Mass of the earth, ME = 6.0 x 1024 kg
· Earth's Radius, RE = 6.4 x 106 m
· Gravitational acceleration on the earth's surface, gE = 9.8 ms-2
· Universal gravitational constant, G = 6.7 x 10-11 Nm2 kg-1

Calculate the following:
(a) Given that Earth's orbital period is 365.25 days, calculate a value for the mass of the Sun. Take the earth's orbital radius to be 1.5 x 108 km.
(b) Calculate the percentage difference in gE between the equator and the pole taking into account the fact that the pole is 40 km nearer to the centre of the earth than the equator. r>What difference does the fact that Earth is spinning make to gE.?


MATHS
1) A curve C has the equation
y = (x^2 + 1)e^-x, xER
(where E = Î, in case that doesn’t come out on dooyoo it’s the symbol meaning ‘is a member of’ and where R meaning the symbol to mean ‘the real numbers’).
(a) (i) Show that
dy/dx = -(x-1)^2e^-x
(ii) Hence find the coordinates of the stationary point on the curve C.
(iii) Show that this stationary point is a point of inflection.


HISTORY
1) What was the main motive for the dissolution of the monasteries?

GEOGRAPHY
1) Hazards have social, economic and demographical impacts. Examine the main factors that affect these. (Essay worth 25 marks)



~ LATEST NEWS ~

You’ll all have heard the latest news I’m sure. It turns out OCR has fiddled ALL its exams. It moved the grade boundaries to prevent too many people getting A’s. This means that EVERYONE’S grades will actually be higher than the results we got in August. Of course it might not go up by a whole grade but your UMS mark will almost certainly go up. Plenty of people have missed out on university places because of this.

Not only have OCR been accused, it seems AQA and Edexcel are also to blame. With all these complaints and problems the UK is experiencing with its exam boards, its inevitable that the students, teachers and parents will lose confidence in the examiners.
What they have done is fraudulent. We should all sue. I know its not directly affected me with me not applying to Uni this year but you’ve got to think of all the thousands who have been affected. Their entire futures may well have been affected because of this.

Of course Uni’s are doing their best but with only a week to go before the new university term to start at most uni’s, its inevitable that some won’t a
ccept late students. Even if they do accept them, the students are likely to have lost their Halls accommodation. This may mean they have to pay extra for accommodation, not to mention travel to and from uni if their new housing is a fair way from campus. Why should they be the one’s to suffer?

For more information about this you can check out the following sites:
www.ocr.org.uk
www.aqa.org.uk

As yet, Edexcel hasn't put any news up on its website. For future reference you can find them at:
www.edexcel.org.uk