Would anyone tell me if I was getting...stupider?

[davywavy]

Reading the newspaper the other day, I came across a piece which said that University admissions tutors were decrying the decline in educational standards represented by A-level grades. For example, one claim they were making was that work of a standard which would have recieved an "F" (fail) grade 15 years ago was now routinely being awarded a "C" grade, and that this was making the task of identifying good quality students capable of benefitting from university education increasingly difficult - especially in the light of central government initiatives to do away with separate University entrance exams - and that all exam grades were being marked up in a similar fashion.
Some people might be shocked by this decline in educational standards, but as usual I see it as an opportunity. I'm going to be asking the exam board for my 15-year old A-level grades to be reclassified in line with this dumbing down process. This will transform my educational achievements from the lacklustre selection of middling grades that they currently are to four A* grades, which should in turn help me get into a decent university rather than the Mickey Mouse establishment I actually attended.
And I'll deserve it just as much as anyone.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Not only are you getting stupider, you should lay off the pies.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It's like some awful slow process of becoming you. Woe for my physical and mental decline.

[gwaunquest.livejournal.com]

you may post as anon but I'm sure you're John.

[(Anonymous)]

There isn't a prize.

[davedevil.livejournal.com]

There are mutterings on moving towards the American GPA system. It is somethign I who heartedly agree with.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I don't want that! I'd go back to being stupid again, rather than the A* student I currently am!

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, but it doesn't work like that, does it?

People look at the letters on your certificates, and if you've got a C they think you are as stupid as today's C students...

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

How does that actually work? (Or rather, how does it remain consistent over decades of changing course requirements, which is what the actual issue is)

Half the reason that exams have got 'easier' is that syllabuses have changed. Yes, a lot of good GCSE Maths students would do very badly on an old O-level paper - they aren't as good at mental arithmetic, and don't know how to use slide rules. However, that's because calculators are now something every student has access to, and therefore the syllabus has moved away from basic calculating. If I remember correctly, there's now a fair bit in GCSE that didn't used to be covered until A-level, simply because there's now *time* for it in the course!

Grr, mutter, and so forth.

With maths at least, I think we're going to see stronger students coming through, because they're getting better understanding - higher percentages doesn't necessarally just mean the exams have got easier. It can equally mean that the teaching methodology has improved, more time is being devoted to a subject ast a younger age, and that exam questions are being laid out ni a way that doesn't muddle the ability to do a subject with the ability to comprehend a convoluted and badly-written question. I've helped out in classes with kids who've been on national curriculum from the start (and this was before the enforced literacy/numeracy hours came in) - and they were doing FAR more advanced maths than I did at school at the same age.

If I could do as well as I did with my training...those kids are going to be fantastic.

Don't know so much about other subjects of course - and some may actively have suffered from the numeracy/literacy hours, because of being squeezed out of the timetable.

[davedevil.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_in_the_United_States#Grade_point_average

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Yes; it should be: "Would anyone tell me if I were getting more stupid?"

;)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Or even 'becoming' rather than 'getting', but now I'm just getting picky ;)

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Damn. Faith no More lyrics let me down again.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Damn. My knowledge of popular music let me down again.

[jonnyargles.livejournal.com]

Maybe they could grandfather your university, too, assuming that you would have got a better degree from a better institution?

They could also assume that there would have been more of a slew of American ingenues who would have been impressed by your bonhomie, and thus you could also grandfather your sexual history.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the second part of that statement is actual possible, considering the reality of my trips to the United States.

[gwaunquest.livejournal.com]

It's chaos theory.Over the years access to information and places to learn has exploded. This means that the number of people able to choose what they learn and from where, as opposed to being fed chunks of information in set places at set times has also exploded. The net result is that the attractors are pulling the very intelligent rapidly away in one direction and the can't be arsed are sitting mindlessly absorbing five second flashes of pointless drivel in the other.The section in between,deprived of both high and low becomes increasingly mediocre.

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised that 'the task of identifying good quality students capable of benefitting from university education' is getting more difficult if A-level grades are being relied upon to do that. That's not what they're designed for any more. The old-style 'O's and 'A's were primarily intended for the purpose of identifying a supposed intellectual 'elite' who could go on to university (or straight into earning pots of cash, as they preferred). GCSEs were introduced with the intention of teaching and assessing knowledge and skills at all levels, and A-levels inevitably had eventually to be adapted to suit the new ways of working to which students had become accustomed.

I can't speak with much detailed knowledge on most subjects, but I can for languages (which I learned under the 'old' system before taking exams under the new one and then teaching them for some years): GCSE is much 'easier' for an 'academic' student, but has the virtue of being half-way useful for all (e.g. I, for one, was quite capable of doing O-level-style 'write a 100 word description in the past tenseof this cartoon strip story' , but 'write a brief e-mail to book a hotel room/ a letter to your penfriend describing your holiday' is far more useful in real life). Similarly, I'm of the opinion that writing an essay in French/Spanish/whatever on criminality/gender politicss/Spain under Franco/whatever (just a few examples of my what the forward-thinking London exam board was requiring at A-level 15 years ago) is just as valid intellectually as writing - in English - about the works of Sartre or Voltaire or whoever, besides meaning you learn more useful modern vocabulary (Plus it's a damned sight less soul-destroying than being obliged to read Victor sodding Hugo).

The modern exams may be less of a strectch for the 'intellectual elite', but at least they teach you to deal with the real world. When I lived in Paris 12 or so years back, I sent the then-boyfriend off, with the right money, to buy a baguette. Despite his undoubted intelligence and a perfectly respectable O-level grade in French, he came back enormously disconcerted because (I quote) 'she spoke to me'!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

This does rather beg the question of how Universities are supposed to at least begin the selection programme of students. With the preponderance of high grades amongst people whom, twenty years ago, would not have got them, what are Universities to do? Successive government policies have resulted in the abandonment of entrance examinations, meaning that the only way to know if someone is suited for a particular course or university is by interview - a task growing harder as the proportion of school leavers shunted into university grows and the proportion of those having high grades increases.
As it's government policy to increase the proportion of university attendance, it's somewhat unreasonable of the government to remove the very tools that universities use to select their students. I hear rumours that Oxbridge and several of the other better universities with larger endowments are seriously considering declaring themselves independent of the government system and funding, a move which would allow them to select according to their own standards rather than being treated as a political football and being dictated to which students they should be taking (such as the unhappy Laura Spence affair).
Like it or not, there is an intellectual elite (I'm not a member of it, as my A level results solidly indicate), and it is to our long term detriment if we do not allow that elite to be identified and taken to the limits of their abilities. A half-way useful for all examination system fails to achieve that, unlike the old O level and CSE split system which taught both intellectually and vocationally.
Not only this, but the ‘half way useful’ education system is of little use to employers; as an employer myself, I’m finding it very hard to find recruits who can spell or add up and these two skills would seem to me to be a reasonable criterion for being able to function in the real world. Nevertheless, these people, at school, received perfectly adequate or even high exam grades.
If high-scoring A level students are being prepared for skills and real world experience and not university entrance, it’s not unreasonable that skills like spelling and sums should be of high importance. And if they are being prepared for university – which the intellectual elite should be – then those skills are of even greater importance.

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

Lots of questions, to which I shall attempt some answers (either here or in replies to later comments on mine).

How are universities supposed to select students? Personally, I'd take the view that if they really can't manage to do it on the basis of application forms and interviews, for whatever reason,they should set specific tests for the purpose, and if government policy prevents that, it's the policy that's wrong, not the A-levels. (Did they scrap STEP papers, then? -I thought Oxbridge still used them.) I don't agree, however, that university selection is - or should be - the primary purpose of the exams which are taken by a far wider group than is ever likely to go on to further study.

I agree completely that spelling and grammar are important. I was forced this week to interview someone whose application form was riddled with grammatical mistakes (but, hey, let's not get into a positive discrimination discussion!), and it was a waste of time for both of us, as attention to detail and the ability to write a decent letter is non-negotiable in the job in question. However, I'm not convinced that it's the change in examination systems that has caused the low standards of spelling accepted by too many these days. The golden age when young people respected their elders and betters and were able to spell, add up etc. has always been twenty/thirty/fifty years ago, whenever you ask anyone old enough to tell you about it. And one of the first relevant articles I dug up when doing a net-trawl for research on spelling standards was the following in the Times Educational Supplement - http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2149987 - which reckons that 16-year-olds' spelling has actually improved since CGCSE was introduced.I understand that the QCA is currently looking into putting more emphasis on spelling, grammar etc, in exam marking, though, which may help.

[(Anonymous)]

> has the virtue of being half-way useful for all

Since when has pandering to the lowest common denominator been a virtue? The intellectual elite should be identified and encouraged, not beaten down because of an inexcusably idea of imposing "equality" in the education system. People aren't equal, people's intellects aren't equal, and the education system should reflect and reinforce that.

[(Anonymous)]

It's possible also that the changes in language teaching have been brought about just as much by improvements in technology - cheaper foreign travel, fibroptic telephone connections, the aforementioned email - as by any ideological reformer wanting to level-up the less academic. If you read "Jane Eyre," Jane's cousins are first encountered teaching themselves German from a dictionary, a grammar, and a text, and taking great pleasure in the exercise. It is unimaginable that they should ever be able to afford to travel to Germany; foreign travel is far beyond their means. Even a hundred years later, placing a trunk call to Germany would be expensive, unreliable, time-consuming. Package tours didn't really gain mass popularity until after the war - my parents have a recollection of us all sitting at a cafe in Nice in the late Sixties, and a battered English van pulling up with GB plates and "Nice Or Bust" painted on the side drawing up at the sea front, and a bunch of triumphant, lobster-coloured young men piling out and rushing down to the sea ... it was a huge adventure then.

People were taught to write in foreign languages, and appreciate foreign literature, because until very recently, that was the real world.

H

[lareinemisere.livejournal.com]

> Since when has pandering to the lowest common denominator been a virtue? (Apologies, have tried more than once but LJ insists on attaching this reply to the wrong commment)

Since when has trying to make education meaningful and useful for all, rather than merely for the top 10 or 20% who will go on to further study, been synonymous with pandering to the lowest common denominator?

Yes, of course the highest achieving should be identified and encouraged - I'm hardly likely to suggest otherwise, since I count myself among that group and went to what's now called a 'bog standard' comprehensive before going on to higher things. And yes, intellects and talents vary enormously, and 'equality' can't be imposed by anything in real life (we'll leave aside fiction like Harrison Bergeron). I'm not sure I see a need to make a special effort to 'reinforce this, though. Having taught in everything from failing inner-city schools and ordinary comps to grammars and a very selective private school, no system I've ever seen or heard tell of has ever prevented the best doing well. The thing is, it's important not to waste the talents of those in the middle of the range, or who are late developers.

The point of the modern system is that it endeavours not to write the less successful children off before they even hit puberty, but that doesn't require the best and brightest to suffer - far from it. There are no end of exams, enrichment classes and extra-curricular activities in which they continue to excel.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Oh, it occurs to me - the other reason exams have got 'easier' (read: more students getting higher grades) - universities don't generally give unconditional offers any more.

So for example, my mother - who was very bright, although I seem to remember that she did have issues with how one of her A level subjects was taught - was given a EE offer after interview, and consequently very much relaxed for the remainder of her Alevsls, coming out with BDE or something.

From the same institution, 24 years later, I got asked for CCC (which given the usual offer was ABB, was about as close as one gets to unconditional these days, and was certainly the lowest offer I got from any of my choices) - that did end up being my reverse choice, but I worked hard and got AAAB (and an A in General Studies, if you count that) - because my first choice still wanted AAB.

Motivation makes a difference to grades, unsurprisingly.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I don't see what motivation has to do with what the university admissions tutors are saying. It's undeniable that a motivated student is capable of good work. What they're saying, though, is that work which isn't good is being marked up - it's not the effort whihc a student puts in which is being scored, but the quality of the work being produced. To wit: that work of a quality which would have merited a fail grade 15 years ago would now recieve a C.
I'm sure that someone working hard now will do, ultimately, just as well in life as they would have done years ago. However, work of poor quality is being comparitively marked up.
I'm reminded of the episode of the Simpsons in which Bart is sent to the remedial class and plays a game of musical chairs with ten chairs for six kids. When the music stops and all the kids sits down, the teacher happily cries, "Everyone is a winner!"
Without challenge, any success is false and hollow.

[(Anonymous)]

For people brought up on non competitive sports and gold stars for everyone, the fact that the 'real' world places more value upon success than failure can come as a bit of a shock.

Still, those who can't cope can always go on long term sick or get jobs in local government - more or less the same thing really.