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davywavyEvery year at about this time, the papers are full of how the latest crop of school leavers and university entrants are getting qualification which are increasingly meaningless due to the examination system getting easier and the marking of those examinations becoming more lenient - you might recall the piece I mentioned a few weeks ago about University Admissions tutors complaining that work of a quality which would once have merited an "E" grade is now being routinely marked as a "C".
There's the counterpoint to this argument which is that exams are not getting easier, but that the quality of teaching has improved so much over the last 20 years that students are getting higher grades in the same intellectual environment due to improved standards.
Personally, I reckon it's somewhere between the two - what's undeniable is that the proportion of students taking 'hard' subjects like maths, physics and chemistry has fallen, and taking dossy, Mickey Mouse subjects like Psychology and Media Studies has risen - with a commensurate fall in academic thinking and rigour.
Moreover, it's undeniable that examination markers are being told to ignore spelling and grammar errors on papers. the consequnces of this are evident to anyone who has ever tried to recruit school leavers to do a job which requires correct spelling.
Yesterday, the Daily Mendicant printed details of an A-Level paper for the "Critical Thinking" course. Now, back when I were a girl and this was all trees, there was no such thing as an A-level in Critical Thinking and so naturally I was curious and went to have a look at it.
If you go and look, you'll see that it comprises mostly of what seem to be logic puzzles - and ones which (in the absence of answers) look pretty easy. I can't help but wish that examinations of Critical Thinking has been available when I was at school, because then my grades might not have been the lacklustre selection of grades with marks from somewhere in the second half of the Alphabet, but instead the healthy selection of A* marks which students seem to routinely get for signing their name these days.
I'm thinking of doing some more A-Levels next year as if it's possible this year to do qualifications in logic puzzles, I hope that by next year there'll be the opportunity for me to get good grades in A-Level Sudoku.
[Poll #802216]
There's the counterpoint to this argument which is that exams are not getting easier, but that the quality of teaching has improved so much over the last 20 years that students are getting higher grades in the same intellectual environment due to improved standards.
Personally, I reckon it's somewhere between the two - what's undeniable is that the proportion of students taking 'hard' subjects like maths, physics and chemistry has fallen, and taking dossy, Mickey Mouse subjects like Psychology and Media Studies has risen - with a commensurate fall in academic thinking and rigour.
Moreover, it's undeniable that examination markers are being told to ignore spelling and grammar errors on papers. the consequnces of this are evident to anyone who has ever tried to recruit school leavers to do a job which requires correct spelling.
Yesterday, the Daily Mendicant printed details of an A-Level paper for the "Critical Thinking" course. Now, back when I were a girl and this was all trees, there was no such thing as an A-level in Critical Thinking and so naturally I was curious and went to have a look at it.
If you go and look, you'll see that it comprises mostly of what seem to be logic puzzles - and ones which (in the absence of answers) look pretty easy. I can't help but wish that examinations of Critical Thinking has been available when I was at school, because then my grades might not have been the lacklustre selection of grades with marks from somewhere in the second half of the Alphabet, but instead the healthy selection of A* marks which students seem to routinely get for signing their name these days.
I'm thinking of doing some more A-Levels next year as if it's possible this year to do qualifications in logic puzzles, I hope that by next year there'll be the opportunity for me to get good grades in A-Level Sudoku.
[Poll #802216]
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 12:01 pm (UTC)...However, multiple choice questions are short and sweet, and therefore rather easier for publications to quote, than extended Parts a-e, each with sub-questions i,ii,iii style - so when people want to sneer at how easy a subject is, they'll usually pick on the MCQ *part* of a paper, and neglect to mention that there's usually a essay half/second paper as well.
The harshness of a MCQ paper is usually far more related to the speed at which one had to do it, and the pass mark required, than just the questions.
Anyway had to do those '50 arithmetic questions/data-checking exercises in 7 minutes' style aptitude tests, for example? It's stuff that a 10 year old could do in terms of difficulty level - but to actually do _enough_ questions _correctly_ in the time limit given really requires you to be totally on the ball and fully comprehending the questions to jump direct to the answer, not stumbling your way through by exhaustive exclusion of the 'obvious wrong' answers.