Out in 10 hours! Good luck to anyone who has taken them this year!

odds on the results being fiddled with anyone?

or will the pass rate finally flatten out?

Quote from: Daveor will the pass rate finally flatten out?

Joker  


Still, good luck to anyone waiting on results

It was said on the radio 23 years in a row pass rates have gone up.

Suprise...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4801035.stm

Just saw on welsh news that welsh results:

25% As
50% A or B

What the hell is that!!! A levels are meant to be hard? Surely thats not right?

lol could be the fact that kids who can actually do A Levels are staying on, with the majority of kids who cant but do so any way, dropping out after AS levels.

percentages mean naff all unless quoted with actual figures.

Quote from: M3ta7h3adlol could be the fact that kids who can actually do A Levels are staying on, with the majority of kids who cant but do so any way, dropping out after AS levels.

nope Im afraid they are simply being fiddled with:

QuoteThere was a record number of entries overall at 805,698, 2.8% more than last year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4801035.stm


little wonder that plenty of the top private schools have already started to give up on the ALevel system & are offering the IB as an alternative

I did em a few years ago, and I know a lot of people who did them this year, they aint easy!

Quote from: White GiantI did em a few years ago, and I know a lot of people who did them this year, they aint easy!

"easier" might be the better term then - at least for science subjects

not sure about the others but the majority will have had the grade boundaries or marking schemes fiddled with over time & the structure of the questions have been changed in order to aid candidates further - seems to be a lot less emphasis on actually solving problems & applying your knowledge & more emphasis on remembering how a certian type of problem is solved & simply following that same pattern again

put it this way we used an old O-level text book to cover most of the A-level pure maths stuff & that was back in 97-99 - standards have no doubt slipped even further by now

18 year olds covering topics that under O-levels were taught to 16 year olds -  they are blatantly easier.

a-levels these days make a mockery of the older ones, and empolyers know that.  I actually know people who have done computing a-levels and they cant code freehand.  They can tell you all the design and methods, they can do HTML, but present them with something harder and they fall to bits.  I started a-levels and switched to a BTEC Nat Diploma in Computer Studies becasue i wanted to do that in the 1st place.  The Nat Dip taught us Pascal as per usual at the time, and COBOL with extra classes in C and Oracle.

Quote from: Dave

Quote from: White GiantI did em a few years ago, and I know a lot of people who did them this year, they aint easy!

"easier" might be the better term then - at least for science subjects

not sure about the others but the majority will have had the grade boundaries or marking schemes fiddled with over time & the structure of the questions have been changed in order to aid candidates further - seems to be a lot less emphasis on actually solving problems & applying your knowledge & more emphasis on remembering how a certian type of problem is solved & simply following that same pattern again

put it this way we used an old O-level text book to cover most of the A-level pure maths stuff & that was back in 97-99 - standards have no doubt slipped even further by now

18 year olds covering topics that under O-levels were taught to 16 year olds -  they are blatantly easier.

Except we were using old A level past paper books for physics to pass A level physics nowerdays in my school.

Can honestly say while I was getting 80% in my A level past paper book, I hit a D grade in my actual synoptic paper.

The practical and the theory was a bastard with more deriviations than anything wed studied for. If science is getting easier then its certain boards that are letting the side down. WJEC was hard as nails.

AQA on the other hand, Chemistry, As an A2 Student we had a look at the new AQA syllabus for AS Chemistry it was piss... covered very very basic organic, and more about the transition metals (boring crap) than anything. WJEC syllabus (what we were on) covered full organic chemistry in the first year, with further organics, and the addition of physical chemistry in the second. Was a whore... an absolute whore.

@M3ta7h3ad  That was a nuber of years ago now tho wasnt it, you not 18 now

Another thing I heard, again a welsh statistic (but im guessing its the same all over) is that there is a 97% pass rate!! If only 3% of people fail then the test isnt hard enough! People may be getting smarter or the education system better (as Mr Blair wants us to think) but if 97% of applicants pass then the exam is too easy.

These figures really annoyed me, exams should be a challenge and a fair representation of the nations ability. If 25% of the country have As then how can anyone be expected to distinguish between them? They are not all as capable as eachother and grades should differentiate them from one another.

It does no one any real good to inflate grades, in universities they adjust grade boundries to fit the correct % of people in each grade. This seems a much better way of accounting for differences in exam papers.

Quote from: sexytw@M3ta7h3ad  That was a nuber of years ago now tho wasnt it, you not 18 now

Another thing I heard, again a welsh statistic (but im guessing its the same all over) is that there is a 97% pass rate!! If only 3% of people fail then the test isnt hard enough! People may be getting smarter or the education system better (as Mr Blair wants us to think) but if 97% of applicants pass then the exam is too easy.

Things may have changed since I was at school but back then a pass was considered a G or better. So in other words, to fail the exam you have to get a U.

Of course, a G isnt a good pass but it is a pass nevertheless.

True, it is A-E grades for A level. But looking at the figures on pass rates (from BBC):

2001: 89.6%
2002: 94.3%
2003: 95.4%
2004: 96.0%
2005: 96.2%

a 6.6% increase in 4 years is pretty big, and with more people than ever taking the exams it should be going down if anything.