Following on from Mr Carr’s education piece, earlier in the week, comes further ‘pragmatic’ news from the UK’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
In a bid to make the UK’s A-level mathematics courses more ‘accessible’, this august and incorruptible State body has announced it will be making the subject even ‘easier’. Is this possible? And please don’t laugh at the next bit, it’s really not funny. To study it, you won’t even need to have studied elementary algebra, beforehand. Yep, you heard that right.
No doubt the honest government which rules us won’t then take the increased grades, which they hope will result from this heavyweight dumbing-down operation, and use them to promote how effective their education policies have been? Yeah, right.
Is the UK the only country in the world in which even Homer Simpson could get an A* grade, in a higher education mathematics qualification? Maybe, not this year. But give them a chance. I’m sure they’ll get there eventually. Everyone must have prizes.
In the meantime, the poisoned A-level gold standard is going the same way as the Pound Sterling gold standard, i.e. straight down the pan to get the UK government off the hook of its own continuing failure. Expect all private schools to abandon A-levels, entirely, within the next few years, to replace them with the International Baccalaureate. A-levels will then become purely the concern of the State system, which will suit the State admirably, as they’ll be able to inflate their achievements to levels of magnificence previously undreamed of, without any reference required to any kind of external reality. What a banana.
So as I gaze lovingly at my A-level certificate, up there on the wall, I wonder if now is not the time to replace it with a small poster of Kylie Minogue, in the hope that when she visits she’ll be much more impressed. I should be so lucky.
Did you see the “Back to the 1950’s” TV programme a few days ago, where modern teenagers are experiencing 4 weeks of life as it was in a 1950’s boarding school?
A class of 30 projected A*/A/B GCSE grade 16-year-old students were given a maths test which (apart from one smart guy who got full marks) most seemed to get about 30% in.
Only when the papers were returned was it revealed that they had actually sat a 1950’s “11-plus” exam (for non-UK people, this was a Common Entrance test for 11 year olds).
Anyway, what’s stopping independent schools letting their kids sit Open University degrees as part of their tuition?
I suppose the OU might have a minimum age requirement.
Well, we can’t expect decent education from state schools anymore than we can expect short dental queues from the NHS.
You keep your A-level certificates on the wall? My God! Were they the best days of your life, or something? I don’t have posters of Kylie Minogue on the office wall, just pics of myself with various critters I’ve caught or shot, not including (yet) John Prescott.
As for qualification inflation, I’ve seen the process at first hand for myself during my teaching “career”, and thinking about it again just makes me depressed. OTOH I have a son yet to undergo secondary schooling, and can only hope that the augean stables of the QCA have been vapourised by the time his 16+ exam comes round.
Tony H writes:
You keep your A-level certificates on the wall? My God! Were they the best days of your life, or something?
I nearly snogged my French teacher once, at a sixth form party, so yes, that was a pretty good day! 🙂
It is commenly mentioned by American firms in Ireland that one of the major reasons they invest here besides low corporation taxes is the high levels of education amongst school leavers. The Irish Leaving Certificate is similar to the International Baccalaureate, and it is generally felt standards haven’t fallen (yet).
Just a thought- but this dumbing down of the A-levels so that the “International Baccalaureate” becomes the Goldstar – wouldn’t be a prelude to a Europe wide Educational system would it?
What was his name Andy?
I heard Estelle Morris on the radio early one morning about a month ago, berating a representative of the UK’s Chemistry body, over the fact that his subject wasn’t “sexy” enough.
As the program progressed her utterances got more and more bizarre and displayed a shocking ignorance about her entire portfolio.
It was very scary.
Eamon
Hi Eamon,
I don’t know who you’re referring to, but for Estelle Morris to criticize anyone or anything, for not being ‘sexy’ enough, beggars belief! 🙂
I have nightmares in which a do-gooding, bicycle riding, Guardian-reading, sexually androgenous, vegetable recycling, social-working, knitted woolly scarf wearning, tea-drinking, bigwig, keeps prodding me with a rolled-up copy of a Polly Toynbee article, whining in a nasally voice, accusing me of being a devil fit only for the bonfire.
Guess who she looks like! 🙂
(PS: I must add, I REALLY am not God’s gift, but I never accuse anyone of not being sexy enough, on the principle that those who throw stones should be prepared to have their glass houses wrecked)
I finished studying for A-Level (or “A2”, if you like) Maths in May and sat the exams a couple of months ago (results this time next week, of course – annual government ‘higher’ education improvements announcement day). I don’t believe I am suitably experienced to make any sort of meaningful comparison between the ‘old’ A-Level and the new “A2” exams but the impression I got from my teachers is that things are definately being dumbed-down. The first year of most A-Levels seems to be spent teaching students material that was previously taught at GCSE level (or earlier). For example, the first year of A-Level Maths (or “AS”) comprises largely of teaching the basics of calculus and logarithms, topics which were in the past covered by secondary/middle and even primary schools.
Meanwhile, my A-Level Physics teachers has no end of difficulties resulting from the fact that it’s already possible to take A-Level Physics without a ‘good’ (A* to B) GCSE in Maths (which meant my physics teachers found themselves having to teach GCSE Maths to some students simply so that they could do some of the easier mechanics and nuclear physics questions – there were members of my class who had an incomplete knowledge of basic trigonometry but fortunately most dropped out after “AS” – I should mention also that I went to a good school, as defined by HMG).
A-Level Economics really was a bit of a joke – many students in my class achieved A grades (NB. Andy, there’s no such thing as A* at A-Level, yet) without doing any more than turn up for lessons (four hours a week). Anyone in any way capable of forming a sentence and endowed with a little common sense (what happens to price when supply increases? how are taxes designed to discourage a certain behaviour or habit? etc) can achieve an A in A-Level Economics. (My economics teacher, a socialist Keynesian lunatic who effectively made a Marxist out of one of the more naive girls in my class, mentioned not long ago that in future, economics students won’t even be expected to answer questions using full and coherent sentences because a new system of exam questions will be introduced which allows students to answer “using bullet points”.)
The only subject I found in some way satisfactory was A-Level History, which still seems to reward students for having an indepth understanding and good analytical, reasoning and writing skills. (I don’t think I need to bring up A-Level “General Studies” – what a joke.)
Andy writes:
I nearly snogged my French teacher once, at a sixth form party, so yes, that was a pretty good day! 🙂
Sexual harassment! I can imagine the sort of court case which either you or your French teacher might subsequently have faced had anyone born witness to that kind of thing today.
A note from over the sea.
What are the following items
A-level certificate,
A*/A/B GCSE in the first comment,
Irish Leaving Certificate
and last but not least, what is A*
Beside that we seem to speak the same language…mostly
Gunner writes:
A-level certificate,
A*/A/B GCSE in the first comment,
Irish Leaving Certificate
and last but not least, what is A*
A-levels: Exams taken by 18 yr-old Brits, often as a qualification for Higher Education (eg: University).
I took 4 of the smeggers, all done 100% in Finals Exams, (Maths, Physics, Chemistry, and General Studies), though God knows what they do these days, as they make them the marks, and collect them, from all sorts of internet-copied essay modules, such as AS levels, A2 levels, and A-Monkey Nuts levels. But essentially, I think they still boil down to most people doing 3 or 4 or 5 A-levels, at 18, studying over a two year period.
A*/A/B GCSE: General Certificate of Secondary Education, taken at 16+, often as a precursor to A-levels, or to enter the jobs market, or technical colleges. These have become so abysmally easy, over the years, that good private schools aren’t even bothering with them any more, as all their pupils are getting A grades (and for University entrance, it’s only really 18+ A-levels that matter – cofused yet? 🙂
I think A-levels stands for Advanced-Levels, BTW 🙂
Also, because of grade inflation to make the educational establishment and the government look better, so many people are now getting A-grade GCSEs, that they had to invent a new grade, A*, to distinguish “really good A-grades”, from “ordinary A-grades”.
It’s a great big joke.
What’s wrong with awarding fixed percentages of exam entrants, particular grades? (eg: top 10% get and ‘A’, next 20% get a ‘B’ etc, based on a normal distribution curve). It’s what we did in the good old days, and what I did, but now it upsets too many people if they don’t get ‘A’s, so everybody gets ’em, hence the need for the stupid A* so people can get a half-clue as to who is actually any good at the subject, rather than merely competent.
Irish Leaving Certificate: I’ve absolutely no idea. I assume it’s a general 18+ certificate, covering all subjects, used as an Irish University entrance type thing. But somebody Irish will have to let you know?
HTH! 🙂
Interesting…I’m currently in the International Baccalaureate in Sweden….
it’s a heck of a job doing it, that’s for sure…