According to todays paper, the A level results this year have 'once again' hit an all time high pass rate of 97% I'm assuming the other 3% overslept. They also estimate 23% will achieve A grade compared to 8.6% in 1982.

This is invariably going to cause the annual debate, are you all getting cleverer, or are the exams just so easy they are becoming a joke?

As there are alot of young people using this forum who are directly effected by this and who work really hard for their results and certainly don't deserve to have their achievements belittled by the press each year, I am interested in your opinion. In the run up to results day, do you feel let down by the current system? What do you think the government should do, and more interestingly did you feel challenged by the exams?

All the debating aside, I am sure despite these statistics there are some nervous people out there, and I would like to tell you all I've got my fingers crossed for you, I hope you all get what you need on Thursday and I'm looking forward to reading all the 'I've passed' threads.

Fair enough the pass rate might have increased but that still means we could get E's as an E is a pass!

I don't think they are easier, I just think most people work a lot harder than people realise. Even I revised for my A-levels!

It is quite horrible when every time we do exams we get told that it's easy and they are are a waste of time etc. It's not fair if we do work hard to get results we want and then we are surrounded by people saying .."ooh well I'm not surprised you got an A becuase exams are so easy nowadays" or " you only got a C..you should have got higher because they're not hard"

They are hard believe me!

I do think some exams need to be rethought and changed slightly but not because they are too easy.

This is precisely what I mean, to read todays paper, no one fails or is disappointed, and it is not right that you should have to put up with this slur on achievements.

It's the same with Scottish highers. Either pass rates go up and the exams are "too easy", or they don't and everyone is accused of not working hard enough. It really does undermine the achievement if exams get considered too easy. I feel similarly with the number people now getting honours degrees that it is easy to forget how much work really goes into achieving the 2:1 I got.

There are people who are just never satisfied, no matter what.

That's true. When the results are good people say it's because exams are getting easier but when the results aren't so good they say it's because standards are falling! You can't have it both ways. The whole thing has turned into a media circus and educational achievement has become a matter of political point scoring. Let's start giving credit where it's due and actually be pleased for everyone who does well. I'm just glad my A Levels are in the dim, distant past!

We're not getting thicker, even if the pass rates are higher, the reason we still do badly is coz of the huuuuuuuuge jump from GCSE to AS. I went from doing no work for french, music and german at GCSE, got A* in all of them, and ended up with Ds and Es til just before we left to take the exam!

Scrap A-S they are a pointless waste of time! I can talk about German and french politics to germans and french people, but ask me "Can you pass the butter?" and I'm a but screwed! All we do is work for an exam, cram as much in as possible and not actually learn anything relevant. (slight exaggeration!)

Scrap EMA, that's half the reason people leave after A-S."Let's go back to school coz I get paid for it." At the end of the first year, they can't do it, so leave. Not the case for all.

I agree with saxlover about people who say they're getting easier. That may be so, but they have to be easier to compensate for the ridiculous amount of work and pressure you get put under!

Rant over!

edit: It didn't like A-S very much!

I did my GCE's in the penultimate year and our teachers were going on the 'how to teach GCSE courses' throughout my first year of A levels - that was precisely the feedback they were giving at the time.

Also I don't think its a case of doing badly, because of all the press over the exams people are not getting the credit they deserve, for their achievements.

Oh and by the way 'passe-moi le beurre s'il te plait!'

I am waiting for my AS results at the moment and it makes me really angry when the press say our exams are not worth the paper they are written on! I got my GCSE results last year and was sooooooo pleased with my A* in maths as one of the papers had been near impossible, only 6 months later I read that the pass mark for that exam really low and it just made me feel really bad! It's very annoying to put in loads of work just to have some paper tell you it wasn't worth it!

I've always thought that it doesn't make much sense to have several different exam boards all doing the same subjects. I think that each exam board should just do one subject like only Edexcel does science and only AQA does history etc. so that then you are judged across everyone in the country rather than just the few who do that exam board. (hope that makes sense!)

*Breathe*

But I did all my exams except ICT on AQA at GCSE and A-level?

Perfect sense, employers, more so than universitys who you would expect to know the various merits of different boards, need continuity.

Ooooh. My views on exams hehe *rubs hands gleefully*

1. "Exams have got easier". Yeah right. Or I'm thick.

2. I was well chuffed with my A in gcse maths. Yep, I was also under the exam board which lowered the grade boundaries. Hmmm, ok so I didn't actually do well.

3. "Mickey mouse" subjects. Right. I take 3 of them. Yep, I must be stupid to be taking music, psychology, and shock horror! general studies.

4. "A grades are going up". Ok, so they probably are. Students working harder to achieve what they want? Better teaching? An improving education system? Apparently not, exam standards falling. I'd quite like an A at A level. So far the higest I have managed in moodules is a C. Whooptie doo.

5. Revision? I started at 6 am before college and finished at 11 ish in the evening, doesn't do a lot.

6. I was pleased with my GCSE grades until the media coverage after results day.

I hate exams, they don't ever match my class performance in any subject.

I think that the exams do need to be changed slightly because we get trained on how to pass an exam.Not learn relevant info really. Like for Music AS I just memorised the information and answered the questions based onwhat I could remebmer not by listening to the music thta was being played.

I sat my A levels just before this nonsense A-S A2 stuff came in. I was one of many year groups who were told our exams were too easy and that's why we were getting higher grades.

I don't think exams are getting easier. I think teachers are preparing students better - increasingly my younger sister was taught to pass the exam not have a broad subject knowledge. There just wasn't the time.

Coursework plays a big part now - our year had lots but subsequent years have had more. I can't imagine many teachers set it and leave the students to it. There must be some help given, even if not directly.

Modular A levels. Aaaahhhhhhh. Would have had to worked much harder if all my A levels were terminally assessed. As it was, I knew I had an A in maths before the final exam. Also, I re-took a chemistry paper. Easy to raise marks when that fundemental point suddenly makes sense to you!

There will always be subjects that some regard as easier than others. I get very little credit for taking media studies early and getting almost full marks for it - after all, we did have the exam for a week before we sat it! To be blunt - no offense ever intended - but I did absolutly no work for general studies and didn't find the exam hard.

Now I'm at university, we're still graded A-E but it becomes almost totally unimportant what grade you get. Everyone who gets Cs or above will become a Dr. None of this 'exams are getting easier' nonsense. In fact many of our consultants claim the assessments we have are getting harder!! What matters is that we reach a standard, which should be the aim of all exams. You wouldn't want to go to your GP and ask which year s/he qualified to check their exams were difficult enough!

The government have not realised the knock on effect that diluting triple science GCSE to double science award GCSE and lowering the grade boundaries in maths will have on the AS science and maths results. In most subjects, gaining a B at GCSE is sufficient for being able to cope and gain a reasonable pass at AS level. This simply isn't the case in maths and the 3 sciences. Half the first term (out of the available two and a half terms of the year) is spent covering work that is bridging the gap between GCSE and AS level. I'm not proposing that AS level is to be made easier, I think the government should re-think the AS and A2 structure.

I don't think the goverment realise that for those taking GCSE, AS and A2 level, and then going on to do a degree at University, after year 10, we are examined every summer term for four consecutive years. I for one am very much looking forward to my second year of uni (when I'm 19), which will be the first year I haven't had exams since I was 15. Oh and if you went to a state school, as I did, you will have sat SATs exams as well.

rant over.

You don't get exams in second year? Lucky devil. We've had them Christmas and May for FIVE years!!!!! (Own stupid fault, I know.) Now I have them every 12 weeks! Next set: 19th Sept. Roll on.

It depends on the course and the university. If I get to where I hope to go, I have mods at the end of first year, nothing exam wise second year, and then the whole of my degreee assessed in four or five exams in one week. But at least I won't have to wait over fifty days for my results to come out at uni, unlike the A level results....

My french cousin, who is the same age as me, sat all her Bac exams in one week, ffinished on the friday and the results came out on the monday! But she couldn't wait that long so she found out somehow through the internet on the saturday night! She didn't believe me when I told I've been waiting over a month and a half!

talking about the number of exams you have to do, I had to do 33 science papers to get 3 separate science GCSEs. (That's module papers for 8 units and three synoptic papers at the end for biology, chemistry and physics!) The module papers were only 20-30 (can't quite remember) minutes long though!

Sorry I've gone a little off topic now!

Heehee. We take our exams this year Mon-Thurs. The results are on the web on Friday at 5!
Previously we've finished at the end of May and waited 'til the middle of June for results. Not too unbearable - A levels and GCSEs gave us practice at waiting, and once everyone's finished, there's always an 'end of exams' party to go to!

I don't think the exams are getting easier, but the way they are taken makes it easier to get higher grades. When I did A levels, there were no modules, the whole 2 years of A level work were examined at once. This meant that there were longer exam papers, 2 years work to revise before the exam, (not a terms work like some subjects), no coursework and all aurals and practicals were worth little compared with the actual written exam papers, so basically the result depended on the written papers. Most of my subjects had 3 x 3 hour exam papers and music harmony/composition was done under exam conditions just like theory. There are some GCSE subjects where students can get a C grade before they even do the written paper. As I've said before, our whole class failed A level French. If it had been tested the way it is tested now, ie in modules where you can repeat until you get the grade you like, we would have known there was a problem before the results came out after the 2nd year of studying it. Some of my current A level students are still repeating modules from the first term of AS levels to get a better mark.

My view is that there is an overemphasis on not letting people fail (even to the point of calling it deferred success). They seem to think it will be very discouraging to people who do fail and thus make it pretty easy to get a grade of some sort in exams. I do feel exams are getting easier, if you compare what my Dad had to do when he was my age, it was much harder.

But because of this, it's becoming harder to differentiate between the top people in a subject. Now, entries for the top university courses are AAA and even then, most people need something extra to help them get in. There is no way of distinguishing between the good, the great and the exceptional, because more people are getting top grades.

If the exams were made harder again, people would get lower grades but those grades would be regarded as better by universities or employers. On top of that, it would be much easier to select the very best in a subject.

Trebor you're right. This country (blinding generalisation I know) seems to have a misguided view that failure is the end of the world.

I've seen my mum's maths stuff she used to do, and it's changed so much. Yes, a lot of the things she did for O level are now on our A level paper. However, some things that have since appeared on our GCSE paper (largely thanks to the use of calculators) we're not assessed until A level 30-35 years ago.

To get into medicine you do need good grades. But you're correct. It's no longer enough. We now have to have extra-curricular activities that we have 'achieved' in, and also some relevent work or work experience (not just the two weeks in Y10). Grades almost become an aside - 'well, clearly you have to get the grades, but more importantly....'

A frind of mine who did A-level sociology did so well in her other modules, that she only needed to turn up to the exam to still get an A overall! And some people in our A-level french class only need to get Cs on the final paper to get an A overall coz they already have an A from coursework and AS.

The other thing the newspaper article mentioned was that students were taking 6 or 7 A levels, just to prove themselves worthy. Back when I did mine (1988) 4 was the absolute maximum for possibly 1% of applicants.

And I remember reading about one case where a guy with 6 A's at A-level was refused entry to a college.

Four was the maximum for us as well - there wasn't the teaching time for any more.

I've known a lot of people refused entry despite having many A grades - the point is that too many people can get these grades now, you need to show you can do other things too, not just learn stuff to pass an exam.

There have been quite a few people who have been refused to Oxford who have 6 A-levels, where one of them is General Studies which doesn't count for anything at Oxford. They'll be doing medicine, but not taking Chemistry which it specifies you have to, that sort of thing....

Some of those are genuine, but most are just the media blowing it up until you read it carefully!

True! Its called deferred success.

Absolutely... and training you to pass an exam is NOT the best prep for going to uni!

I am so glad I did A Levels before the obligatory AS thing started... in my time (makes me sound ancient!!) you could do an AS level over 2 years if you wanted to and it was offered. I would have hated to have yet another year of exams WHICH COUNTED! YUCK!

At uni I took 6 3 hour written papers in the 2nd and 4th years (3rd year I was in Russia) which all counted toward my mark, also 3 separate oral exams, (one Croatian, approx 20 mins, two Russian, I forget how long the 2nd year one was, the 4th year one was about half an hour) and we may have had a listening exam at some point - I don't remember any more! In the first year I think one of my exams was only 2 hours long... it was lovely at the end of 2nd year exams knowing I wouldn't do another one that counted toward my grade for 2 whole years!!! Though I did almost get thumped for mentioning that to my then recently ex-boyfriend who at the time hadn't started his exams... me, evil?

Frankly, I don't see why it's so suprising that exam results are going up year upon year, with two major influencing factors: with the continuing efforts to raise the standards of education in schools, and the influence of socio-economic factors.

Addressing the former, despite people's cynicism experienced teachers do admit that they're generally better resourced than they were 30 years ago, and with the introduction of better-specified syllabuses they know better what to expect on the exams and can thus better prefer their students. Provide better teaching, and people will do better, duh

As for the latter, the average education level of the general adult populus is higher than it used to be, and the needs of students are better understood. The percentage of parents able to help their children with their schoolwork is higher; even those who cannot better understood that students need time and space to do their homework and revise, so an environment conducive to this is provided as far as is reasonably possible.

Perhaps it can be in some fields: certainly, when studing for A-level maths I was taught a great deal of exam technique; this was immensely useful to me in my finals. But certainly, I agree that the exam should not get in the way of the content.

Well, I have to say that I find the English system much easier than the German Abitur system:
Firstly, people in the English system only have to choose 4 subjects for AS level, whereas the German system requires pupils to have 10 subjects including at least one science, maths, a foreign language etc. This means that one has to do everything basically, rather than being able to specialise on subjects one is best at and, at least in my case, the sciences are ruining my school report. Also, it is not possible to repeat exams (I gather it's possible to resit AS exams the following January) in the German system which puts loads more pressure on people.
I'm sorry to rant, but I wish I had stayed in the English system (I did the first year of my GCSE's (year 10) in England but I'm now in Germany)!
Not meaning to offend anyone - sorry! : )

I did a presentation for my german aural on the german education system, and I agree with you! Although you get a more overall knowledge of everything, like you said, you don't get to specialise. However, it is easier for unis to make a better decision as everyone does the same sort of stuff. But then you get to uni and there's chaos coz the places aren't linited....

I now uoi can't resit certain subjects, but can you not resit a year (not ideal either, but still an option?)

Yes, you can resit a whole year, but that is only in desperate cases (like doing really badly on all your exams) and basically you're the oldest among loads of younger kinds etc. So it's not really advisable.
I did the opposite, in fact, I skipped a year (due to a really good report in year 8 ) and I'm now among lots of older people, which I don't mind! The main reason I skipped was to finish the same year as my friends in England finish, so we can go to the same uni!

Oh, and good luck for your A-level results! They're out this week, aren't they? Keeping my fingers crossed!

true, in terms of exam technique... however, being prepped for an exam not being just taught widely can mean (did with my French!) that you get to uni completely unprepared for the course. As you say, the exam should not get in the way of the content... but too frequently does.

Actually in my experience that's all they seem to do at university now! If the lecturer said 'this bit won't be on the exam' hardly anyone turned up; or if it was just part of a lecture people didn't listen. At every opportunity the students seemed obsessed by asking the question of 'will this be on the exam?' and if the answer was no then people didn't care. I always heard that at university people weren't spoon-fed and had to learn for themselves; my experience, however, was that nothing the lecturer hadn't explicitly taught was on the exams and that as long as one did what one was told (and that doesn't extend even to reading the recommended reading) the material was all there on a plate.

As for the question of modular exams making things easier I'm not sure that this was the case. Most of the people I knew who re-sat modular exams were battling with the feeling that they needn't try so hard first time round because they had another chance; they felt the same the second time etc. etc. and never really felt motivated that 'this was it' their chance and they had to work. Consequently the marks were similar each time they re-sat anyway. I did three of my (pre 2000, well in 2000 actually but on the old system) A-levels as modular ones and one (plus general studies) was none modular. The one I found the easiest, or at least the least work, was the non-modular one which was physics; because there was only one exam at the end of the course and far less work throughout the course due to lack of teachers constantly ploughing through and setting work to prepare for exams. I also found the approach of a none-modular system far more content and less exam based, we just learnt the stuff and didn't really think too much about the exam until it came. As such I'm not convinced that modular implies easier just more work (and less motivation to do it at exam time with re-sits).

I do believe, however, that the A-level exams do need to be made harder; not because I necesessarily believe that they have been made easier. Even if people have just become cleverer/better trained for exams; ultimately because the exams can't do the job of splitting the top end anymore. I've been frustrated all my life by getting good marks in exams and being told that they're easier than they used to be and my A doesn't mean anything, I would have loved for them to be made harder at the time.

People often don't like to believe that their exam results, which were lower, weren't worth the same as their childrens' higher resutls now. The younger generation need a chance to prove this so make the exams harder to split the top end up more and make university offers lower if necessary to accomodate this new system. The A-level needs to do the job it was made to do, if it's not splitting people well enough (because they're cleverer; or becuase it's easier) then make it harder so that it does. There's little point introducing an A* mark at a higher percetage as they did for GCSE because there's currently a celing effect and everything around there would just be noise (plus it would simply eventually lower the A boundary and have A* = A, A = B etc.); so the exams do need to be harder, even if they were no easier in the first place!

Maybe it depends on the subject.... actually I do remember going to a friend's physics lecture (yeah, I'm weird) and us two languages students took much more comprehensive notes (OK so I'm really really weird! I did have another friend with me doing the same so at least I wasn't the only crazy one!) than the physics friends we went with - we wrote down what the guy said and all the explanatory notes (even if we didn't understand them...) as well as what was on the overheads etc! whereas they just wrote down what he wrote down "because that's what we need to know" in my language lectures and classes, I took note of everything, regardless... partly because I don't think I was ever told that something would or wouldn't be in the exam, and partly because generally it was all very interesting, and I wanted to know as much as possible, even if no one would ever test me on whether I knew the Russian word for dog collar or "to put on blusher" or if I knew how to say "I'm full" in a dozen different ways...

I agree that modular exams do not necessarily make life easier...


Good points all round

OK My 3 ha'pence

With my HR hat on now. As an employer the fact that so many students now come out with high level passes and degrees makes it harder to distinguish the best from the good. Also with so many Unis about now there are far more graduates than ever before. I now find myself involved running assessment centres for newly qualified grads, to do the "creaming off" for my organisation. Its no longer sufficient to take a person with a degree, we have to sort the sheep from the goats ourselves.

A couple of statements first:

I do agree with YAP that the standards of performance are higher for a number of reasons, and they should (and I hope will) continue to increase.

Also the modular form of assessment in my view makes it much fairer than it was in my day when my future (ie going to uni or not) was determined by a set of 3 hour exams taken in the summer. I'm not going to be bitter here, it was now a long time ago, but just a fact of what happened to me to put this into context. You may have read on the results thread that I failed all my A levels. When I took my A level exams, my Mum was terminally ill in hospital with leukaemia. No wonder I couldn't concentrate in the exam hall, and as a result I didn't get to Uni. If I had been assessed over the 2 year period I believe things would have been different.

So.....97% pass rate and a high proportion of these with A passes means that we are not now distinguishing who are the best performers. The results should be a normal distribution and I think there is an argument for forced distribution so that employers and Unis can reasonably cream off who they want without a big morass of everyone getting good passes.

If as a nation we are all performing better, then organisations can also in turn perform better and we can make this nation a key player in the world economy.

But we need an adequate assessment tool to do this, and currently we don't have one.

Even though modules do exist, they do not count for a large percentage of the overall grade. Although coursework does take some pressure off the final exam, it is still stressful to do coursework and get it to a good standard. Even so, there are still a lot of exams where the exam is worth 80% of your final grade, where you just have to do well in the exam. Also, the exams are still as long, I think my friend's Media Studies exam was 3 hours, and I had about 4 which were 2 1/2 hours.

Also surely, the best employers aren't just the ones with the best grades, but the ones who have other interests, have a good manner and simply want to do the best they can in a job?

Yes, and you have to be good at interviewing to get this information. It is all a bit of a lottery. But a bigger differential in the performance results would help with shortlisting.

Sometimes someone with lower grades can be a more allround personality, and better in the workplace, you have to take the person as a whole. I would certainly shortlist people with lower grades if they appeared to have other relevant skills from their CV....but if everything else was equal????

Even if people were equal, wouldn't the interview seperate them?

Yes but you can't interview them all very often. You need to shortlist and just interview about 6 for one job.

Interviews in any case are notoriously bad at determining who is best for the job, unless the interviewers are well trained. Very often they just pick someone they like, so by the interview stage it is best if all of the candidates could actually do the job by assessing them in other tests firsts. Then it *is* important at that stage to employ someone you can work with.

A local council near to me (my sisters employer which is how I know this) has what they call an equal opportunities policy towards interviewing.
Every candidate for the job gets exactly the same questions at interview. It is possible to get a review of your interview and to actully get to know the 'correct' answers for next time. The system is so rigid that those who have learned these correct answers have an advantage over others regardless of how suited they are to the position.
They also expect pages and pages of information on application forms, an essay reallly, in which you are expected to show how you fullfil all the job requirements as advertised. I would have thought that generally at this stage in the selection process employers would want a fairly brief summary .... who in their right minds wants to wade through hundreds of massive essays when this extra information can be explored at a shortlist stage?