Michael Gove confirms what i've been saying all along

[dune]

Examination system 'discredited', says Michael Gove

 

Mr Gove, who is set to announce an overhaul of the exams for 16 and 18 year olds, said one of his main goals as Education Secretary was to “change our discredited exam system”.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8583596/Examination-system-discredited-says-Michael-Gove.html

 

His comments confirm what i've long believed. Exams have got easier and that is why we keep seeing an improvement in grades.

 

I look forward to an apology from thorpe-le-saint.

[Saintandy666]

Because Michael Gove said it, it does not mean it is correct. The man has an agenda. I am taking my A levels at present and I can assure you that A2 Chemistry, A2 Biology and A2 politics are far from 'easy'.

[benjii]

This doesn't even merit debate.

 

When I did my GCSEs I sat an Additional Maths paper. This was an additional GCSE that was harder than Maths and was supposed to challenge the brightest. It was an old O-level paper and it covered most of the first year of A-level maths. QED.

 

Combine obvious regressive measures like this with schools teacing Mickey Mouse subjects, hordes of semi-literate bog-standard people at "universities" and exam boards which can't even check their own papers properly and you evidently have a discredited exam system.

[benjii]

Because Michael Gove said it, it does not mean it is correct. The man has an agenda. I am taking my A levels at present and I can assure you that A2 Chemistry, A2 Biology and A2 politics are far from 'easy'.

 

Who said they were "easy"?

[Saintandy666]

Who said they were "easy"?

 

Everyone who is old and has no knowledge of them whatsoever except the Daily Mail and its parody 'the Daily Express' to young people all the time.

[dune]

Because Michael Gove said it, it does not mean it is correct. The man has an agenda. I am taking my A levels at present and I can assure you that A2 Chemistry, A2 Biology and A2 politics are far from 'easy'.

 

I thought you were about 40. You are certainly wise beyond your years. Watch out Mikey, you have some competition here.

[saintfully]

Does this mean that Mr Gove is pledging to make exam results worse then?

 

I look forward to the Conservative Party celebrating more children failing at school.

[Saintandy666]

I thought you were about 40. You are certainly wise beyond your years. Watch out Mikey, you have some competition here.

 

You seriously thought I was about 40?! I'm 18.

[benjii]

Everyone who is old and has no knowledge of them whatsoever except the Daily Mail and its parody 'the Daily Express' to young people all the time.

 

No, they have said they are getting easier.

[benjii]

Does this mean that Mr Gove is pledging to make exam results worse then?

 

I look forward to the Conservative Party celebrating more children failing at school.

 

No, I imagine he's trying to change the invidious mindset that getting a clutch of A-C grades equates to "succeeding" in education.

 

Of course results should get worse. The point of top grades is to identify the cream, the elite. Not to pacify and mislead the average. If there is grade-inflation then exams aren't doing their job.

[View From The Top]

What does exist, and it drives me nuts, is schools are teaching kids to pass exams and but not how to think.

 

Kids are coming into FE with loads of good GCSEs but with no thinking skills at all. A real issue IMHO and one that government, unions, business etc recorgnise but are unsure how to fix. Functional Skills, we hope, may address it but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Part of the problem is that the A* - C league tables carry so much weight they become all that matters.

[View From The Top]

No, I imagine he's trying to change the invidious mindset that getting a clutch of A-C grades equates to "succeeding" in education.

 

That is the fault of government of all hues and the emphasis that they have placed on league tables, which are easily manipulated by clever schools. My last one did just that.

[benjii]

What does exist, and it drives me nuts, is schools are teaching kids to pass exams and but not how to think.

 

Kids are coming into FE with loads of good GCSEs but with no thinking skills at all. A real issue IMHO and one that government, unions, business etc recorgnise but are unsure how to fix. Functional Skills, we hope, may address it but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Part of the problem is that the A* - C league tables carry so much weight they become all that matters.

 

Exactly.

 

The whole mindset is wrong.

[dune]

You seriously thought I was about 40?! I'm 18.

 

I automatically assumed you were older seeing how you are an expert on most things.

[Turkish]

I automatically assumed you were older seeing how you are an expert on most things.

 

I have to agree, i thought you were about 40 as well.

[Kadeem Hardison]

In a similar wat, I thought that dune was 8 years old.

[Kadeem Hardison]

*way

[Thedelldays]

I have to agree, i thought you were about 40 as well.

18 years old and clearly a right laugh

[Saintandy666]

No, they have said they are getting easier.

 

No, I have spoken to these people and they tell me they are 'easy'.

[Saintandy666]

I automatically assumed you were older seeing how you are an expert on most things.

 

I don't claim to be an expert on anything. I merely have opinions which happen to be opposed to yours and thedelldays.

[Saintandy666]

18 years old and clearly a right laugh

 

You know nothing of me from some posts on an internet forum.

[dune]

You know nothing of me from some posts on an internet forum.

 

If Jamie calls you dull it's bad mate.

[LGTL]

The problem is, Gove doesn't have a clue about Education, has never spent any real time in a proper school since he was about 16, and therefore if he has an opinion, the opposite is more often then not correct.

 

In regards to exams, blame successive governements who have made "league tables" and "5 A-C grades" the be all and end all, not teachers or the students who have to put up with it.

[hypochondriac]

You know nothing of me from some posts on an internet forum.

 

You do come across on here as quite intelligent but also with an extremely naive view of the world.

[Saintandy666]

You do come across on here as quite intelligent but also with an extremely naive view of the world.

 

I can accept that I am naive in my opinions, as I am young. However, I can not accept that because someone is older than me they are instantly correct. Also, debate is always healthy. This is why I do not understand why people like Dune and thedelldays come on here, start a thread bragging about how right they are and then get all butthurt and personal when someone disagrees with them. It's only an internet forum at the end of the day and it is used for debate, not name calling.

 

But of course whether I am naive or not depends on your own view point.

Edited 18 June, 2011 by Saintandy666
thought of more to say

[Jonnyboy]

No, I imagine he's trying to change the invidious mindset that getting a clutch of A-C grades equates to "succeeding" in education.

 

Of course results should get worse. The point of top grades is to identify the cream, the elite. Not to pacify and mislead the average. If there is grade-inflation then exams aren't doing their job.

 

Surely, it is POSSIBLE that as funding into state schools increased, as Labour did throughout their tenure, then pupils become better educated and do better at exams?

[Trader]

I took my O and A levels in the sixties.

 

Specifically in maths, the syllabus has been massively dumbed down - I have seen my own children's work.

 

So the exams haven't got easier, they test what the kids are meant to know, but we don't teach them what we used to - they're not stretched enough.

 

I think this is true in other subjects as well.

[bridge too far]

I took my O and A levels in the sixties.

 

Specifically in maths, the syllabus has been massively dumbed down - I have seen my own children's work.

 

So the exams haven't got easier, they test what the kids are meant to know, but we don't teach them what we used to - they're not stretched enough.

 

I think this is true in other subjects as well.

 

Odd that you should think this. When my daughter was studying for her A level Maths, her father, a Maths with Physics graduate, was both surprised and pleased to see that she was studying stuff he'd done as part of his degree!

[ben05]

I took my O and A levels in the sixties.

 

Specifically in maths, the syllabus has been massively dumbed down - I have seen my own children's work.

 

So the exams haven't got easier, they test what the kids are meant to know, but we don't teach them what we used to - they're not stretched enough.

 

I think this is true in other subjects as well.

 

I agree with GCSE's. Kids are just learning what is in the text book. In the core subjects children/teachers just want to get a C as thats the "acceptable" Grade. Im currently doing A2 maths and Further Maths and there is a certain amount of just being taught what we know. Last year my teacher said "You dont need to know the theory, Just how to do it in the exam :S"

[anothersaintinsouthsea]

When people starting talking about the education system the phrase "opinions are like arseholes - everyone's got one" springs to mind. Exams might be easier, I don't know, I'd guess that only those that work in Education would have an informed opinion. Dune - wtf do you know about exams apart from what you read in the tabloids? **** all I'd imagine.

[Trader]

Odd that you should think this. When my daughter was studying for her A level Maths, her father, a Maths with Physics graduate, was both surprised and pleased to see that she was studying stuff he'd done as part of his degree!

 

As I say, the syllabus has changed. In my day matrices were part of a degree course, no covered at all at school.

 

On the other hand, we were doing integral and differential calculus at O level.

[Lord Duckhunter]

The education system has been broken since we lost most of the Grammar schools. The Tories wont bring them back because they dont want to be seen as "elitist" and Labour wont as they've spent 40 years telling us how bad they were. The problem with the old system was that the Secondary modern schools were dire. Instead of fixing that part of the education system the Lefties decimated the part of the system that did work fantastically well, the Grammar schools.

 

Luckily I live in an area that still has Grammar schools, so my son and daughter may get to benefit.

[JustMike]

I automatically assumed you were older seeing how you are an expert on most things.

 

must mean you are 12 then!

[benjii]

Odd that you should think this. When my daughter was studying for her A level Maths, her father, a Maths with Physics graduate, was both surprised and pleased to see that she was studying stuff he'd done as part of his degree!

 

Maths is far easier now. Fact.

[Trader]

Maths is far easier now. Fact.

 

I have to agree.

 

What worries me though is how these people cope when they get to Uni - they may feel that school (or more correctly the syllabus) has failed them.

Edited 18 June, 2011 by Trader

[badgerx16]

The education system has been broken since we lost most of the Grammar schools. The Tories wont bring them back because they dont want to be seen as "elitist" and Labour wont as they've spent 40 years telling us how bad they were. The problem with the old system was that the Secondary modern schools were dire. Instead of fixing that part of the education system the Lefties decimated the part of the system that did work fantastically well, the Grammar schools.

Amazingly, I have found yet another point on which I broadly concur with you.

 

The education system is the favourite plaything of politicians of all hues, and the continued changes in policy, guidelines, funding, intitiatives, frameworks, etc, only serve to further damage things and leave staff in the education sector completely bamboozled as to what they are supposed to be doing. Sometimes it is better to leave things alone rather than to constantly meddle.

[badgerx16]

I have to agree.

 

What worries me though is how these people cope when they get to Uni - they may feel that school (or more correctly the syllabus) has failed them.

Too may are allowed to get into University these days - mind you the changes to tuition fees may knock that back.

[Fowllyd]

This doesn't even merit debate.

 

When I did my GCSEs I sat an Additional Maths paper. This was an additional GCSE that was harder than Maths and was supposed to challenge the brightest. It was an old O-level paper and it covered most of the first year of A-level maths. QED.

Combine obvious regressive measures like this with schools teacing Mickey Mouse subjects, hordes of semi-literate bog-standard people at "universities" and exam boards which can't even check their own papers properly and you evidently have a discredited exam system.

 

Was this an 'O' level Maths or Additional Maths paper? I did both, having done my maths 'O' level a year early (in 1975). Additional Maths covered two terms of 'A' level Pure Maths, but we did it in less time as we had fewer classes than we'd have had at 'A' level (if that makes sense). So if the paper you did was an old Additional Maths 'O' level one, then I can assure you that it was bloody difficult back then too.

Edited 18 June, 2011 by Fowllyd

[Fowllyd]

The education system has been broken since we lost most of the Grammar schools. The Tories wont bring them back because they dont want to be seen as "elitist" and Labour wont as they've spent 40 years telling us how bad they were. The problem with the old system was that the Secondary modern schools were dire. Instead of fixing that part of the education system the Lefties decimated the part of the system that did work fantastically well, the Grammar schools.

 

Luckily I live in an area that still has Grammar schools, so my son and daughter may get to benefit.

 

There's some sense in there, not least that the secondary modern part of the old system was neglected and needed improvement. But then it was meant to be a two-tier system, so grammar schools were given more funding, leading to smaller class sizes and so forth.

 

I'd also disagree that the grammar school system worked 'fantastically well'. I was at one myself, and I knew kids who not only failed every 'O' level they took but got unclassified grades in each and every one of them. The process of selecting kids at eleven years of age is inherently flawed; in addition, there were junior schools around that taught their pupils specifically to get through the Eleven Plus exam (and thus to grammar school). Not much different to the target-obsessed mentality that we see today, and about as much good.

[benjii]

Was this an 'O' level Maths or Additional Maths paper? I did both, having done my maths 'O' level a year early (in 1975). Additional Maths covered two terms of 'A' level Pure Maths, but we did it in less time as we had fewer classes than we'd have had at 'A' level (if that makes sense). So if the paper you did wasn't an old Additional Maths 'O' level one, then I can assure you that it was bloody difficult back then too.

 

The qualification was Additional Mathematics GCSE but the paper that we sat to obtain this was based on previous O-Level material. At least, I think that's what the scenario was. It certainly covered most of the following year of Pure Maths A-Level. To be honest, it was some time ago (ish). So I might actually be wrong; in which case, I retract all my maths related comments!

[AussieDog]

Maths is far easier now. Fact.

 

Maths is 110% easier now than when we was at school three quarters of students get A grades because they've done their homework and the other half get C grades for being able to write their names on the exam paper.

 

English to. All you need is a capital letter at the start of a sentence and a full stop at the end. Anyone can work the rest of it out.

 

Exams....all a waste of time if you ask me.

 

when I was a lad we did a paper round before school eight hours in the class room 3 hours homework a night and still had time for a w#nk before dinner.

 

the kids these days don't know how easy they have it

[shurlock]

There's some sense in there, not least that the secondary modern part of the old system was neglected and needed improvement. But then it was meant to be a two-tier system, so grammar schools were given more funding, leading to smaller class sizes and so forth.

 

I'd also disagree that the grammar school system worked 'fantastically well'. I was at one myself, and I knew kids who not only failed every 'O' level they took but got unclassified grades in each and every one of them. The process of selecting kids at eleven years of age is inherently flawed; in addition, there were junior schools around that taught their pupils specifically to get through the Eleven Plus exam (and thus to grammar school). Not much different to the target-obsessed mentality that we see today, and about as much good.

 

Think the grammar school system is shot and no longer a vehicle for social mobility (I went to one years ago in bompey fwiw). It works best when there is a genuinely level playing field among 11 year olds and personal and family experiences are roughly similar. That might have been true in the past when the divide between richer and poorer families was easier to bridge; but today your sharp-elbowed middle class family invests far more financially and culturally in their kids than poorer familes that by the age of 11, test scores have less to do with pure ability than the cumulative impact of those differential investments.

 

Under these circumstances, so far from expanding the opportunities of children from poorer backgrounds, the grammar school system simply becomes another closed-shop and bastion of privilege. Its no coincidence that where grammar schools still exist, only 2 per cent of children at them are on free school meals, even though low income children account for 12 per cent of the school population in their areas.

 

Regards the alleged dumbing down of exams, its easy to overstate the problem. In theory, school and employment systems will self-correct by finding an alternative basis on which to identify the cream. Whether its attaching greater weight to the subject students take, the exam board responsible for the GCSE, the number of GCSEs obtained at A* or something else entirely, the system will just raise the bar to adjust for inflation. And students have every incentive to follow suits. After all, the competition for top university places and jobs is dog-eat-dog with a fixed quota on positions and prizes, requiring students to find ways to distinguish themselves from the pack among whom five A*-Cs is par for the course.

 

As View From the Top says, the real issue is how to get kids to think rigorously and critically (parallels can be found in football and whether youngsters should be proving themselves in competitive matches or be given space to learn and experiment). For a ton of reasons -some rational, some not- exams aren't going disappear anytime soon; but equally they are not always the best way to support critical thinking: they are easy to manipulate; they are better at capturing simpler, more objective forms of performance and provide incentives to teach to the test etc. Reconciling the demand for testing with the need to impart proper skills seems a far more pressing challenge than the sideshow of dumbing down, even if the latter makes very good politics.

[CB Saint]

Are exams getting easier maybe, maybe not. I couldn't say. What is easier is the ability ti achieve higher grades through coursework. I was in the first year to sit gcse and my school quickly worked out that if little johnny got a c in a piece of coursework, they would be invited back one lunchtime to retry that bit of work and eventually little johnny got a b. Exam based qualifications don't give you that chance, but then there are some very valid arguments against them as well.

 

What I can say is the level of numeracy of young people entering our company is falling and I am not talking about calculus or matrices, they can't even work out percentages. It really is sad to see.

[View From The Top]

What I can say is the level of numeracy of young people entering our company is falling and I am not talking about calculus or matrices, they can't even work out percentages. It really is sad to see.

 

The reasons for this are multi-layered IMHO but my experience is only based on teaching in Stoke-On-Trent and the West Midlands, especially the Black Country, since 1994.

 

1) Chronic lack of maths graduates/specialists in primary education. They are rarer than hens teeth and that impacts the early learning and underpinning skills. My kids school have the only maths specialist in the borough and it shows!

 

2) Failure to recruit, maintain maths graduates in the classroom at 11-16. This has a greater impact on the tougher schools. I can speak from my everyday experience that the vast majority of schools that I come into contact with have non maths teachers teaching the subject as they can't recruit qualified staff. This dynamic changes in the "better" schools where the majority I come in contact with have fully staffed maths depts.

 

The was a survey done regarding maths grads, in the TES iirc, that showed the average salary of a maths grad' in teaching to be £28k, outside of teaching £37k, that's a 30%+ difference. Of my maths class I am the only one still teaching.

 

3) Teaching only to exams. Kids are being taught only what they need to know so if they are foundation level maths they are only being taught those skills and as so many are arriving in secondary schools with very low level skills they are already playing catch up. Too many schools then just write them off and concentrate on getting the all important A*-Cs.

 

4) ******ing about with the curriculum every 5 mins and changing everything so less skills are taught.

 

5) Societies failure to recorgnise that poor numeracy isn't a badge of honour but is as bad as poor literacy.

[Thorpe-le-Saint]

Examination system 'discredited', says Michael Gove

 

Mr Gove, who is set to announce an overhaul of the exams for 16 and 18 year olds, said one of his main goals as Education Secretary was to “change our discredited exam system”.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8583596/Examination-system-discredited-says-Michael-Gove.html

 

His comments confirm what i've long believed. Exams have got easier and that is why we keep seeing an improvement in grades.

 

I look forward to an apology from thorpe-le-saint.

 

Oh Gove said it?!? It MUST be fact then. Any man who is as useless as him, as clueless as him, as moronic as him could make that claim...oh.

 

The day Pob actually proposes something worthwhile and meaningful for our excellent state education system in this country will be the day hell freezes over.

 

I love this argument and in fact, doing the research for my MA I looked at some English O-Level and A-Level papers from 1964-1968 (and am more than happy to scan them and upload the photocopies I took). The questions are a hell of a lot simpler than what pupils are asked to do today: The O-Level in particular focuses on one skill in a question where the GCSE asks for at least two every time: for example one of the O-Level questions is "A friend doesn't like poetry, you need to convince him otherwise in the form of a letter.". Dear o dear, if that's what Gove wants to go back to, you wont hear the pupils complaining!

 

Plus being lectured at about exams from a man who can barely pick his knuckles up off the floor to carry his HNC certificate is a bit rich don't you think.

[trousers]

It's the predictability of this forum that I like the best

[Thorpe-le-Saint]

It's the predictability of this forum that I like the best

 

As in the predictability that I ram dunce's pathetic argument into the ground as I base my arguments on fact and not on conjecture?

[Window Cleaner]

What does exist, and it drives me nuts, is schools are teaching kids to pass exams and but not how to think.

 

Kids are coming into FE with loads of good GCSEs but with no thinking skills at all. A real issue IMHO and one that government, unions, business etc recorgnise but are unsure how to fix. Functional Skills, we hope, may address it but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Part of the problem is that the A* - C league tables carry so much weight they become all that matters.

 

Under the "old system" if you got O levels you had a fairly good decent well organised memory and could regurgitate stuff

in the desired form on the exam papers. If you could get a couple of A levels then you had something about you that would enable you to cut a decent career out for yourself. 3 A levels with decent grades made you a thinker and a scholar,you knew your stuff and could develop it to produce the oft needed deductive reasoning to impress the board of examiners.When I went up to Imperial in the early 70s only 2% of the population attended University (mind you the word University meant something thenf,Portsmouth didn't have one, neither did Bournemouth or John O'Groats).

[saintfully]

No, I imagine he's trying to change the invidious mindset that getting a clutch of A-C grades equates to "succeeding" in education.

 

Of course results should get worse. The point of top grades is to identify the cream, the elite. Not to pacify and mislead the average. If there is grade-inflation then exams aren't doing their job.

 

I agree that a persons success, or otherwise, in education can't be described by a single letter. I don't agree that the point of exams is to identify the elite/cream. IMHO, exams have a variety of aims. One might indeed be to help spot talent. Another is to measure what people know - the extent to which they've been educated. Mostly, its about being able to discriminate between members of a group - spotting who's good/bad at what. Grade inflation is only a problem if it prevents that from happening. In my experience this is a red-herring. The big issue I experience when trying to spot who is a talented student and who is not, is that exams tend to identify only who is good at exams - and its always been like this.

 

The best measure of a students ability is achieved by inteview of by using a reference from a former teacher/tutor. The latter requires that teacher to have a close relationship with the pupil. That requires more teachers/smaller classes. This is what Gove should be focussed on. Exams are a distraction that panders to a media driven preconception about changes that certainly have happened to exams. Are they easier? In some respects - however, students undoubtedly have to know more now. It's just that they are now under less pressure to be able to synthesize information to create a new answer. I agree this a shame and needs to be reversed.

[ecuk268]

 

I love this argument and in fact, doing the research for my MA I looked at some English O-Level and A-Level papers from 1964-1968 (and am more than happy to scan them and upload the photocopies I took). The questions are a hell of a lot simpler than what pupils are asked to do today: The O-Level in particular focuses on one skill in a question where the GCSE asks for at least two every time: for example one of the O-Level questions is "A friend doesn't like poetry, you need to convince him otherwise in the form of a letter.". Dear o dear, if that's what Gove wants to go back to, you wont hear the pupils complaining!

 

I did my O levels in the late 60s and still have my maths papers. As with a previous poster they included calculus and, comparing them with my son's GCSE papers, they are certainly different. Whether they are harder or not, I don't know. You can only be examined on what you are taught and some of the current stuff is unfamiliar to me.

 

Mrs ecuk268 has taught infants and juniors for decades and they do "set theory" which I didn't come across until degree level. The O levels were aimed at the grammar schools and the secondaries had CSEs. The GCSE seems to be a compromise between the two.