Matt, more Little Middle England tripe. As the man said, it is not 100% exam based, you can't cram any more. It is now proper with assessment and coursework taken into account. They have to stick with it all along.
It works. How is that being gullible? Once again, it works.
I agree.
They are rubbish and a con...
Remove antispam and add 670 after bra to email
But what is the point of A levels ?
Like it or not, exams have always been used as an indicator of how academically gifted a person is and the current system fails to allow that.
In the past if a student got three As then it was a pretty good bet that they were, academically speaking, in the top few percent and therefore would benefit from access to one of the limited university places available and/or contribute most to a future employer.
Nowadays it is not possible to say the same. It's a fact of life that some people are not as academically gifted as others and giving them a false hope by awarding them the same grade as someone who is much more gifted than them is both cruel and stupid.
Everybody has some things they are good at and some they are bad at and I think the current education system spends too much time trying to pretend all students are good at everything and not enough time
*finding out* what they're really good at and encouraging that.About the same as those who got an 'O' grade or failed their 'A' levels in the past I imagine.
Cheers,
John
Don't be so silly, Geoffrey.
Standards of examination may be hightr, although I doubt it, but standards of knowledge certainly are not.
Really? What diod you take, then, and where, and what were your results? Please be honest.
All for nothing, in many cases.
What an odd expression. Puke away, then.
No.
What, a basic understanding of what molecules are, and the forces which hold them together? Certainly was part of my GCSE physics and Chemistry.
Absolutely. That is exactly the point.
You never could beyond A level anyway and it was marginal there.
Education from a university perspective was and should be about learning how to think, analyse and deal with issues, not the loading of explicit information which in many cases has limited shelf life.
It isn't possible to cram the ability to think
It had to happen, I suppose, another interminable magnets do/dont' do this thread. Perhaps I should market a magnetic device for putting around the necks of beer bottles because it makes the beer taste better, gets you drunker and completely eliminates the risk of a hangover. Any takers?
John Schmitt
Matt, it is more assessment geared these days. Not up to having a good memory.
It was and still is about thinking. Matt, where did you go wrong?
Geoffrey is totally right.
The French baccalaureate is superior and we are going over to a similar system.
I fundamentally disagree. Having compared the experiences that I and my friends had, and my experience of schools today, I would say there has been a fundamental shift in the professionalism and achievement in schools in the last 20 years. Education today is vastly superior. There is plenty of independent academic studies that show this, too.
Only last week, there was a study published of a comparison of English papers submitted in 1992 and 2004. When studied, the 2004 papers not only had better spelling, punctuation and verb use, but the meaning of the texts were deeper and more intelligently presented.
I don't believe in nostalgia. Crime is down. Education is better. People have their brains fundamentally wired to not believe the evidence of this, unfortunately.
Christian.
The whole problem is that you think only a few percent are worthy of higher education. The fact is that the current generation is harder working, more intelligent and more academic than anything before. I can assure you that even at primary school, there has been a complete sea change. When I went to primary school in the early 1980s, many of them were staffed by older, non trained teachers sometimes even without degrees. Now, schools are staffed by extremely professional teachers, entirely versed in the latest trends and scientific research into which methods work. School children from the very first term of compulsory education now get homework. That would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. The same ethos now permeates right through the system. Things have changed.
This next generation will go to university and these 30% getting 'A' grades achieve just as much as the few percent did in the 1970s. In five or ten years, they'll start being serious competition in the job market, too. Current university students don't lounge about doing 5 hours contact time a work and sitting on ridiculous left wing demonstrations. They are far too busy studying, whilst often working part time to cover the fees and living expenses that the molly coddled 1960s/70s generation got paid for them.
I concede that A Levels are no longer very useful. This isn't because they have become easier. They have not. What has happened is that education has improved to such a large degree and the students are working so much harder, that it is no longer possible to distinguish the very top slice. This could be solved if the government stopped panicking and implemented the baccalaureate system that almost everyone in the education system wants.
Christian.
But not mine (1963).
I asked my son who did "science" GCSE:
What is the first element in the periodic table?
Answer: You are not required to know that, they give you a periodic table in the exam.
He passed.
His younger sister, she's different she got * 13 * GCSEs !
DG
You wish to see vocational training have greater status and reach, and yet wish to demean any vocational achievement by insisting on a second tier designation for it? I believe this to be inconsistent. I have no doubt that a course, even if it included flower arranging, could be worthy of a degree standard, if the level of expectation and achievement was sufficient to warrant it. I don't believe in a sharp division between "academic" middle class good achievement and "vocational" working class "unworthy of degree status" achievement.
I believe such a division would be socially divisive and counter productive.
Christian.
Well, if you believe fact cramming is more important than deeper understanding and thinking, then I can understand why you think things have gone downhill. All the rote learning has gone from the system and has been replaced by an attempt to get people to understand the underlying principles and apply them.
OTOH, I would expect any chemistry student to know the first element in the periodic table, as not knowing it implies a lack of deeper understanding, given hydrogen's importance in creating many molecules due to its single electron/proton. This doesn't mean you need to know the atomic number of americium by rote.
The fact that he didn't know hydrogen was the first element is neither here nor there. Such a basic lack of understanding will soon be expressed by the much higher level questioning that has replaced the useless fact dump style examinations of the immediate post war period.
Christian.
around the
takers?
No, but apparently it is possible to make a magnetic fridge to keep the beer in!
Jim
To say nothing of continuous assessment which favours polite girls with nice tidy handwriting and "teacher's pets". Plus modular courses which do not ensure that you finish the course knowing all that you are supposed to.
"International Hospitality Management" , a *4 year* *Honours* degree course at Leeds Metropolitan University. (It's "Pizza-Ology" BTW)
"Geography With Dance"
"Sports Science"
"Media Management"
And it will come back to haunt them in future. My own son did a BTEC and a HND in "Business and Finance" 10 years ago and these qualifications appear to be completely worthless now. He's 30 and his present employer is downsizing. Prospective employers just ask him why ten years ago he didn't do a degree (exactly the same course, just 1 more year), because they've all got junk degrees themselves.
It is necessary if 50% of the population are going to uni to get Mickey Mouse degrees. One of the London bombers had done a "Sports Science" degree at Leeds Met. He'd never worked after he graduated except to serve on in his dad's fish and chip shop.
DG
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