Thursday, August 14, 2008

It's that time of year again.....

..... when exam results come out for entrance to Universities.


The BBC news site has an interesting video on the pluses and minuses of the A-level system.... I agree with bits of both the views here....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7559519.stm

Further down the same article it states

Last year, 25.3% of A-level entries in the UK were awarded an A grade, with 96.9% of entries graded from A to E (pass).

For the A-level in maths, things were even more extreme; 67% of students sitting it got either an A or a B, with 44% getting an A. Nearly half the people sitting the exam got the highest grade.....

In contrast with the 97% pass rate in maths A level, it is 99% at Standard grade in Scotland, 71% at Higher Grade.

I shall be watching for the detailed breakdowns in Physics and Maths again this year....

3 comments:

Simon Bates said...

So it is much the same this year as last.....

Cumulative Average over all subjects who got an A or B: 24 / 48%

For Maths: 44 / 66

For Physics: 32 / 53

Steve said...

Interesting data you collected. Would you happen to believe whether or not that grade inflation is to blame for this situation or is it just an achievement of students reaching higher expectations?

Simon Bates said...

Hi Steve,

My opinion is it is the former (but of course that is not what you hear in the media every year when exam results are announced and they get better year on year on year....)

I am hoping to do something a bit more quantitative on this kind of thing - I had the idea of looking over a long period of papst papers (10 yrs or more) and trying to classify the questions onto something like Bloom's taxonomy. I need to learn a bit more about the theory of problem solving first (working memory space etc!)