Maths exams have become easier ...

[Mulder]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7431840.stm

Ha! Just as I suspected ...

Making exams easier doesn't help people. The world is just as complicated when they get out of school, if not more than once was!. It is patronising and counter-productive.

[Mongrel]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7431840.stm

Ha! Just as I suspected ...

Making exams easier doesn't help people.

Except the schools who find it easier to hit targets than to teach properly

[median]

Making it easier just doesn't add up; if anything it creates a division in society.
Sorry, just couldn't resist

[Matt]

Making it easier just doesn't add up; if anything it creates a division in society.
Sorry, just couldn't resist

Sum people!

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

I was in the first year to sit GCSEs, and it was obvious even to us that the papers were far simpler than O'Levels, as we seen plenty of O Level papers.

Because the syllabus was easier at GCSE, then they had to make the A Level easier, and so on.....

I wasn't complaining at the time though

[Matt]

I was in the first year to sit GCSEs, and it was obvious even to us that the papers were far simpler than O'Levels, as we seen plenty of O Level papers.

Because the syllabus was easier at GCSE, then they had to make the A Level easier, and so on.....

I wasn't complaining at the time though

I agree, I was also in the first year to take a maths GCSE. Which I took a year early on account of being a smart arse.

[Mulder]

And a probable result of this is universities setting entrance exams:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7434463.stm

Perhaps it would be simpler and fairer if all universities had entrance exams anyway. Though I guess pupils wouldn't exactly relish it.

[brettdbass]

I was in the first year to sit GCSEs, and it was obvious even to us that the papers were far simpler than O'Levels, as we seen plenty of O Level papers.

Because the syllabus was easier at GCSE, then they had to make the A Level easier, and so on.....

I wasn't complaining at the time though

To continue this off-topic avenue just a litle:

I was in the second year of GCSEs, when they over-compensated for the first year being too easy. Our teachers reckoned we ended up with some of the hardest exams in years.

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

To continue this off-topic avenue just a litle:

I was in the second year of GCSEs, when they over-compensated for the first year being too easy. Our teachers reckoned we ended up with some of the hardest exams in years.

And you've used that excuse for failing ever since?

[Furi]

And you've used that excuse for failing ever since?

only for the last 13^H^H 15^H^H so many years
Dammnit I should have evolved more fingers by now.

[filippo lippi]

I agree, I was also in the first year to take a maths GCSE. Which I took a year early on account of being a smart arse.

I have your answer paper here. The examiner's remarks at the top of the page read:

Date wrong; he thinks it's last year. Is there any point marking this paper?

[Matt]

I have your answer paper here. The examiner's remarks at the top of the page read:

He gave me an A anyway

Though I did lose the honour of getting being the only person to get a 100% mark on one of the trickier experiments in my first year at Uni by virtue of missing off my name from the paper. D'Oh!

It wasn't that the experiment was intrinsicly difficult, just that the equipment given was inadequate. I devised a way to compensate and get the extra decimal place of accuracy necessary to bring the error bars down to less than the size of the quantity being measured.

[filippo lippi]

I won an award for sarcasm when I was in the sixth form.

The pinnacle of my academic career

[brettdbass]

And you've used that excuse for failing ever since?

Actually... yes!

[Cuddles]

I took A-levels right at the transition between the old style and the new modular and AS-based style. Since I did further maths, I sat a regular two paper exam in lower sixth and then we switched to modular for the further matsh in the upper sixth. There's absolutely no doubt at all that over a period of about 10 years they went from being a serious test of ability to being passable by a dead monkey with a pencil glued to its hand. The past papers we looked at from the early 90s and even the 80s contained plenty of stuff we'd never heard of, and even the parts we had covered required much more understanding to get a decent mark. There was a huge difference in actual exams we took. Although they were all fairly easy, several people got 100% in several of the modular exams, but no-one did in the regular exams we did the year before, and I don't know of anyone who ever did. A couple of years later I did some tutoring with parent's friends' children and the exams they had were basically the same as my GCSEs were. If they went back to the exams they had at the start of the 90s, pretty much every person taking A-levels would fail. It really is silly.

As for entrance exams for universities, I think they're really a bad idea. We already have two nationally recognised exams above A-levels, S-levels and STEP, which cover exactly what entrance exams are supposed to. It would be far better to stick with these as a national standard rather than having every university make up their own tests, which would put far more stress on the students could end up having to take up to six extra, entirely seperate exams.