So what is this ACTUALLY teaching them?

[ghoti]

From my recollection, exams were pretty much of a muchness. I don't recall seeing past papers that were excessively hard or easy (we did try past papers during each course)

I see no reason why 10% must pass at an A grade. This would imply that someone, one year, who should have received a very good B grade might receive an A, and conversely, someone who should have received an A received a B.
Given that there are differences between each year's ability in different subjects, surely there must be years when 9, 11, 8 or 12% should pass...

Curving for national exams is done at the population level. Yes, there may be differences in ability from year to year in individual classes in individual schools, but at the population level differences are negligible.
"10% pass at an A grade" was an example I used for simiplicity; the actual curving calculations (as I said) are more complex and I'm not sure of the exact algorithms used by the examinations board. At universities it works slightly differently (although the basic principles are the same) because universities don't examine at the population level.

 

[nilagin]

It's not fair that students this year had a calculus question which was significantly more tricky than in years previous.

Regardless of the number of people who achieved it, there may well have been some students who scored highly in that exam, some may well have scored 80% and thus deserve the A, but because not enough reached such a score it is dumbed down to encompass a number they figure should have achieved an A. Thus those who have achieved their A pass on merit have had it cheapened for them.

 

[ghoti]

As a product of back then and as others of similar age and older on here have already testified, it did work and so you are talking rubbish. Back then we were taught using real world examples as for some it was the only way it could provide understanding. All papers back then were set to a required level. So there was direct comparison between A grades, regardless of whether they were achieved in '75, '76, etc, Where as by changing the goal posts of what score can achieve an A grade, their can be no direct comparison, because they have no way of knowing how someone who got an A with a 34% score could have scored the previous year. So back then did work, but the current system doesn't work and can't on that basis. It just merely gives a result on a whim.

Papers were not set at a "required level" because that cannot be done! I'm now fully convinced you don't actually understand the issue. Grades produced by curving produce predict ability far better than fixed cut-off grading. They just do. It's not controversial. Modern grading is a far better predictor of ongoing academic achievement than it ever was before. "It worked for me!" is not an argument. What worked for you? How did it work for you? How do you know it worked?

 

[kendo1]

Curving for national exams is done at the population level. Yes, there may be differences in ability from year to year in individual classes in individual schools, but at the population level differences are negligible.
"10% pass at an A grade" was an example I used for simiplicity; the actual curving calculations (as I said) are more complex and I'm not sure of the exact algorithms used by the examinations board. At universities it works slightly differently (although the basic principles are the same) because universities don't examine at the population level.

I think my point still applies even at the population level- some number of students could still be affected. At this level it could still amount to (insert number here )

 

[ghoti]

Regardless of the number of people who achieved it, there may well have been some students who scored highly in that exam, some may well have scored 80% and thus deserve the A, but because not enough reached such a score it is dumbed down to encompass a number they figure should have achieved an A. Thus those who have achieved their A pass on merit have had it cheapened for them.

If they got 80% they may well be intelligent enough to understand why the grade-curving does not, in any way, cheapen their achievement. So I'm not worried by that.

 

[OldCarlos]

ghoti, Just had a thought.

By the same logic, a game of football, where the goals are set & are equal to everyone participating. Team A concede far fewer goals & win a greater proportion of their games than other teams in their league, hence winning the title.

Is it fair then when you realise that team A has an extremely large goal keeper who gives his team a massive advantage?

Surely the fairest thing to do is raise the cross-bar when he plays? (or better still, use a bendable bar which can be adjused according to the keeper's height)

Taller than average keeper & the bar will be curved upwards in the centre. Shorter than average keeper & it will be curved down...............hence the new `curved system`!!!!!


It isn't real life I'm afraid & life is all about winners & losers. We aren't all the same & we all have to take a few knocks along the way.
I just wish folk would stop dreaming up new fangled ideas to try to make us all equal & boring.


tbh, the very mention of this `curved system` is starting to grate on me now & makes me cringe.

 

[kendo1]

How do you know it worked?

Thick pupils failed, smarter ones passed.

 

[ghoti]

Any credibility just vanished.
You just wrote off a couple of generations of learning / students as rubbish.
Exams were harder.
University places were earned, not given / gifted.
Courses were in subjects with merit, not "how can we get the thick kids in".
It would appear you're a fine poster child for the core of todays education system and all it lacks.
You've made my night, thanks.

I'm not terribly worried by your analysis because you don't seem to have a clear enough understanding of the education system to provide worthwhile criticism. This is really just a lot of "O TEMPORA, O MORES" regurgitated from the reactionary press.

 

[ghoti]

ghoti, Just had a thought.

By the same logic, a game of football, where the goals are set & are equal to everyone participating. Team A concede far fewer goals & win a greater proportion of their games than other teams in their league, hence winning the title.

Is it fair then when you realise that team A has an extremely large goal keeper who gives his team a massive advantage?

Surely the fairest thing to do is raise the cross-bar when he plays? (or better still, use a bendable bar which can be adjused according to the keeper's height)

Taller than average keeper & the bar will be curved upwards in the centre. Shorter than average keeper & it will be curved down...............hence the new `curved system`!!!!!


It isn't real life I'm afraid & life is all about winners & losers. We aren't all the same & we all have to take a few knocks along the way.
I just wish folk would stop dreaming up new fangled ideas to try to make us all equal & boring.


tbh, the very mention of this `curved system` is starting to grate on me now & makes me cringe.

Well, they do use curving of sorts in a lot of sports. It's called "handicapping".

ETA: it's not really the same, though, and your example isn't a good analogy either because students in exams are not in competition with one another.

 

[Llamaman]

Given that there are differences between each year's ability in different subjects

Got any evidence of that? The sample size of an exam board is pretty large, so you would need to invoke some force to overcome the average.

 

[OldCarlos]

I'm not terribly worried by your analysis because you don't seem to have a clear enough understanding of the education system to provide worthwhile criticism. This is really just a lot of "O TEMPORA, O MORES" regurgitated from the reactionary press.

True `teacher-speak` is that.

How do you know WHO amongst us doesn't have an understanding of the education system?
I for one think I have a fair understanding & actually spend quite a chunk of my time in schools

 

[Llamaman]

Thick pupils failed, smarter ones passed.

But students who would have passed a year earlier/later failed (and vice versa), purely because of the year of their birth.
So thicker students passed where brighter students failed, purely because of their birth date.

 

[kendo1]

Got any evidence of that? The sample size of an exam board is pretty large, so you would need to invoke some force to overcome the average.

As I said in a previous post, my teachers (and my kid's teachers) noted that there were differences between years, whether it was behaviour or academic ability. Have you not noticed this in your experience?

 

[OldCarlos]

because students in exams are not in competition with one another

In effect they are. They need to get that extra couple of % more than their peers to get a higher grade!

 

[ghoti]

True `teacher-speak` is that.

How do you know WHO amongst us doesn't have an understanding of the education system?
I for one think I have a fair understanding & actually spend quite a chunk of my time in schools

I can make a pretty decent stab at deciding who does and who doesn't understand the system because some people have not demonstrated any comprehension of the issue under discussion, preferring to relax into old tabloidesque tropes rather than provide any proper criticism.

 

[kendo1]

But students who would have passed a year earlier/later failed (and vice versa), purely because of the year of their birth.
So thicker students passed where brighter students failed, purely because of their birth date.

So you are always correct? No room for manoeuvre?
I would suggest that if the people setting the exams were better at their job there would not have to be this fudging.

 

[kendo1]

I can make a pretty decent stab at deciding who does and who doesn't understand the system because some people have not demonstrated any comprehension of the issue under discussion, preferring to relax into old tabloidesque tropes rather than provide any proper criticism.

Sorry, I don't read tabloids.
You're making assumptions about the abilities of everyone here, including yourself.

 

[OldCarlos]

I can make a pretty decent stab at deciding who does and who doesn't understand the system because some people have not demonstrated any comprehension of the issue under discussion, preferring to relax into old tabloidesque tropes rather than provide any proper criticism.

A defensive statement from someone who doesn't particularly like what they are hearing?

 

[ghoti]

Sorry, I don't read tabloids.
You're making assumptions about the abilities of everyone here, including yourself.

I don't recall ever saying you did read tabloids. In fact, I don't even see you in the part of the conversation where I used the word "tabloidesque".

 

[kendo1]

I don't recall ever saying you did read tabloids. In fact, I don't even see you in the part of the conversation where I used the word "tabloidesque".

OK
I have been taking part though. My wrong assumption.

 

[ghoti]

A defensive statement from someone who doesn't particularly like what they are hearing?

I don't know if I'd say I don't "like" what I'm hearing. I don't think the counterarguments offered are particularly well thought out or substantial. Mildly frustrating in a trivial sort of way. It just boils down to "things were better in my day!" Which is the lament of every ageing generation. O tempora, o mores.

 

[OldCarlos]

*Mildly* frustrating

Is a term I'd use for much of the education system & those in charge of it. (change to *extremely)

 

[kendo1]

I don't know if I'd say I don't "like" what I'm hearing. I don't think the counterarguments offered are particularly well thought out or substantial. Mildly frustrating in a trivial sort of way. It just boils down to "things were better in my day!" Which is the lament of every ageing generation. O tempora, o mores.

I don't think I would say 'things were better in my day'. Yes, it was different.
I think some posters just don't agree with you that this is the best way to go, and don't all agree with certain assumptions that have been made by those in charge.
It doesn't necessarily follow that those who make these decisions are the best to make them.
I'm thinking of politicians...

 

[Llamaman]

Any credibility just vanished.
You just wrote off a couple of generations of learning / students as rubbish.

(S)He did nothing of the sort.
The point being made is that fixed grade boundaries are unfair on borderline students because exams are not consistent in difficulty.
That doesn't 'write off generations' in any way.

Exams were harder.

My personal experience doesn't chime with that. My high school teacher had me sit an O-level maths paper (I was 13, or maybe just before my birthday). Compared to the 'modern' questions, it was only marginally harder in technical difficulty, but the questions were presented much more clearly - they were straight maths problems rather than having to 'spot' the problem and apply the correct principle. Different students would respond differently to the different paper styles.

University places were earned, not given / gifted.

Again, not true. Cambridge colleges, for example (and other universities did the same) used to have places set aside for students from particular (public) schools, with special consideration for the sons of alumni. Those days are fast disappearing, and good riddance.

Courses were in subjects with merit, not "how can we get the thick kids in".

Yeah, and all those boat crews/heirs to the aristocracy were doing their Part IIs in particle physics, not 'Land Economy' or 'History of Art'.

It would appear you're a fine poster child for the core of todays education system and all it lacks.

It would appear you're a cheerleader for a rose-tinted revisionist history that never existed.

 

[viv1969]

I'm not terribly worried by your analysis because you don't seem to have a clear enough understanding of the education system to provide worthwhile criticism. This is really just a lot of "O TEMPORA, O MORES" regurgitated from the reactionary press.

And quoting latin clichés is a way of getting your own pseudo intellectual point across in an effective manner, yes?
The education system I went through stood me in good stead; with sound qualifications in established subjects.
I'm secure enough in that.

 

[Llamaman]

As I said in a previous post, my teachers (and my kid's teachers) noted that there were differences between years, whether it was behaviour or academic ability. Have you not noticed this in your experience?

I assumed everyone was familiar enough with bell curves and statistics to realise that a sample of 20/30 will show greater deviation from the mean than a sample of thousands.
So, yes, I have seen variation - and it is utterly meaningless.

 

[kendo1]

I assumed everyone was familiar enough with bell curves and statistics to realise that a sample of 20/30 will show greater deviation from the mean than a sample of thousands.
So, yes, I have seen variation - and it is utterly meaningless.

Yes, I did statistics as part of my university course, so I am familiar with them.

 

[ghoti]

And quoting latin clichés is a way of getting your own pseudo intellectual point across in an effective manner, yes?
The education system I went through stood me in good stead; with sound qualifications in established subjects.

No doubt it did. There's no argument being offered that the education system here was TERRIBLE in the middle-late 20th Century and is now BRILLIANT. The argument is that the introduction of grade curving represented an improvement in one aspect of the education system. From this thread, it seems to be a measure which his widely and seriously misunderstood. It's nothing to do with "bumping up grades" or "dumbing down passes". It simply sets out to provide a more reliable correlation between grade and ability than existed before. It achieves this quite well. I don't understand why this wouldn't be seen as worthwhile.
Across the huge field of education, there are, and have always been, things we could do better and things we do relatively well.

 

[Llamaman]

So you are always correct? No room for manoeuvre?

No, but in this case I am.
It is a statistical certainty that if there were any variation in exam difficulty, then identical borderline candidates would get different results depending on the year they sat the exam.
It logically follows that a marginally brighter candidate in a harder year would perform worse than a less gifted candidate in an easier year.

I would suggest that if the people setting the exams were better at their job there would not have to be this fudging.

That is true, but until we find a way to write exams that are sufficiently different to challenge students whilst being identical in difficulty, it is an observation that offers no solutions.

 

[Llamaman]

Yes, I did statistics as part of my university course, so I am familiar with them.

Excellent, so you will have appreciated that a teacher's sample of 30 children is less statistically relevant than an exam board's sample of thousands.
I missed that your question was rhetorical - it's sometimes hard to pick up on such nuances in written text.

 

[kendo1]

Excellent, so you will have appreciated that a teacher's sample of 30 children is less statistically relevant than an exam board's sample of thousands.
I missed that your question was rhetorical - it's sometimes hard to pick up on such nuances in written text.

I would suggest that a teacher's experience of a particular year was not limited to just 30 pupils, but certainly not thousands.

Rhetorical? Me?

 

[Chipper]

So we shift the goal posts to make sure there is roughly a 50/50 split to pass / fail then?
one year some would have failed that should have passed and vice versa, hardly fair is it?

Which is exactly what Gove did a couple of years ago and stuffed up lots of kids chances. There should not be government interference from a bunch of elitist millionaires... And one examining board instead of all these others... It's pretty straightforward to work out which board is easiest...ask any head of department.

 

[nilagin]

Papers were not set at a "required level" because that cannot be done! I'm now fully convinced you don't actually understand the issue. Grades produced by curving produce predict ability far better than fixed cut-off grading. They just do. It's not controversial. Modern grading is a far better predictor of ongoing academic achievement than it ever was before. "It worked for me!" is not an argument. What worked for you? How did it work for you? How do you know it worked?

Papers can be set to a level, because that is exactly what they did for us.

But students who would have passed a year earlier/later failed (and vice versa), purely because of the year of their birth.
So thicker students passed where brighter students failed, purely because of their birth date.

There were no hard or easy papers, we keep telling you this, obviously the education process and how your exams were graded after is making it difficult for the pair of you to grasp it, perhaps I should award you both an A, it doesn't matter you have no grasp of it but hey ho, we wouldn't want to upset your idealistic perfect world would we.
The fact was all papers were set to a required level, proof being in all the many papers we sat from previous years in the run up to the real exam. If you had a grasp of the subject at hand you did well if you didn't have a grasp of certain elements of the subject, you didn't do so well. The concept was as simple as that, nothing could be simpler nor fairer especially as the goal posts didn't require changing,

 

[Llamaman]

No they weren't.
From a parliamentary briefing paper;

"Before the mid-1980s there were more or less fixed percentages of students who were awarded each grade and these proportions changed very little year to year. This ‘norm-referencing’ method meant that most improvements in national performance had to come from increases in entry rates. This method was replaced with ‘criteria referencing’ which attempts to set each grade boundary at a constant standard over time and hence if the performance of candidates improves then a higher proportion of candidates can gain top grades. Actual grade boundaries can vary year-to-year (as each years’ papers are different), but the standard required to gain each grade should remain the same."

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04252/SN04252.pdf

The history you treat with such affection and reverence is a myth.

 

[ghoti]

Papers can be set to a level, because that is exactly what they did for us.


There were no hard or easy papers, we keep telling you this, obviously the education process and how your exams were graded after is making it difficult for the pair of you to grasp it, perhaps I should award you both an A, it doesn't matter you have no grasp of it but hey ho, we wouldn't want to upset your idealistic perfect world would we.
The fact was all papers were set to a required level, proof being in all the many papers we sat from previous years in the run up to the real exam. If you had a grasp of the subject at hand you did well if you didn't have a grasp of certain elements of the subject, you didn't do so well. The concept was as simple as that, nothing could be simpler nor fairer especially as the goal posts didn't require changing,

You simply don't understand what you're talking about. No papers were successfully set to an identical standard (though they may well have tried; and still do, try) because it can't be done. There will always be unavoidable variations in difficulty.
We actually do reasonably well at it, as grade threshold adjustments are usually quite small. But there are always harder/easier papers and always have been.

 

[OldCarlos]

There's no argument being offered that the education system here was TERRIBLE in the middle-late 20th Century and is now BRILLIANT.

I disagree on both counts. (btw, who are you measuring `brilliant` against?)

 

[Llamaman]

I disagree on both counts. (btw, who are you measuring `brilliant` against?)

Um, he wasn't making that claim. He was saying that no-one was making that claim.
Why argue against a claim that no-one is making? Do you really, really dislike windmills too?

Edit: this really should have had a smiley as it reads pretty aggressively without Sorry Carl.

 

[OldCarlos]

Um, he wasn't making that claim. He was saying that no-one was making that claim.
Why argue against a claim that no-one is making? Do you really, really dislike windmills too?

Yep, I've just re-read it. Apologies I'd only just got up & turned the PC on

Do you really, really dislike windmills too?

No need to start being childish.

 

[Llamaman]

Yep, I've just re-read it. Apologies I'd only just got up & turned the PC on

Ah, easily done. Grab yourself a coffee, pronto.

No need to start being childish.

It's the only way to remain sane around here. Take it too seriously and you'd go mad pretty quickly. Maybe that explains the Mods...

 

[nilagin]

The history you treat with such affection and reverence is a myth.

What you mean my whole school life was a dream then? Your comments are becomming more and more farcical. My education and the exams plus previous test papers that I took are testament that it wasn't a myth. Just because you weren't there, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just for your information, when a tree falls over in a forest without you there to hear it, it still made a noise.