Rob 80386
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and the site receives a small commission
So what is this ACTUALLY teaching them?
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OldCarlos
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You are spot on there. They are far too pampered/protected!
`Theory and practice` seemed easy enough to understand.
I think I do. (btw, should there be an apostrophe * ?)
Just because you are in the top 10% shouldn't necessarily guarantee an `A`.
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Why not? The sample size is large enough that there is no significant variation in raw ability between candidates from different years. The variation in marks is primarily driven by the style, range and difficulty of question asked, not by the natural ability of the candidates sitting the paper.
Lots of criticisms here, no solutions. So, let's hear your ideas for examining pupils fairly. How would you standardise examinations?
How would you determine appropriate grade cut-offs in examinations?
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OldCarlos
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Because in theory you could be amongst the top 10% but actually only achieved maybe 25% pass rate. (If papers/questions were actually too difficult for students) & I wouldn't expect an `A` then.
OldCarlos
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It's not just about `exams` for me, it's the whole ethos being adopted by many heads/schools. Crikey, many junior school kids don't even get a meaningful end of year report, which actually tells parents how well they're performing in class against their peers.
This is very unlikely to happen (and curved grading is more complex than simply "top 10% get an A" - though that's a reasonable approximation of the idea) but if it did, why would it be bad? If only the top 10% can exceed a mark of 25% then that tells you more about their real ability than setting the cut-off at some arbitrary score (say, 75%).
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You mean a 25% score, I assume (pass rate means something different).
What would be wrong with that? If the exam is so difficult that even the best candidates score 25%, then why not award an A? The alternative is fixed grading, where potentially an entire year could fail because the exam was so hard no-one could score the predetermined pass mark. how is that of any use to anyone?
Employers don't want to know how hard the exam was in a given year - they want to be able to grade you against your peers. Moderated marking/grading achieves that in a way fixed grading cannot.
OldCarlos
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As you say, `unlikely` but not impossible.
Are you serious?
If I was an employer, I'd be mighty disappointed if I found out the grade `A` student I was interviewing, or worse still actually employed, possibly didn't have enough basic knowledge. (it would obviously depend on the job)
OldCarlos
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see above
Absolutely serious.
I wouldn't care too much about their absolute score because that tells you next to nothing about their ability. Curved grading actually provides information about someone's true ability.
So it is very, very useful for employers to know that candidates were graded on a curve. If the employers are bright enough to understand it and its implications.
Though if the situation arose where the cut-off for an A was 25% there would probably have been something seriously wrong with the exam itself. Or the course. But in principle, it's still more useful than having an arbitrary cut-off.
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I'd be mightily concerned if I found out I was turning down excellent candidates who got a 'C' in a hard exam year in favour of average candidates who got a 'B' in an easy exam year. Yet that is what would happen without grading moderation.
And I can say I've seen this from professional exams which have fixed pass-marks like you propose. The exams do vary in difficulty - in general, they are similar but every so often a particularly hard or easy paper comes along and the pass rate varies dramatically. Typically, each paper for the CTA (Chartered Tax Adviser) has about a ~50% pass mark and a ~50% pass rate. However, one sitting of a particular exam had a pass rate of just 16%. The tuition colleges hadn't noticed any particular lack of quality in the candidates (you sit plenty of past papers as practice so they know) - it was just a really hard exam. This doesn't matter quite so much in a professional exam where you can resit in 6 months (although people can and do lose their jobs for poor exam performance), but would be disastrous if it happened in school exams, where a failure can be life-changing.
OldCarlos
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That would suggest previously competent teachers all became rubbish for a year. Does that seem plausible?.... or the teaching?
OldCarlos
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That's life though.
I left school 40 odd years ago & didn't expect to have a right to go to college, then university, but I get the feeling things are very different these day.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know the % of pupils going on to college these days, as opposed to 50 yrs ago?
Also the % who go on to uni?
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That's a completely different point to exam grades though. Universities flex their admission requirements in line with the grades students receive, so if grades inflate they raise their requirements.
Education to 18 is now compulsory, so 100% for your first question. Second one I don't know, but Blair's government stated a 50% target.
So this sounds like you're saying that, even though we know why the uncurved system is unfair (for students and employers), and even though we know that we can use curving to make it fairer, we shouldn't act; presumably out of spite?
"We could fix this problem but we won't because THAT'S LIFE!"
Very strange attitude.
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Depending on the grades you get, you may well not get the course you want to study straight away, you will have to do a year at the college improving on the grades before you can start your intended course.
I'm with OldCarlos's point of view on gradings. I left school 36yrs ago with 5 O Levels and several CSE's, prior to taking our exams we were tested using papers from many previous years all the questions were of a similar difficulty and gradings were set on the percentage you achieved. It was exactly the same when I did my OTC and HTC exams during my apprenticeship, depending on what percentage you got determined whether you failed, or got a Pass, Merit or Distinction.
But this system does not give you an accurate measure of ability.
Why would anyone prefer a system that is less accurate? I'm struggling to understand it. It's completely baffling.
The only argument seems to be "that's what we did when I was young"...yes, but then we acknowledged that this system didn't work very well and changed it to something more accurate: curved grading.
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That can work for maths and maybe even science but it's harder for, say, English. If you ask the same questions about the same texts students learn rote essays without thinking.
I had a stonking 'is Winston Smith a hero or anti-hero?' essay in my locker for my GCSE but the examiners saw me coming
I had a stonking 'is Winston Smith a hero or anti-hero?' essay in my locker for my GCSE but the examiners saw me coming
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Of course it worked. How is it in anyway less accurate, it's quite simple. Answer all the questions correctly you get 100%, answer whatever percentage correctly you get that percentage as your score. I can't remember what the grades were set at but lets say 80% and above gives an A, 70-79% a B and so forth. I've taken many tests at work when applying for jobs, if no one passes the tests with a suitable score, no-one gets the job and it is re-advertised. It's not a case of "Oh at least he tried" If it isn't good enough, it's not good enough end of. It's no good pussy footing around them when they are at school, they are going to get some big shocks and disappointments when they get out in the real world otherwise.
Not so easy for maths and science these days. There's a big emphasis on solving concrete problems and applied knowledge, setting these questions can be difficult and you don't really know how hard they were with any accuracy until the students have tried them.That can work for maths and maybe even science but it's harder for, say, English. If you ask the same questions about the same texts students learn rote essays without thinking.
I had a stonking 'is Winston Smith a hero or anti-hero?' essay in my locker for my GCSE but the examiners saw me coming
I don't think you've understood the problem or the solution at all.
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Haven't you just proved the point I was making all along?
Its too difficult ( for what ever reason, lack of ability of teachers / students / exam setters)
Lets just shift the goal posts a few % down so a lot more get a decent pass, the school doesn't look like it's failed to it governing body, or the government, when they do their inspections?
and the examination board ( or who ever sets the questions) don't look like a lot of total arses.
No. You've not understood. The grade cut-offs are pushed up just as often as they are pushed down.
It is impossible to set identically challenging exams from year to year. Therefore, with fixed cut-offs, in some years students will be disadvantaged, in others they will have an unfair advantage. Using curved grading tells you (and potential employers) the real ability of your students.
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You know exactly how hard they are if they are tailored to the curriculum being taught.
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No I fear it's you that is misunderstanding (could it be a result of your exam process being dumbed down). When I went to school, we were educated to either O-Level standard or CSE standard, depending on your ability. You then took your exams and received your marks and subsequent grading depending on how well you did. If you took CSE's, a Grade A was the equivalent of a Grade C O-Level and was counted as such. So as someone taking O-Levels in most of my subjects, I backed them up with CSE's should I not get a high enough O-Level grade or indeed fail.
That's pretty idealistic and naive. You can have a good idea of the difficulty of pure knowledge questions but not applied knowledge questions where you are testing the students' ability to take the curriculum and apply it to novel scenarios.
If you can think of a system to gauge the difficulty of those questions without testing them first I'm all ears.
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No it doesn't tell you anything about a students abilities, all it means is one exam was more difficult than another.
Yes. And that system was fundamentally flawed. Curved grading fixes that flaw.
Curved grading raises the bar as often as it lowers the bar.
Sit and think about that for a bit.
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It was called O-Levels and CSE's it worked for years and provided employers a good indication of someone's abilities.
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You can only accurately do that if both the curriculum is static and the questions are regurgitating prior ones (i.e. change the numbers).
That's a terrible way to set exams because students only learn how to deal with specific question types rather than understand the material.
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How was it flawed, it must be because it didn't pander to little darlings because they didn't get a good enough grade and hamper them in later life and must have been against their human rights.
You only get rights to an education not a guaranteed pass.
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Well in that "terrible way" I was first taught the basics to get an understanding of whatever the subject was then tested on it. It doesn't matter if the specifics are changed around then does it.
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That's a rather simplistic view of how exams were set (when I was a lad).
viv1969
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I simply don't agree.
It worked for a long time. (And yes I'm sure tge fish will disagree).
Standards have dropped since then.
With certain exceptions university admission requirements have dropped to keep pace.
Has there been a single year when the pass rate has not risen? Because the standard of Intelligence of job applicants certainly hasn't risen accordingly. Far from it.
Extending the compulsory age for continued education, dropping admitting standards and the invention of frivolous degree courses is simply an excuse, both for youngsters to not work, and for governments to disguise employment figures.