A level results

Originally Posted by Ed

My nephew got his reults yesterday. He got 3 Bs. He feels that he failed because he didn't get As - he thinks that people will consider Bs as second class and so is thinking of doing resits.

Have we really got to this level...

Sad isn't it. Succesive governments meddling with standardised testing have not only undermined those with genuine academic ability, but made those who don't have such ability feel like failures.

If universities whose lecturers are supposed to be the best specialists in this one field and abrest of publications aren't able to spot plaigarism (which they aren't in many cases) there is no chance schools and the associated exam boards will spot most of it

I worked as a science teacher as part of an outreach programme between school and university. Plagiarised work was blindingly obvious - a lot of students copied and pasted from the net, so the phraseology of 'their work' was inconsistent all the way through. Also pupils would visit the same sites so i'd see the same statements recurring. The teachers were so bogged down with marking the coursework, the volume and also ensuring that pupils made the targets, it was generally ignored. I don't think that its because they don't spot it.

mary

Originally Posted by missyorkie_chris

A-Levels are getting beyond a joke. Some of the subjects students have the option of taking could be learnt in a month, let alone 2 years

Not even a month - best example is General Studies. It was mandatory in my sixth-form, but I decided that as I was attempting to finish my A-levels in 15 months instead of 2 years that I'd exempt myself. Never went to any of the classes, but sat three exams back-to-back with 100% marks, managing to come out with 574/600 UMS points over 6 exams. Somewhere in the region of 60% of the sixth-form students came out with As.

Originally Posted by Ed

My nephew got his reults yesterday. He got 3 Bs. He feels that he failed because he didn't get As - he thinks that people will consider Bs as second class and so is thinking of doing resits.

Have we really got to this level...

Yes. Having decided to do A-levels in 15 months as mentioned above, I was 1UMS point short of a Physics grade A and 12UMS points short of a Geography A. The 1 point in physics equated to something stupid like 0.8 marks on the module I did worst on. I subsequently spent the next 6 months attending 5 (mandatory) hours of classes per week, just to resit 2 exams.

On a side-note on the getting harder front, while studying for my first set of AS physics exams I was getting rather stressed due to trying to juggle 2 hard subjects while teaching myself AS-psychology with a very rough home-life at the same time, and my dad couldn't work out why. I was explaining to him that I was struggling with certain things in the course, to which he asked why, since he'd done all the topics that I'd mentioned before years earlier and found them easy. The next day I picked up a practice exam from my teacher and took it home and gave it to him, along with a calculator. Thirty minutes later he admitted defeat having not answered anything, and stopped giving me a hard-time.