... but you can get an A with just 57%!?!?

I'm sure when I did my GCSEs a grade C was 60%?!

At this rate I'm not surprised the pass rate is so high. In a few years you'll be able to pass by being able to fill in your name.

You say that, but my old school did terribly...I don't know any figures yet, but I've heard Dad talking about it (he's vice-chair of the governors...)

Interestingly I can imagine only A* - B will be classed as a pass soon for employers looking to sort the wheat from the chaff

I'm not surprised, even when I did my GCSE's over a decade ago my top-level Biology paper almost assumed no prior knowledge of biology...
I managed to get a B in physics and I sucked at physics.

Certainly in my school, knowing how to do coursework and how to do exams seemed more important than knowing the subject. The people that knew things tended to get lower grades than those who knew how to pass exams...

When I was at school, you had to know the subject, otherwise you couldn't do the exam... And an A was around 95%, I think.

having just gotten my GCSE results, nothing below a D thank god, ill admit there not that hard, i found english, history and maths difficult, i got a C in all of them, but business studies which i was good at, i also got a C, the other subjects i got B or A

now to be honest, i did absolutely [LIFTED] all in the 2 years till my exams, and for my exams i did no revision at all..hell i went to download festival near the end of my exams and i still did all right, sure i was predicted higher results than what i got (history and maths were expected A/B) but i dont think there hard enough, also teachers only teach what they think will be on the papers, they dont teach other stuff unless they have a free lesson which they have planned for something else (for instance, we were meant to be able to dissect a cows heart, other classes did, but we did not) and so on

all in all, i am happy with my results, and they got me into sixth form, and from what ive heard the school did very well overall, considering its one of the top 5 biggest high schools in england, i think thats rather good

Easiest ever GCSE's = Highest ever pass rate.

Too much easy course work, not enough exam. People can pass without remembering anything*.
The iGCSE is the way forward

* Long story about the GSCE pass rate at my school.

All these kids you see on the news saying they're not easy........... Give them an old O level paper and see how they do.

This argument continues every year. Yet every year, the problem persists unnabated and the nations yoof get ever stupider. Whatcha gonna do?

I wouldn't say the tests were easier...I would say they are testing less about the topic itself and more about how to pass an exam though...

+1

I suck at exams. My Uni. record clearly shows a grade bias in favour of coursework. Why? Because I'm the kind of person who will go away, thoroughly research a subject and then write a detailed analytical account. This is where my strength lies.

I find in exams that there just isn't the time to do this. In fact, there's barely time to get more than the basics down, and you can't check facts either. Exams reward people with good memories, coursework rewards people with good research and analytical skills. Which is more important?

I personally think that exams are a poor method of examining someone's performance. In all of the professions the ability is there to go away and research the answer if you don't know it, yet somehow you are expected to remember an entire subject for an exam?

An exam might be able to tell you if someone has the basics covered, but to check whether someone has a real in-depth understanding of the subject only coursework will suffice.

If there's a reason why GCSE results are so good it's not because the subjects are too easy or children have cheated at coursework, it's because teachers have become very adept at teaching pupils how to pass the exam instead of a thorough grounding in the topic at hand.

Yeah, I also favour a continual assessment approach to marking. It teaches constant performance, rather than a moment of brilliance, which is of next to no use in 'the real world'.

Really, anyone can reasearch something, being able to apply it when it is needed is what matters in a lot of cases


Exams have their place. A written exam for a programming course isn't a good way of testing (in some cases it can be a way to show working however). A better way is virtual PC exam stations that you can do the test on

I have had an exam where a 40% question was on an area that was only lightly touched on and showed who actually did the additional (and highly reccomended) reading on an area. It also clearly showed who turned up to each lecture and who just looked at the notes and thought it would be ok (only 4 passed the exam including myself)

Cheating is very commonplace. Not just at GCSE level, I know of 3 or 4 people on my course that had cheated a number of times, 1 of them got severely caught out as he couldn't explain his work and was given a choice of 0 or a good mark and being kicked out. the other 2 or 3 got off as it wasn't noticed. All the other students knew they had cheated though yet the university couldn't prove it through their methods for plagiarism or collusion. It's easy to show someone has lifted a block of text from a website yet incredibly difficult to show another student has told them the answers to word in their own way.

When it comes to testing that someone has knowledge of a topic the only real areas of examination are exams (open/notes or closed book) or face to face interviews as it eliminates the opportunity for outside inteferences.

My maths teacher (who was also a Dean of Mathematics) was happy for us to bring out own notes in, provided they were handed in with the exam. It was incredibly easy to see who actually took the time to revise and thoughtfully prepare notes, and who just photocopied pages/went in blind especially when there were a lot of complicated formulae needed.