GCSE and A-Level results. The whole media campaign around the results is a complete farce.
The truth is that exam grades are given to set scoring percentiles, not for actual resutls. (the top 30% scoring exam papers in economics get an A no matter what their actual result was)

This creates a system where exam results only reflect how well the person did compared to everyone else that took the exam that year. It has no relation to any other previous exam and any comparisons between different years is completely meaningless.

yet every year, exam results are announced and the government take credit in "record breaking results"
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 10:58, 16 replies)

On the plus side
The newspapers print pictures of excited 18 year-old girls jumping
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 11:06, closed)

yes and some time reginal tv even have film of said jumperlumps jumping

( fluffybunnykiller Is feasting on the clitoris of life, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 11:40, closed)

This is what A-Levels are all about.
Providing photo opportunities for the media industry.

If anything, A-Levels are a gateway to porn. I'm disgusted. It's essentially coercing girls into a life of prostitution and drug addiction.

Next time I hear a conversation about exams I'm going to deck someone.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 12:14, closed)

Pfft
GCSEs results are better
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 14:52, closed)

hmm
you really think that one year's collection of examinees will be statistically distinguishable from the previous years?
(haberman is singing in the changes, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 11:56, closed)

More importantly
If the above is indeed the sole method for determining grades we wouldn't see increases in the number of students getting A's etc, since that number would remain constant every year at 10% of submissions or whatever.
( JebediahSpringfield, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 11:58, closed)

this!

(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 18:06, closed)

I can completely believe this.
The Oxford Union Library has a collection of GCSE-level-equivalent papers from a hundred or so years ago and they're fecking impossible for most graduates, let alone sixteen-year-olds.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 12:07, closed)

This isn't even close to how it works.
I worked for an Awarding Body for years and I assure you there are no percentage bands of people who get each grade.

There are a million and other things wrong with how the system works, but this is not one of them.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 12:14, closed)

Is that why there are minimum percentages required for each grade then?
You fucking spastic.
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 12:18, closed)

Well I thought that
I re took my maths GCSE a few years ago and I remember reading at the time that to get a C you only had to get 40% which I thought was a joke.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 10 Mar 2012, 18:18, closed)

There's different levels of paper.
The higher paper does have some ridiculously low threshold for a C, but the intermediate one makes it impossible to get anything higher than a B, or some such bollocks.
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Sat 10 Mar 2012, 21:15, closed)

Straight Fs, for you, then?

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 13:05, closed)

No
That's how it used to work in the days of GCEs ('O' 'A/O' and 'A' levels) because the universities (the only people who gave much of a toss about it) wanted to know that an 'A' grade meant you were in the top 5% of your cohort.

So you didn't really need to have stars and work experience and the like to be able to tell whether someone was genuinely bright or just a taught-to-the-test muppet.

In those times, the percentages of people getting certain grades didn't and couldn't inflate every year, because only 5% got an 'A', the next 10% got a 'B', the next 15% got a 'C', etc. (or whatever the percentage cut-offs were). Schools then tended to publish results of all their internal tests so kids could see how they were doing against their peers, because that's what mattered.

That was scrapped when GCSEs were introduced in about 1986-7 (I just missed them), for both those new exams and for 'A'-levels. Instead of getting better marks than 95% of the other people sitting the same exam as you to be awarded an A grade, now you only had to get more than 75% of the marks available on the test.

Grade inflation happens because teachers, like everyone else, get better at what they do over time, and now you only have to get a certain mark to get a certain grade. That's why there are so many kids getting 'A' grades that they had to introduce 'A*' to at least try to distinguish the brighter kids to help university admissions, recruiters, etc.

And why schools positively baulk at the idea of publishing competitive test results. Kids never really know how they're doing relative to the rest of their class. So you end up with unmotivated bright kids and thickies who think don't know they're thick.

Of course, there's a choice, and the system we have now is there because it was seen as unfair to write of such large proportions of the population in order to create and sustain a well-educated elite. But egalitarianism has its downside. It's the difference between having a singing 'test' to see if you're good enough to join the school choir aged 11 and being rejected (like my school did), then thinking you can't sing when you've got a perfectly serviceable voice for non-choral non-classical music; and only ever singing with your mates at the back of the bus or into a hairbrush in front of your bathroom mirror, thinking you're god's gift and destined for musical greatness only to go on X Factor and become a national laughing stock for 5 minutes.

In one system, the perfectly good get written off as inadequate. In the one we've now moved to, the useless think they are indispensible because nobody has ever told them they're no good.

...and relax
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 14:26, closed)

Bell curve marking on UK exams
No, they're not. They're really not. If the top 30% got an A, every year, 30% of pupils would get an A. There'd never be any improvement - or indeed any difference at all - in exam results from year to year.
I believe "bell curve" marking has been employed (at least in the past)in US schools system, but not here. No. Happy to be proven wrong. Don't think I will be.
(Tstar73, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 14:50, closed)

It is in some cases
but the grade positions on the bell curve are adjusted by the chief examiner relative to the difficulty of the particular exam, ie what percentage of pupils that year got all the answers right.
I once helped my uncle (a chief examiner) enter some of the results into a database in order to determine this. So it does happen, just not necessarily in all subjects, or indeed over all exam boards.
( wynoh kills threads by his mere presence, Sat 10 Mar 2012, 12:54, closed)