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Royal Society of Chemistry Slams UK Exam Standards
cheesethegreat writes "The Royal Society of Chemistry has sharply criticized the 'catastrophically' falling standards for UK school exams in the sciences. The RSC had 1,300 highly achieving students take an exam made up of questions taken from the last 50 years. The students averaged an appalling 15% on 'hard' numerical questions set in the 1960s, but managing much higher marks on the more recent 'soft' non-numerical questions. This latest report has garnered mainstream media attention. The RSC has also created a petition on the UK Prime Minister's official website, calling for urgent intervention to halt the slide, which has garnered over 3,000 signatures. The issue of declining exam standards has been an ongoing concern in the UK, with allegations that exam results have been manipulated by the government to increase pass rates and meet its own targets."
Hard numerical questions are jobs for spreadsheets and Ti-89s
US Schools do the same shit
News at 11
Glad to see Finland isn't the only one in trouble. It seems that it won't matter if our standards of education decline as long as they decline faster in other countries...
its well known in the uk that exam standards have been falling year after year, exam boards make their exams slightly easier, so that the students taking that one get better grades, so more people use that board over one of their competitors, and its just a downward spiral, its ruining our education, universities are having to work harder and harder to teach students what they would have come in knowing a few years ago. The universities cant let their standards slip so it just gets harder and harder for the students that actually go to university, while making those who stop at a-level seem better than they really are compared to those who sat the 'same' exams a few years ago
fuck all this learning must be fun horse shit, making learning fun hasn't helped anyone actually learn. maybe this recession will be a good thing, you have an entire spoilt generation out there who think they don't actually need to learn anything in order to make it through life.
Not sure what they mean by "Instead, they are doing the completely different, and more rigorous, International GCSEs, which are still in demand in Commonwealth countries."
Having taught first-year engineering in one form or another for 7 years at an Australian university, I can say whatever standards are implemented in other Commonwealth nations (like ours) are failing too.
The bright kids are as bright as ever (maybe even brighter), but the median just seems to sink lower, and lower and lower...
Even bright students with enthusiastic teachers are being compelled to "learn to the test", answering undemanding questions to satisfy the needs of league tables and national targets
I have to say, that aside from less quantifiable testing (ie essay based) the mentality of "study the test" is prevalent everywhere, even in higher education. I'm sure that if it were not, the pass rate would be attrocious and consequently, for many schools/institutions: "Goodbye tuition fees".
I record my sleeptalking
Science is incredibly maths based, how can you expect to be in any way competent in a related job after school, if you've spent your entire education doing simplified unrealistic tasks? Its like essay subjects such as history and geography saying you don't need to be able to write in clear English.
... in the UK is that young people now care more about who is going to win X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent than own performance at school.
And when you can just show up for an audition to a TV program, do a little dance and become rich and famous overnight, why on earth would you want an education?
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
My early 90s Chemistry GSCE contained questions about chemical reactions.
Modern "chemistry" GCSE containst questions like "Which one of these is a bunsen burner".
The govt stonewalls any discussion of this year after year but the truth is exams are becoming trivially easy, content of syllabuses is being axed yearly and we are developing a nation of idiots - albiet apparently intentionally.
See for yourself. Google GSCE/A Level past papers (all in the public domain). Pick last years. Pick one from 15 years ago and recoil in horror. We have 16/17 year olds finishing school with the same level of academic knowledge that 13 year olds used to have in the 80s. Its there for every science, and maths too.
Keep numerical questions for the maths exams.
You're clearly a complete idiot. Without mathematics, chemistry and physics become meaningless qualitative handwaving. Without mathematics, it is impossible to interpret the results of an experiment, or even to demonstrate that your experiment is measuring the think that you think it's measuring.
If you think that science is in anyway separable from mathematics, I can only come to the conclusion that you know nothing of science.
Pirate Party UK
I'm sick of this "Kids in the 1950s were smarter than today" rubbish. I know that these old accidemics studied back then and want to feel smart but making kids feel dumb today is wrong and they should feel ashamaned.
Let me break it down for them and you:
- Kids in the 1950s did not study what we study today
- Kids today did not study what kids studied back in the 1950s
I know this is a shocking revolation but still true. If possible I would love to see what would happen if you sat a 1950s kid down in front of a 2008 exam, my guess is the results would be similar.
The only school subject which might be the same between the 1950s and today is Maths. But even then there is less focus on doing long calculations on the page and more using a calculator.
You can claim that doing them on the calculator is dumbing people down but I think voluntarily spending five minutes and likely introducing errors already makes you fairly dumb given an alternative.
First, let's get one thing straight.
This is not an argument anyone in a position of power can possibly win. More students fail? Your teaching standards are falling, your education system is lousy. More students pass? Your exams are too easy.
So instead, let's look at what organisations which aren't obliged to follow the state-designed education system think.
Several universities are introducing entrance exams, whereas previously this was more-or-less exclusive to Oxford and Cambridge.
Several universities are having to introduce more basic maths into their first year syllabus to get students up to speed.
Private schools are seriously considering dropping the state-set exams (GCSEs and A-levels) in favour of something else such as the International Baccalaureate. I myself have looked at papers which were set only 5 or 6 years after I left school and exams which I should by rights have been completely lost on - I could immediately see how to answer at least half the questions.
On the other hand, a lot of countries in north Africa and the Middle East consider that education is the only way they're going to improve their lot in the long term. Tunisia, for example, spends a third of its money on education and children leave school speaking at least three languages reasonably fluently. Many of the Arab emirates are doing something similar - they know the oil's not going to be there forever, and they want to be prepared for the day the wells dry up. No chance they can do that if most of their population can hardly read.
As for China - if you think you can move all your manufacturing out there and the locals won't one day say to themselves "Hang on a minute. We own all the factories, we know exactly how to build the kind of things that they buy in the West - why don't we design them ourselves and keep all the money?" you're living on another planet.
20 years from now, the West isn't going to be the technical research place it is today.
When that comparison between easy English and hard Chinese exams was in the news I asked a Chinese guy about it. He said that although the questions are harder, they vary very little across years so the students all just practice the question forms a lot beforehand, and regurgitate the method with minor changes during the exam.
Still, I'm sure exams have got easier over the years. It would be interesting to see if this has happened to university exams - Oxford and Cambridge must have records going back hundreds of years...
Your friendly neighborhood anarcho-capitalist chiming in again.
I understand that people think that education is a right. I don't see it that way, but it's where we are today. If people want to socialize education, so be it. My problem is in the grading system.
If you were allowed to grade the work you do at the office, what would you give yourself? This is the problem with teachers also being graders. When you socialize learning, you never want to strive for the perfect straight A class, or the complete disaster total failure class. Ending up with a C average means you can moan for more money and staff and administration next year.
I would accept socialize teaching if we had completely private and competitive grading systems. Think of the ACT and the SAT, but on a per-class basis. Let teachers know what is required for each tier in terms of learning, and then let the teachers hammer that home.
With private, competitive grading systems, different future work industries might look for different scores or even different grading systems. The student can pay for the ones they need, and take those tests. The educators can focus on "educating," and the cost of grading isn't passed on to the taxpayer. Some students may just want a "Social Equivalency" exam, and most private graders would offer similar ones. Other higher level students might need specific exams, to get an interview, for example.
When you socialize learning AND grading, of course you're going to eventually dumb down the system. That's how these things work.
It's referred to as 'Exam Technique' and is total bullshit. But hey, I did it, and got 11A*s, so who am I to complain? Anyway, things seem a little better at A- (AS-) Level, from what I've seen so far.
Education is only a means to an end, that is having the right pieces of paper to get hired so so you can have a wellpaid career and afford to buy the nice stuff. As long as you can bullshit your way through the selection process thats fine by me.
...the standing around on corners all hours at night drinking cans of Stella and cheap cider, vomiting in the street and causing as much trouble/violence/vandalism as they can.
That's absurd. Just about the only science in which you don't need numerical questions is maths.
Later school education should give students a good impression of the kind of education that they might later attend in universities.
I went to a selective school - called a "grammar school" - which took the top 20% of the population based on a mixed IQ/attainment test. I was then in the top set for maths and the three sciences - so that's the top 5%. In the last two years at school I was in special groups that were applying to Cambridge (our school was heavily science biased to did not have Oxford applicants, who had to do Latin)- the top 1% in maths and physics. If you failed the Cambridge Entrance there was always Durham, Imperial or University College London, or Sussex.
There is your explanation. The exams in the 60s were aimed at - let's call it an elite. In those days there were few distractions - hardly anything on television, no mobile phones, electronic gadgets were basically for nerds who were already into electronics, music was about playing instruments or listening to a few very expensive recordings, not the iPod generation, theatre was about the school theatre group or the local AmDram society if you were good enough. To be absolutely honest, if you were a nerd, and there were enough of us, school was actually the most interesting place to be, where really intelligent adults spent quite a lot of spare time encouraging those of us who were interested in their subjects.
Nowadays schools are expected to spread their teaching assets over the entire pupil list, and the children have far more things to think about outside school. Exams are taken by most children, not just around 15% in each subject. Of course the emphasis has changed.
But if you are one of the top few percent, you can still get the education you want. Despite going through the state system, my children and their friends still go to Oxbridge and the top tier universities, and they still emerge just as well educated as our generation ever did.
I don't think the problem is anything at all to do with exams. It is that society nowadays needs a higher percentage of technically educated people, but the media give the impression that the best opportunities for the bright are in banking, finance, law and celebrity culture. Most journalists are technically illiterate, and the rest follows.
As for maths, you are simply wrong through ignorance. My generation used calculators. They just were not electronic. We had Brunswiga mechanical calculators, mathematical tables (which are basically a hand operated calculator system) and slide rules. The knowledge of how to use them is obsolete, but the principle of assisted calculation is the same.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
...at least for the growing number of UK 'universities' offering Homeopathy etc. BSc courses. Not an easy sell to students equipped with a basic knowledge of chemistry.
http://dcscience.net/?p=454
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403123&c=1
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=404104&c=2
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/dcpubs.html#fun1 [DC's Nature article, "Science degrees without the science" available here]
Make sure you don't send your kids (or yourselves) to any of these disreputable UK establishments:
http://www.thinkhumanism.com/files/UCAS%20Courses%20on%20quackery.xls [List of UK universities offering fraudulent 'science' degree courses]
Good grades on your A levels? Who cares.
On the other hand, do you really want a "nation of chemistry students," to misquote Napoleon?
A Chem-Nerd-ocracy?
May God have mercy on us all.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The following examples may help to clarify the difference between the new and old math.
1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?
1970 (Traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. What is his profit?
1975 (New Math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $1.
(a) make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M
(b) The set C representing costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of the set M.
(c) What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?
1990 (Dumbed-down math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Underline the number 20.
1997 (Whole Math): By cutting down a forest full of beautiful trees, a logger makes $20.
(a) What do you think of this way of making money?
(b) How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?
(c) Draw a picture of the forest as you'd like it to look.
I left school the year before they merged GCE (General Certificate of Education) and CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) into GCSE.
The CSE syllabus was taught to those who were less academically capable (as evidenced by their past results). In my opinion, GCE taught how to calculate an answer, whereas CSE taught how to recognise an answer from a group of candidates. But that wasn't "fair" so everybody had to learn at the lowest common level.
That is the problem.
I do have experience of both types as although I did GCEs at school, I also went to college to learn car mechanics where I had to take basic English (Communication Skills) and Maths (Numeracy) as part of the course. Having already got GCEs in both, I pissed the college courses with distinctions. The top grade in CSE was only ever a C in GCE. The laughable thing from this recent article is that you can pass with around a 20% score.
One of my children currently heads the maths department in a London comprehensive school in a deprived borough, and would not agree. However, your comment about the generally low level of educational attainment in the 70s (which was indeed a dire time in British education) is one I agree with. I spent part of the 70s teaching maths in an independent school, and parents and grandparents would practically bankrupt themselves to get kids out of the local State system (Camden), which was indeed out of control. But then that was part of a general social problem. At the time I literally lived 100 metres over the border in Barnet. You could actually see the dividing line between the boroughs: on one side uncollected rubbish, dirt, broken street furniture and on the other, still on the same road with similar houses, clean and orderly streets. We had a severe attack of a kind of socialism which the Soviet Union would never have tolerated for a moment.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
As I see it, the problem isn't that examination standards are falling, but that they encourage the education system to "teach to pass tests" not "teach to learn the the students critical thinking. /and/ that the teaching standards are lowered from "learning critical thinking" to "rote memory learning designed to pass tests".
From the article: "Science examination standards at UK schools have eroded so severely that the testing of problem-solving, critical thinking and the application of mathematics has almost disappeared."
If it was only the examinations that had become easier, then the problem wouldn't have been so serious. The problem is the combination of lower examination standards
--
Regards
You have something of a point here. While such a course would be useless to actual science majors in college or university, it could be quite beneficial to others.
The article goes into a lot more than that. It details how this problem is effecting science classes taken by people headed into science and engineering fields, not just the general classes everyone takes. It also highlights problems with the standardized test regimen in the UK, and the disgustingly low standards for a pass.
So this is a unique opportunity to talk on /. and actually know what I'm on about.
I agree, the science exams we work towards these days are a pitiful shadow of what was taught in the past, and the slide is continuing.
Have a look yourself if you're interested:
http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/index.html
This is our exam board at the moment. There are past papers and mark schemes etc so you can see what the kids get put up against.
Calculations have gone out of the window it seems, moved up to A-levels. That's why there is a massive drop off in A-levels - kids think that it's the same but as soon as they get a bit of real science to do, it's too hard.
We're all supposed to make science relevant etc. The courses are a joke and the science is a joke, filled with 'science for everyone'. The science of mobile phones to teach microwaves (plus discussion on phones causing brain tumours). Cooking potato as a first lesson in organic chemistry to check on texture and colour. I kid you not. Everything is a discussion and an opinion, with little right or wrong answers. They are expected to debate whether we should build nuclear power stations or not without (I'm not exaggerating here) useful knowledge of nuclear power, decent atomic structure, other forms of generation, pollution concerns, resource management or how electricity works. It's far too touchy feely with far too little rigorous intellectual content.
As a student who has just started an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Physics straight out of secondary school in the UK, I'd have to agree with the Royal Society. The exam boards revised the standards in examinations as recently as two years ago and I remember how disgusted most teachers I knew were by the low level at which they were suddenly expected to teach. When a 16 year is forced to learn the electromagnetic spectrum as the "Space Rainbow" because the concept is 'too hard to comprehend' then there's something wrong.
Most of my current friends took the International Baccalaureate, whereas I took A levels. The difference between their knowledge and mine is astounding even though I achieved good marks at A level and attended a selective and supposedly high standard grammar school. I consciously feel left behind in my studies compared to them, and I wish I had gotten out of the English education system earlier.
I think the exam boards are trying too hard to make the subjects that students fall down on in exams easier to understand. To make up for the extra content this requires, the harder material gets pushed out. Lack of understanding is not necessarily because the subject is too hard however; if that is the case then the students should not be studying it. I believe the fault lies in bad teaching and management of school resources by governors as well as lack of attention to individual student needs. Perhaps once these standards improve, overall expectations will too.
I work in a UK school, having moved some years ago out of my research discipline. My school is not private but it is not the standard product either, being girls-only and basically running its own affairs. We get mainly higher-end kids but still have a "tail" ability-wise. In addition to science for younger pupils, I have always specialised in physics (not exactly an easy sell to girls). So, here are my thoughts...
The RSC are broadly correct with their analysis. It's a question of breadth versus depth. Certainly many pupils are now putting in far more hours than in my day, but then they are usually taking a wider variety of subjects, with some distinctly eclectic choices. They are also heavily involved with external activities, often with an eye on the CV in order to compete effectively for the "best" courses and/or universities. Staff support them as much as possible in all this, in my school often working 80+ hours per week during term (I'm taking a break to write this!) So, more effort is going in for and by some pupils - but to what effect?
The GCSE science courses are very poorly thought out - with a random jumble of disconnected facts ranging from the trivial to the arcane being presented together on the same textbook page. Children of 14 who are only dimly aware of what an electron is (in VERY simple terms) suddenly meet HOLES in connection with p-n junctions at the start of their GCSE course. Oh, and allow about 15 minutes to get the idea of a p-n junction across - then move on! Similar lunacies occur elsewhere in the specification, but you get the idea. So make science sexy and "relevant" by dumping the structure and rigour. To paraphrase an old physics joke, teach them about real horses before they know anything about spherical horses.
The advanced courses are better, but here the mathematics has been almost entirely removed, which is a clear advantage for those who are not going to take the subject at university but a massive disservice to those who are. It's not all bad, since it forces pupils to focus on principles (Feynman-style) but it can easily give a totally wrong impression of what science is really like. Most of my pupils do maths (and often further maths) anyway, so it's not a major problem for me.
Teaching to the test? No, sorry, I believe in pupils being encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills, where this is reasonable. Thinking rigorously is a major life-skill, unlike the test which will be history once it has been taken. The immediate consequence is that the subject is perceived by some as "almost impossible" but, ironically, those brave enough to still take it and committed enough to work at it come to love it! Since this is a public forum, I'm not going to comment explicitly on the predictable conseqences this can have with management - you're all bright enough to do that yourselves. Suffice it to say that I have yet to be promoted.
So, are we developing a generation of box-ticking, multi-tasking, shallow-thinking children who cannot do things for themselves? In general, yes - although the VERY best are still as good as ever: and as rare.
The one problem we do have is that you can't objectively match the old exams with the new. In the Good Old Days, we used to have the Bell Curve, which could be shifted accordingly to make the Elite appear the Elite. So the old style of marking wasn't very "objective". Nowadays, the bar is set and the bar stays there, at least in English schools. I have a sneaky suspicion that this is what people really want. Witness one poster bemoaning the demise of the CSE. I took CSEs, and the maths exams I took weren't like he described so I really have to doubt the whole thrust of his argument.
Problem 2 is that the people who took those exams weren't trained in those "hard numerical" methods so surprise surprise fewer people passed. Are these methods exactly what people want? I'm not a chemist so I wouldn't know.
Problem 3 is the UK school leagues which, under whatever system you adopt, will always lead to gradgrind. Not sure gradgrinding will actually produce better pupils.
I think the real problem is multifold: turning schools in to gradgrind institutions with the incentive for Schools to "tweak" the results. Continually tampering with the school system. I think stability is better than this continually idiocy of sniping and bickering.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Science is about the application of mathematics. If you can examine a problem, construct an equation, and then mess up solving it, then you have done well at the part that is science but badly at the part that is maths. Outside an exam, you would probably use a computer on more complex equations (in Physics there are a lot that would take months or years to solve by on paper, and just a few hours on a computer), but the computer can't produce the equation for you.
As I recall from looking at science examinations from the '50s when I was at school, their main focus was on substituting a simple equation that you'd memorised by rote into a problem and then spending 90% of the time with your slide rule solving it. This doesn't assess your scientific ability, and it doesn't really assess your mathematical ability either. The reason we moved away from these kinds of question is that they are very poor metrics of scientific ability (which is not to say that the questions in recent years are good - they are just bad in different ways).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The smackdown started with third-world country exam standards, then old tenured U.S. public school teacher exam standards. If they defeat UK chemistry exam standards they'll go on to the main multidiciplinary showdown against Chinese math exam standards!
I taught in comprehensive, selective and private secondary schools in the UK, and have done in the equivalents here in Australia.
Erosion of standards in Maths/Science has been steady and dramatic for at least the time I have been teaching (20 years). I am not an English teacher but from the way that the students react to my vocabulary ("You talk funny and like use big words and stuff!"), and from their universal and complete lack of spelling and grammar competence; I assume it is the same in that faculty.
I wish I could advocate an easy fix, but the kids do not value what we are trying to teach them and neither do their parents. You can make it as dumb as you want, but if students cannot see any merit in the process or the result...they just get angrier. As Heinlein (and/or Mark Twain) wrote, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig!"
As for OFSTED (http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/), don't get me started! Julia Gillard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Gillard) wants it here in Oz as well - God help us. That's the lunacy of WACOT (http://www.wacot.wa.edu.au/)...on steroids.
This is what happens when you tie school funding to results on standardized tests. Teachers in the US end up teaching in a tunnel, with the only focus for 80% of the time is getting the students to pass the one critical standardized test. If it's not on the test, it's not taught.
Of course, flexibility and creativity are dead with this type of reward system, and this doesn't even scratch the surface to the utter moronic standards of No Child Left Behind programs.
I'm sick of this "Kids in the 1950s were smarter than today" rubbish.
...but that's only the Daily Mail condensed summary of the argument (i.e. a big straw man).
What has happened, particularly in the last decade or two, is a significant increase in the amount of mandatory, external assessment of kids, coupled with an obsession with simplistic, by-the-numbers "performance targets" creating an accountability monster which must be kept fed.
In the good old bad old days, a good teacher wouldn't start exclusively cramming kids for the Big Exams (GCE/CSE and later GCSE* at age 16 and optionally, A-level at 18) until the last year or so (OK, small matter of the dreaded 11-plus, but that was abolished for most people in the 70s).
Now, with external assessments** at age 7, 11 and 14 plus Big Ones at 16, 17 and 18*** and management breathing down teachers' necks to deliver the numbers, kids are inevitably spending more time being coached for exams instead of being taught stuff.
(Or, to put it another way, "No fair! they changed the result by measuring it!")
* GCE and CSE replaced with GCSE in the late 80s See what they did there?
** The age 14 ones were very recently scrapped - not for any deep educational reason but because the contract to deliver them went titsup - what will replace them is yet to be seen; The age 7 ones aren't "exams" as such, but they're still significant.
*** A-levels now come in two bites...
The only school subject which might be the same between the 1950s and today is Maths. But even then there is less focus on doing long calculations on the page and more using a calculator.
Nope. I can say from personal experience that, circa 1980, several of the age 16 Maths exams had stuff like Venn diagrams, matrices, group theory and basic calculus on them. I don't think its a loss - with the possible exception of the calculus, none of it made much sense to us (or, I suspect, the teacher) at the time.
As for calculators - nope again: The GCSE typically comes in two equal-length papers, and you only get to use calculators on one of them - and where they are allowed many questions don't need them, and calculations are still contrived to give nice round numbers, apart from a lonely question about using calculators correctly (e.g. writing down an answer to appropriate accuracy).
You can claim that doing them on the calculator is dumbing people down but I think voluntarily spending five minutes
The problem is that the curriculum hasn't evolved to take account of calculators (let alone computers). Apart from the "calculator" question each year, you won't (e.g.) find a situation where you lose marks for saying Jill gets 2.9376128 squares of chocolate; where Aunt Lucy's inheritance (which she wants to divide in the ratio 1:2:3) isn't a multiple of six or where a quartile falls between two cases...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
This problem started 95 years ago on Jekyll Island.
/summary
Summarizing: If you siphon all the value out of a system, the system will go straight downhill without slowing.
I come here for the love
I would give you points if I had any.
I can only speak for this side of the pond, since I'm not well versed in UK testing, but I specialize in educational assessment and the quality of state-sponsored standardized assessments are far below acceptable. Most schools will use expensive, well made psychometric assessments when they work with students with "special needs"; university admissions board require students to spend hundreds of dollars taking similarly high-quality exams; but when a state needs a "math" test, they contract it out to the lowest bidder and get what they pay for.
New York State, for example, has used norm-reference testing techniques (determining the passing score base on group mean) for what is a criterion-reference achievement test (8th grade Math A). The publisher's "technical report" also reported the exam scores to be bi-dimensional (per a principal component analysis), but that the two factors together only explained 20% of the total variance! They excused this by quoting an IRT theorist out of context. (The theorist was explaining when unidimensionality was acceptable in meeting the assumptions of IRT, NOT when unidimensionality was acceptable in a general sense.)
All this is to say that we have the know-how and the skills to create meaningful, educationally useful assessments that don't sacrifice the traditional qualities of score reliability or the validity of those scores' intended interpretations. The problem is that people in the government a) don't have those skills, b) refuse to talk with those of use who do(1), and c) are being blinding by the publishers who want to get a ROI for their test.
(1) Yes, I've tried to bring it up.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
...is obvious. A dumb population is an easily controlled one. The simplest way to keep a population dumb is to cater for the lowest achievers when it comes to academic study. Is it any wonder a significant proportion of school leavers can barely, if at all, even write their own names? (source: OFSTED)
Or that of those attending college, nearly a THIRD are attending foundation-level literacy/numeracy courses? (source: OFSTED)
In fact, the effects of the trends towards "easier" exams is already being felt. Under-25's entering the workforce are getting the thin end of the wedge, and not even considered for professional positions at professional salaries.
Some might argue that the standards are being brought into line with the rest of Europe. I would argue that instead of bringing our standards /down/ we should force other member states' standards /up/ or they can forget the idea of joining the local workforce. This might sound a little Nationalist, nay even racist, but the truth will out when the IQ scale is reduced to reflect the trend and the UK becomes dumber than the United States.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
And much as I don't like the idea that I myself got easy qualifications, I must admit that we did exactly the same back then.
We looked at papers from 10-15 years before, praised the lord that we didn't have to do anything that tough, and then did the papers for practice anyway.
I "graduated" from senior school in 1989 (I'm a Brit).
My Chemistry GCSE was the "Salters Syllabus", chosen by my school to maximise pass grades.
It contained precious little actual chemistry. For example, I had to write esssays where I pretended to be a kitchen equipment manufacturer, and achieved grade A by pointing out that vinegar bottles should be resistant to acid...
I started an A-Level in Chemistry and it became very clear, very fast that I was massively out of my depth. In the first lesson the teacher "recapped" what we had learned in our GCSE Chemistry, and a lot of it was new to me (chemical valencies being on that sticks out in my mind).
Education in the UK is perilously, dangerously poor. Standards aren't slipping now. They've been slipping since the 1980s. Giving kids a good education is seen as a form of child abuse nowadays -- making them work hard just isn't on, because it might affect their "development".
... and I didn't really see that great a range in difficulty. They were all fairly straightforward, which is of course what you'd expect in a high school chemistry exam. The main differences I could see were that the more recent questions had a greater percentage of descriptive (non-numeric) questions. It was actually the questions from 1975 which had the greatest percentage of multiple-choice answers.
I suspect a lot of the difference in the students' results is from teaching to the test - they did well on the 2005 questions, because those are (in terms of phrasing and presentation) the ones they were taught to answer.
The curriculum may have gotten dumber, and the assessment bar set lower, but even without those additional factors the abandonment of the split grammar school vs comprehensive (& corresp. "O" level" vs CSE exams) has to be a large part of this.
Under the old system (I went to grammar school) the academically faster kids went to grammar schoool and the slower / less able ones went to secondary modern. The purpose of this system was to let each group advance at it's own pace, rather than having to gear the curriculum and pace to the average or less able students as would be needed without this seperation.
Of course eventually the politically correct crown got their way and it was deemed unfair to seperate kids based on ability, so now the brighter kids are doomed to the GCSE curriculum/pace of everyone else. If you're not even TRYING to educate the brighter kids to the best of their ability, is it at all surprising, or even newsworthy, that their level of education/ability is lower than when you were trying to?!
Of course this whole dumbing down appears to have gone further than the abolishment of ability streaming, and the usual response to slipping exam grades seems to be lowering the bar rather than increasing the quality of education.
I hate this sort of test, it is complete bullshit! If you take out a test from 50 years ago it is no mystery as to why children these days don't do so well in them. The curriculum has changed, we do not have stupid rope learning of equations and reciting the periodic table. We have moved on as a nation and have realised that education should prepare people for industry of further education, not just test their cognitive abilities. Therefore we teach different things now, and teach it in a different way, children are not prepared to take exams from the 50's! because they are irrelevant, and pointless! it is a good thing they don't do well in them. Please everybody, stop using dodgy methods to prove a mute point.
This epic fail is all explained in the BBC documentary The Trap. I suggest everyone obtain a copy from their local bittorrent vendor.
There's international politics, cold war think tanks (RAND Corporation), science and maths included. In sum: it's a film all Slashdotters should watch. :)
Stuff gets shuffled. Back in the 50s there was a lot more focus on geometry: I did as much maths as was possible at school (2 A-levels and an AS) and I'm sure I didn't cover nearly as much geometry as my mother. In fact, I doubt I covered 10% of Euclid. On the other hand, she was surprised that group theory had moved into the A-level syllabus - she didn't encounter it before university - and the two "discrete mathematics" modules I took covered topics such as graph theory which were research material in the late 50s and early 60s. (Dijkstra's algorithm, by way of example, was invented in 1959 if Wikipedia can be believed).
There are numerous ways for children to receive adequate physical exercise and fun without force addicting them to professional team sports at an early age. Numerous. But, no, we have to generation after generation get them addicted to these big league antics. They grow up to be..drools in a lot of cases, drunken hooligans is the phrase I have seen used for the UK and European variants, in the US we call them dumbass sports rednecks. Drunken hooting Neanderthals. You look at the antics of adult team sports addicts and wonder about society in general and the old "bread and circuses" technique the aristocrats have always used to keep their serf populations under control. Keep them drunk, occupied and not paying attention and the elite continue with their exploitations, generation after generation.
Team stadium sports are just the evolution of the coliseum games, along with that allegedly "amateur" Olympics soap opera they run that is nothing more than a battle of the chemistry scientists in how to avoid getting caught doping. We have allegedly "informed" adults who get to vote all across the world who can rattle off their "team's" important statistics and spend considerable amount of time and money following the games around (plus a lot of them becoming harmfully addicted to sports gambling), yet they can't even correctly name who their local politicians are for which office or correctly identify critical legislation or what it is about all the way to they are incompetent outside a very narrow range of skills for work. They barely can run a cellphone or computer or a box of mechanics tools, but they can head butt some stupid ball with alacrity, or catch and pass another ball, etc. Look at this article and so many others, they have to cook the books to make it appear the students are even learning anything, but ..wow. we "beat" that team the next town over Friday night at the "big game!". Give it huge chunks of TV news time and a whole section in the newspaper! Let's "analyze" every single play back and forth for hours now! This should be *embarrassing* making this rubbish all that important. In short, I think one of the best ways to get education back into the school systems all over is to remove these stealth children's farm leagues from the curricula. If their parents want them forced addicted, they should do it on their own budget and time in coordination with the expensive for-profit "leagues" someplace other than schools. There shouldn't be penny one or minute one spent by the taxpayer to support these professional leagues, including their subsidized farm leagues in the schools.
Removing the interest and ludicrous pay scales for professional athletes and entertainment "stars", in essence dropping severely what the collective "we" pay for those "industries" would really help to put the emphasis back where it belongs, evolving society to be more civilized and technologically competent.
A computer is great as a helper. It really speeds up the calculation especially when your only objective is the answer. Knowing how to solve it mathematically however is the one that will increase your original publications. Computer don't have creative process, programming teaches some creative thinking style but the ultimate creativity tool is math.
The old style emphasize too much memorization, the new style lessen the amount of memorization but substitute it with a lower scoring scale. The problem however are not the high school, it is the elementary school. The old style focus too much stuff to learn at high school but the elementary are taking quite a relaxed stride. We should disperse the syllabus a little. Allowing ample time for students to study it without having to memorize.
The current system of teaching only basic arithmetic and reading for 4 or more years are simply absurd. Most student have decent grasp of that subject after 2 years. Some subjects could also be skipped periodically. I propose a system that teach redundant subject such as English for grade 1, 2, 3, 5 , 7, 9, 12 only. Those credits are better devoted to other subjects.
I don't know what kind of math you do but without the insticts you developed on numerical questions, it is very hard to do math. I do agree however that the current application of numerical questions is an overkill. The emphasize on the abstract part of math is severely lacking.
The sad fact is that nowadays for good jobs recruiters have a list of good courses from good universities. For graduate training, the interview can be little more than a check to make sure that the person submitting the CV really is the person who got or is doing the degree, as there is so much dishonesty in CVs nowadays. I suspect that this is one reason why we worry so little about school exams any more.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
From a purely maths POV (in terms of competence etc.) I don't think subject specific maths is where the weakness lies (in the UK) - the root of this problem is primary school maths education. For those outside the UK, you may or may not know that primary schools here generally (although not always) make teachers of a class of pupils tech most, if not all of the different subjects to their class - so primary school teachers end up teaching English, Maths, Science etc.
As you can probably guess, this is quite absurd, and I personally feel that this is where my problems with Maths start from - not the lack of decent "hard" questions, but the lack of understanding at the most crucial point (the start). This lingers on into secondary school and beyond. A generation of pupil's maths skills poisoned from the get-go. _That_ is what needs to change.
I went to a good business school in the US recently, finished on top. I was in my 30s with a job and raising a kid. To my stupefaction, most students took the main accounting and finance exams by guessing backwards from the multiple choice questions (math? what's that?). Moreover, my study group buddies could not understand how I never guessed the answer, went through the required calculation and got it right faster; that is, when I had time to join the study groups since my allotted study time was considerably less than most my colleagues. Don't take me wrong; I don't think I'm that smart, but I am thorough. At times, I was angry that students with mediocre skills and conduct could still get the degree at all. Now, I am very sad to realize that these guys run the show. Yes, they are the financiers and arrogant money managers who are wasting our resources. Worse, however, is that many people buy into the arrogant lingo and dream-like promise of Wall Street that our money and hot air economies will grow forever. We let a bunch of schmucks with mediocre business degrees run our world. Why would an average to mediocre high school student not want to go to a B school where they can get a degree by memorizing the answers to exam questions? Moreover, a business degree can land one a good paying job in a cool city. Why would this same person try an engineering degree that's a lot harder to go through? Back to our subject, business-like concepts have changed engineering and science curriculum and test standards as well. 'Sell the tuition' says the University, 'we can't have over half our students failing.' I am not at all surprised by the findings in the subject that started this discussion. What can we do about it? Now that's a deeper question and yes, it goes to our very Western existence: will we continue to be the creative leaders of the world or indeed, the Chinese cohorts of engineers will take over soon?
"
- Kids in the 1950s did not study what we study today
- Kids today did not study what kids studied back in the 1950s
"
Nonsense! What the kids of the 1950's learned are the basics that should be taught today. If the kids today are not being taught the basics, then the foundation of what they have to learn today is faulty.
There is serious grade inflation going on and the kids are bringing home what their parents perceive to be good grades. Their kid is bringing home report cards that show that he is doing C+ work. In the 1950's that would probably mean that he is above average. In todays school, a C+ average means that he is seriously below average. We have to rethink or entire way of assigning test scores. We continue to think that a grade of C means average while reality is quite different. To those that actually deserve an A+, how can you tell when a student that hardly worked, gets a grade of A?
Other things being equal, companies prefer to recruit younger people meaning that as I get older it'll be harder and harder for me to find new work. So this is great news because as long as I can outthink the next generation I have a steady stream of income. At this rate, when I'm old and senile I'll still be gainfully employed.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Yes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have numerical questions on science exams. What you do is provide a formula sheet and make the questions hypothetical situations that require thought to pick and apply the right formula.
Applying mathematics to scientific problems appropriately is a major scientific skill and must be tested.
Shopping is about the application of maths, Without Maths you can be stiffed by the averate illiterate market stall holder in seconds ...
oh, wait...
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I got high marks in high school chemistry, the next year I tried helping a friend with his homework, and was completely lost.
The curriculum had changed!
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
After reading through the posts, it is enlightening that the UK educational system is suffering under the same crap as the US system. It used to be that public education was an end, not the means to an end. Education has become more of a higher-learning preparatory that a life preparatory. The original purpose of education was for the national acculturation of the young to produce law-biding, taxpaying workers/solders/citizens/voters. In an information age, the learned have become more than a asset. They have become a commodity in which nations compete. The trade-off has become quantity verses quality. Nowadays, competing nations need a technical workforce more than they need invention.
The main differences I could see were that the more recent questions had a greater percentage of...
Wait, hold on, slow down. A what-age...?
Current exams do work as you say they should, the emphasis is on showing your working so even if you make a simple numerical error you can still get most of the marks. If you get 1a) wrong and then plug the wrong numbers into 1b) you can get all the marks for b, ofc if you get 1a) wrong and then plug the write numbers into 1b) your probably in a whole load of shit.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I don't know about the UK, but in the US, most professionals are scared that they will become an obsolete and discarded product in mid-career. Lots of them become discouraged by the process and give up or change careers. If you visit your local career transition networking groups, you will learn about many such people who have opted to become truck drivers or retail sales clerks.
I know lots of people with impressive degrees who work at menial jobs for minimum wage. I don't think the vast majority of them are any less motivated or bright today as any other time.
When people fail in their professional life, we discard them, unless they are very powerful bankers and investors who lose on very large bets. We just bail them out and let them try again!
Given that this occurs to their parents, most kids become apathetic too. Why not just train for truck driving at the onset? It avoids lots of unnecessary expenses and moreover, you don't spend your days wondering what you could have been.
Science is about the application of language. Without language it is impossible to explain and argue your theory. (Well it makes about as much sense as the science is about Mathematics argument)
The exams have not necessarily become easier --- they have simply started assessing the wrong things. Instead of basing the grade on the qualitative understanding of the subject demonstrated by the student by having them write a short essay, the exams are marked by tick-box, where the examiners will look for words and phrases and assign one mark for each phrase that appears on their list. Similarly, every question is formulaic, and the required answers can be reliably predicted by the student looking for key phrases in the question text. There is no point to it all beyond the ability to execute memorised formulae (the bad kind, not the mathematical kind) to score points by tick-box, rather than demonstrating any actual understanding of the subject (as this study indicates).
I have an IQ of 155, and I got a D-average* on my four A-levels last year, down from my B-average** at GCSE... Let us hope that university will be less appalling.
*A-E grade scale
**A*-G grade scale
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've always wondered how some countries are consistently able to produce tons of qualified scientists and engineers while the US and UK can't do it even with access to many more resources.
I've definitely seen some counter-examples from India and China, but the majority that I've worked with are at least passably intelligent, can troubleshoot and seem to have a better grasp of their subject than comparable Americans. Is it truly just a culture thing, or is their education system better?
Keep numerical questions for the maths exams
keep verbal questions for the English exams
I think the main problem is the "anybody can grow up to be president" mentality. Huge steps have been taken to squish the bell curve at the low end of the scale, and nothing to stretch it at the other end.
So you end up with an education tailored for the average to poor student.
I know this sounds a bit harsh, but most of these average kids don't need or want an academic education, they much prefer and are best suited to vocational training.
Kids need to be treated according to their individual needs, not based on the lower common denominator. Which means get rid of this stupid standardised cookie cutter approach, and actually grade students (yes, I said it) according to ability.
All kids are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
- There is no point, it's like a sphere -
What is this ridiculous focus on making sure everybody gets good grades? The point of education is not to get good grades but to learn something useful. I can't think of anything more useful in the sciences than to be able to use mathematical calculations to analyze the results of an experiment.
I have never heard of an employer asking to see a college transcript. When I have hired, I have never cared the least as to what an interviewee's grades where in college. It's the skills they have and whether they can apply them that is important.
Sad, but not new. I was privately educated in the 70s/80s and I can assure you that "teaching to the test" was alive and kicking then. I actually think it was worse in humanities subjects than the sciences. I managed fantastic results in, for example, English and French, without any appreciation of literature or any ability to speak or understand French. But I could recognise a subjunctive in either language at 50 paces.
Over the last decade the entire New Zealand school system has moved from an assessment system of external centralized exams, scored by percentage, to an assessment system built on locally written tests, scored with only 4 grades.
Now many students who historically could not cope with rigorous, external examinations can succeed at the lowest grade level ("achieved") with a percentage understanding of content at around 20-30%.
It is a disaster. Teachers have simply given up fighting as it is driven by idealists, university education academics, and politicians looking to improve outcome statistics. Instead they are constantly audited to make sure they are interpreting standards correctly.
When I started teaching in 1991, we taught content so that students could handle ANY related exam question. Someone else wrote the exam. "Teaching to the test" was the mark of a very poor teacher.
Now "teaching to the test" is the model of excellent teaching. Eventually it will be exposed as complete crap in NZ too. We're usually about 10 years behind the UK...
Mathematics is a language, it provides an unambitious way of explaining processes that is (relatively) independent of general purposes languages (e.g. English, Mandarin, etc).
Without a good grounding in maths you're barring yourself from all but the lowest rungs of Science, Engineering and associated disciplines like Computer Science. Even the great cash cow that is the City of London requires a decent knowledge of maths in most high paying positions (except Risk Manager it would seem).
Not that there's anything wrong with taking other paths: a good liberal arts education can go a long way. But just as scientists benefit from skills other than pure number crunching (the ability to explain their results to non-experts for a start), everyone benefits from understanding basic (i.e. A-Level) maths. If people understood compound interest maybe we wouldn't have such a problem with personal debt levels.
Classically taught chemistry needs to die. The wrote memorization of odd latin names and electron algebra is worthless. Just go through the periodic table showing the cool properties of the separate elements, demonstrate the types of bonds, classic reactions, useful materials, and then go into computational chemistry.
//Does computational chemistry for a living.
//Never took a college chem course outside of a one semester "Chemistry for the Informed Citizen"
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
All it means is that the RSC have got some new, rather active, PR people.
Whether it's Yorkshire Puddings:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/13/perfect_yorkshire_pud/
the ending of the Italian Job:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7756288.stm
or now, "exam standards", the RSC has been busily putting its name around. Whichever news story happens next, you can bet the RSC will have a press release out about it (e.g. "Margaret Thatcher dies; petition for new Ice Cream flavour to be named after her").
So, what we need is 12 years of learning critical thinking? That's 1 year (max). If you don't learn critical thinking within that time frame you're a broom engineer. The remainder of the 11 years is still "teaching to the test".
On the bright side it means less competition for me.
As long as my bosses are old enough to be from the "old school" they can tell the difference between me and the incoming new crap ( but not so old that they are senile or demented ;) ).
I can honestly tell them that even though I am indeed crap and not that good, I'm still many times better than more than 95% of the prospective candidates. I can usually spell and write more than a few sentences without making silly mistakes. Every so often I am even capable of coherent thought and basic reasoning!
The danger of course is if the crap gets so widespread that there are no longer enough decent hirers who can tell the difference.
Lastly, there appear to be some decent chemists coming from India:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-11/11-year-quest-create-disappearing-colored-bubbles
Yes the US guy had the idea and drive (which counts for a lot), but in the end he needed the Indian guy to create the dye.
Your use of the word unambitious where you almost certainly meant unambiguous demonstrates my point better than I could ever have wished.
Private schools:
1.- Selection method: select people that can pay, if we have too many then we select amongst them.
2.- The parents take par in the kids education? How it comes? They don't work or what? Oh, I get it, working class people don't love their kids, that is a privileged trait...
3.- Sure, expel a paying pupil. Don't make me laugh.
4.- They are trying to save costs, thus employ so-so teachers.
5.- See 4.
A few private schools are very good and have a reputation to uphold, but most of them are really horrible places and parents are deluded when they think that paying more is necessarily a guarantee of a good education....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The problem is if you lower the standards.
I have no problem to see everybody passes as long as the standard by which they are judged is reasonably high.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.