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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."
US Schools do the same shit
News at 11
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...
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...
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.
That's not the point. The point is that these days the focus is on understanding the concepts of chemistry (for example) compared to 50 years ago when the focus was on doing the math.
If you actually look at the Chemistry curriculum from then and now you might see just how very wrong you are.
All subjects except Maths evolve. Even staple subjects like History and English. Even if some of the basics remain similar you'll find that they're tort in a way that makes them more applicable in today's society and world.
The real question/issue we should be asking/addressing is - How good are degree students in the workplace?
Now that is a problem we should our time looking into. Because from my point of view people leaving University are damn near never qualified to walk into any job (*with a few exceptions). I'm also sure that in all cases learning 1950s Maths and Chemistry wouldn't fix then and might even make the problems worse.
Standards are not falling in private schools
Which is why the NuLabour government is doing its best to get rid of private schools. There is a marked and increasing difference in standards, and levelling down is so much easier than levelling up.
A while ago, the UK government's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) fined 50 leading private schools a total of GBP3.5 million (about $5.25 million) for exchanging information about the fees they were charging. See, for instance, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511429/50-public-schools-fined-for-fixing-their-fees.html
Note that in the UK, "public school" means a particular type of private (independent, non-state) school. The name was adopted before there was any state-run education in the modern sense, so it was logical in its day.
The irony is that most (all, AFAIK) of those schools have charitable status - they are "not-for-profit", so that the fees they charge merely pay their costs. No one is getting rich from running those schools. Moreover, the fine of about $100,000 per school could only be paid by increasing the fees!
Obviously, the purported motive of the fines - to stop the schools colluding to distort trade, reduce competition, and raise prices - was not applicable in the case of the public schools. What could be more ridiculous than fining a bunch of charities for not being competitive enough, when none of them makes a profit?
It's even stranger when you reflect that the body doing the fining - the UK government - forces all children who do not attend independent schools to go into its own state education system, which offers no competition at all. Moreover, competition law does not seem to apply to transport (where big companies enjoy state-granted monopolies), TV (where Sky has a monopoly in satellite and Virgin in cable), or banking (in which, as we have recently noticed, there has hardly been any regulation at all).
It seems pretty obvious that the motive for the investigation and subsequent fines could only have been to damage the public schools' reputation and financial status. As it had to be passed on to the parents, it was really a fine on them for daring to avoid the state education system. In itself, this attack has apparently not forced any of the schools to close (yet), but the government and its supporters live in hope.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I must agree.
I went to school in the UK in the 70s. Being what is now recognized as Dyslexic I had a rough time, being considered 'thick' and not worth teaching. Since I now have a Ph.d in Computer Science, I often find myself wondering at this assessment, and how many peoples lives such labels all but destroyed. For me it was a hard road up the education ladder, but I got there in the end.
I didn't notice anything much better back then myself. Seems to me, given how many people I knew from that time still work in local factories, and got pretty much nothing of benefit from their 'harder' exams (I wasn't allowed to take them, so I can't comment) I don't see how things have changed that much.
My boy is also dyslexic, gets extra help as a result, and in spite of some issues with the low standard of education which even he realises is a problem, he's doing OK (far better then I did), and will be going to university to do a science subject himself.
I personally think people need to be looking to their own parenting, and how they encourage their child to learn, and not expecting the government to sort it out for them. Behavior is so bad in UK schools at the moment that I'm amazed the kids learn anything at all. This is almost entirely a parental issue.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
This is exactly right. My maths teacher, who has been teaching maths for many many years, himself says that the tests haven't got easier or the students dumber. Nay, it's just the fact that the curriculum is different now. It adapts.
For example, when he was at school, he was routinely using logarithms at age 11/12 just because it was the simplest way to do operations involving large numbers. We didn't start that til I was 16, but we learnt about other areas of maths a bit more. Geometric, series, etc.
Everyone bangs on about how hard old exams used to be. It's simply not true, the students were just learning different things back then.
I attend a state school, and I consider myself quite gifted. I've had a good education all my life and I've always been creative/interested in all things science/maths. And honestly, after all the work that's gone in, I refuse to believe that I'd be in a majority if I'd lived 50 years ago. It just doesn't make sense; my parents' education's standards just weren't different.
Nice Post. I couldn't agree more.
I'm an English teacher at a good school, but even here, we are forced, not just from administration, but more diffused social pressure, to make sure our scores are good, even though we know the tests are flawed.
The problem with education is it has become a political issue, which means we keep slathering nice pretty paint on a school building that's rotting away from the inside.
I'm afraid the whole system will have to collapse before we begin actually fixing it.
An important change for education.
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.
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).
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With the obvious point being, if learning to pass the test isn't good enough then the test must be wrong.
I'm paying £3,000 a year for this degree. I don't expect to be told to read stuff in a book!
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Just "HISTORY"? It must have been a survey course....
Seriously, what do you imagine is the "core subject" of "history" such that two people who studied "history" 60 years apart should perform similarly on identical exams? My wife is a PhD student in history, but would probably have trouble answering simple questions about people or periods she's never studied, even if she could give some broader context.
Or the "core subject" of "math"? I'm a PhD student in theoretical computer science, and do a lot of "math", but you could easily trip me up by asking for computations in areas I don't study (like, I suspect, some of the integrals that might appear on a 1950s chemistry exam)...
GP is right. Subjects change (you can claim "the same facts are still true", but the same facts are not still studied on the same timeline today, nor should they be). As another comment said, what we should really be concerned about isn't performance on some arbitrary historical standardized exam, but on how well education is preparing students. In many cases the answer is probably "not that well," and that's what we should be worrying about. If students are performing well after highschool and college, then who cares about a standardized exam from generations ago? Since when did we start thinking that doing well on specific tests is really an objective measure of a quality education?
I am the man with no sig!
Yes, they are. Private schools are under even higher pressure to pass all students, because they have payed for the education. They also have to have higher average scores as the parents are more selective, if funds are limited (if it isn't an elite private school), then they have to cheat just like the public schools do.
The problem is with the league tables that put schools under enormous pressure to raise their headline figures. This has all sorts of unfortunate consequences such as the concentration of resources on borderline students to the detriment of the strongest and weakest students.
The league tables are indeed a problem, but my experience is that the problem is the opposite of the one you describe. The day before one of my daughter's exams we got a phone call from her teacher, who asked us not to send her in to the exam, because it was possible she might not pass and that would hit their league table (whereas a no-show wouldn't). We told her where she could put her league table (a place famous for lack of solar illumination) and sent our daughter to the exam anyway. She passed. But the strategy was clearly to exclude marginal pupils, and that's something we've seen across a lot of schools. If a pupil might not get the grades, they don't get to take the exam.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Oh come on you cant honestly believe this drivel! Public schools and paying for an education is the quintessential example of what is wrong with the world! It is incredibly unfair! Ignoring all the shit that is fed the poor kids that attend these institutions (I feel I am quite knowledgeable of the subject as I have spent a lot of time around public school pupils, and I am myself a state educated fellow) the strange elitist stuff and the notion that state educated people are "not as valid a member of society as public school educated people" (I am quoting someone I know there, who went to St Paul's). They should not have charitable status! It is plain bollocks that they are a charity. If you compare their salaries to the salaries of state school workers it is ridiculous, people do get very rich from running these institutions. I agree that there is always room for improvement in the education system but the public school system definitely isn't a model to go by!
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. :)
That is partly a function of the post-college environment too. Trade school certificates and 2-year degrees are not respected in the United States. Many jobs for which they should be sufficient demand a 4-year degree anyway. That forces many people who shouldn't need a 4-year degree to get one. The increased demand for 4-year degrees increases the price significantly.
All of this amounts to a situation where one frequently incurs such a staggering debt to obtain one's education that it would be a very poor choice indeed not to consider how one's education and grades affect one's job prospects. I would have been happier if I could have enjoyed college as an academic pursuit whose value was completely intrinsic. There were economic pressures on both me and the college, however, to turn it into a hellbent marathon.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
The problem here is actually a combination of factors.
It is true that exams have gotten easier. But you cant compare a GCSE with the old O-levels and have a like for like comparison. For a start most students today take about 10 GCSEs. Some take as many as 16! Taking that many O-levels would have been insane. GCSEs have coursework with is usually a total waste of time (and take up a big chunk of time).
They tend to teach things in such a way as to make them deliberately more difficult. Imagine trying to do diffraction when you have no idea what a function is (or a sine wave). Or study Newtons laws when you have no idea about vectors (never mind calculus). By dumbing things down they have made the subjects harder to teach for all bar the stupidest of candidates which was always the intentions. Dumbing a subject down often makes it harder! Especially for the best students.
Then there are a whole bunch of subjects that are a complete waste of time. IT is a good example. Media studies and business studies are another pair of good examples. Incidentally I did business studies and IT so I know what a waste of time they are. The entire science curriculum is taught with virtually no maths, and no statistics.
Modularity of the courses also wastes an immense amount of time. Studying for an exam carries significant overhead. Testing should all be done at the end, with the option to resit (so as to give people who simply have a bad day a second chance). The tests should be hard enough that it doesn't matter how many times you resit (since passing the test demonstrates that you have the necessary knowledge).
It's no wonder that structuring a course which seems to be designed only to get the maximum number of passes (and sod the ability to tell the difference between the genius and the guy who knows just enough) would be railed against.
In the UK at 16 students should be taking around 5 core courses. There should be no course work other than mandatory (but unmarked) labwork in the sciences. English, Maths, Science, Philosophy and Statistics. The emphasis should be on functional capabilities with mathematics, a good cultural understanding in English and good logical and inferential skills in statistics and philosophy. This is supposed to be teaching people the foundations of knowledge, not pretending that people with no knowledge of logic can make a reasoned argument, or that people with no knowledge of calculus can hope to understand Newtons laws.
If we then want a couple of optional courses in computer science, higher physics, economics, art, history, geograph and so on, that's great. But every 16 year old should be able to construct a coherent sentence, work with derivatives, matrices, know what an ad hominem is and be able to analyse experimental data. Without these very basic skills there is absolutely nothing of value you can teach them.
The A-levels are not (at least in their current form) hard enough (or structured sufficiently) to be teaching at 16, never mind the immense waste of time that is the modern GCSE.
I find it interesting that so many kids put in 4+ hours at home on their studies and still struggle. To me this is indicative of the way we've added all this content that isn't relevant while standards have slipped.
OK, I'd like you to sign under: "I am willing to let the rich poor divide of our nation increase exponentially by denying poor people a fair chance and I am a horrible, horrible person." As much as I agree that my "friend" (yes the quotes are definitely required, thank you!) was not a typical example of publicly educated people, I do believe (and I have been on various scholarship courses where I was the only state educated person out of a group of 60! as everybody else managed to put together enough cash to get in) that the overall population does lean that way. There is no indication that there are more people teaching in private schools that are industry standard. In fact there is data to suggest that there is a higher percentage of ex-industry personnel teaching in state schools. Probably because they have made their money and they want to give something back.