Slashdot Mirror
Computer Science GCSE in Disarray After Tasks Leaked Online (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The new computer science GCSE has been thrown into disarray after programming tasks worth a fifth of the total marks were leaked repeatedly online. Exams regulator Ofqual plans to pull this chunk of the qualification from the overall marks as it has been seen by thousands of people. Ofqual said the non-exam assessment may have been leaked by teachers as well as students who had completed the task. The breach affects two year groups. The first will sit the exam in summer 2018. Last year 70,000 students were entered for computer science GCSE. A quick internet search reveals numerous posts about the the non-exam assessment, with questions and potential answers.
Using the study–test paradign to pass on the knowledge and skills of a complex subject just doesn't work.
Your proof of ability should be your portfolio, and your working relationship with actual professionals.
Sure, medical doctors do take exams along the way, but they'll all tell you that what really counts are the endless hours of working with their betters until they themselves become somebody else's better.
Education needs to be re-arranged around this apprenticeship model; interviewing and testing are bullshit ideas—your movement through society's functions should be well defined.
A whole article and recap without one word on what GCSE means. Thanks.
What is that? No idea. Ain't America.
Undefined acronym alert! Bad editor alert!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I think the ones thinking that was a good idea have just demonstrated they are utter failures at CS and at understanding how it is being used today. If the rest of the thing is of similar quality and level of insight, then this thing is completely meaningless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
GCSEs are exams given to 16 year olds in the UK, not that you would know that from the summary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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But, but, but... Don't we all know, that information wants to be free? And that any attempts to censor anything are treated as damage and routed around?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
According to the College Board, 40% of the score for the new Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course - whose higher-than-other-subject-area pass rates were recently celebrated by tech-bankrolled Code.org - is based upon assessment of non-exam "Performance Tasks."
That just makes them cliff notes now.
"We have to come up with new questions now" is the problem? Isn't that what the money goes toward?
The whole "educational" system seems to be tuned to breeding drones with the latter. Walking USB drives who can answet everything in their database, yet understand nothing.
I can't even hire anyone anymore, because they would rather use their energy to prevent having to ever think, than to actually think. The mere concept seems to offend them.
If anything, they want to be "hard working", when really, especially in IT, you take pride in not needing to work!
The more certificates and degrees and report cards and badges they put in front of me, the less I want to hire them.
Hint: If you want to be hired, come at me with what you came up with!
But who's Qual and why is he already allowed to own a slave?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
True story. I used to post on the TES forum (TES = UK Education Newspaper). One year there was a problem with the "AS Level" IT exam (AS level is done by 17 year olds roughly, it's the level above GCSE). None of the teachers could do it (it was an Access database). Literally. Slightly worrying when they are supposedly teaching students to do it, but that's the standard of UK "Computing". To be fair it was an insanely stupidly designed question (and about half of it was drivelling on about green issues which were irrelevant to the problem). I created two sample working databases, different approaches same problem, which I shared with teachers (it had to be to a teachers email in a school email address for obvious reasons). I ended up getting deluged with questions from students asking for all kinds of help , bizarrely the most common was "how do I memorize this". From all over the country. None of them should have seen the question let alone the answer. I don't know who leaked it. I understand that such is commonplace. Cheating is rampant.
I can break stuff. Gimme job?
Oh no, programming tasks were leaked online! The horror!
It's not like there's a horrible lack of unique programming tasks out there, nope, impossible!
It's like complaining about fucking 2+2=4 being leaked.
What sort of crappy non-exam task requires being pulled from the full year instead of replaced?!
Summer 2018? Plenty of time to come up with a new test.
If that isn't enough time, disband the damn education board for being the monolithic piece of shit that it is for coming up with terrible tasks that can't be easily jumbled around each year.
I remember doing Past Papers from previous exams as practice, well 90% of the questions and tasks were the same with different numbers. (the rest maybe being new stuff added to the curriculum)
I don't know what the fuck these idiots are doing, but it is very wrong.
That includes Sample Data from stuff like "oh a company wants you to make a point of sale system" tier tasks that contain their details and such. This is a CS question though, so it is even less crippled by such stuff as there's considerably more avenues to test a task.
Absolutely trivial. How awful.
Finland, the birthplace of Linux.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Please expand your acronyms.
The average reader who doesn't work in that industry isn't going to know what "GCSE" means.
You may have potential in QA, if you are genuinely creative and clever in breaking stuff.
It is always helpful to introduce abbreviations before use, e.g., General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE). If your audience includes people from difference contexts, e.g., countries, cultures, continents, please provide the necessary context. For example, secondary education inside the Bologna zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process) which includes many countries in Europe, secondary education may refer to master degrees, whereas in the EU education framework primary = primary school (up until 4th/6th grade), secondary = high school/gymnasium/grammar school/secondary school/access to universities and tertiary = university education. This is especially required with this topic, as student in the US and UK may refer to school children and university students, whereas in, e.g., Germany there are different terms for both groups (Schüler/Student like schooler/student).
In short: express abbreviations before first use, explain abbreviations, provide context for your audience.