Universities bribed £1000 to accept D students! - Are degrees becoming useless?

Voyager2002

windswept wrote: »

A levels easier???
Are you kidding?
My daughter is in her 2nd year, doing maths, english and psychology - she has just got a U in her maths module retake, she got an A (almost A*) in her gcse maths.
Not one of her class got higher than E for this maths as module.
She's been offered a conditional place at Keele (she needs 300 points _ that's 3 B grades, for an educational studies degree - it doesn't look like she stands a chance).
She's at Edge Hill today for an interview for primary maths with qts - she needs 200 points for that along with at least a D in maths - she has GOT to pull up for her final exam and her resit.
She has decided to resit all but her English exams so will have 9 exams in June - I would hardly call that "easy".

There is a well-documented shortage of capable Maths teachers, and so many schools employ teachers who are only capable of teaching Maths to GCSE and yet expect them to handle 'A' level as well. I fear that this is your daughter's situation.

Anyway, I wish her all the best for her retakes.

bestpud

There is two seperate issues going on here imo.

1) Should every student be assessed equally for funding even though:

some will be supported by families,
some will have families who can afford to support their children but choose not to,
some will have families who cannot support their children (as they don't have the means to do so),
some won't have families or are totally independent of them,
some have their own family to support
some will have extra costs through disability or the like?

2) Should the entry requirements be overhauled as students are getting in with poor A level results?


The former is a difficult one and is hotly debated.

The latter assumes there is a correlation between poor A levels and poor degree result, and also that pupils with poor A levels are not going to work hard at uni, or are only applying for the funding.

Also, it depends on whether we are going to say uni is useless unless a person can get a 1st or 2:1. Some would argue the experience is useful in itself and the degree classification is not that important.

Lastly, I don't think someone has to be 'intelligent' to do well at uni. I think hard work and a willingness to use feedback are just as important as one's previous results - after all, we do change! Then the problem becomes one of assessing who is going to put the effort in and who is going to bum around for three years. And how is that going to work?

Gemmzie

There is also the issue with those only achieving low A Level grades (the plural is important) - that their key area of interest is either ONE of their A Levels or not presented at A Level at all, especially for those at school sixth forms with very limited A Levels.
I know of several people with "low" A Level grades who've gone on to achieve Firsts because they've specialised at degree level.

System

Surely thats what GNVQs and BTecs are for?

cupid_s

windswept wrote: »

A levels easier???
Are you kidding?
My daughter is in her 2nd year, doing maths, english and psychology - she has just got a U in her maths module retake, she got an A (almost A*) in her gcse maths.
Not one of her class got higher than E for this maths as module.
She's been offered a conditional place at Keele (she needs 300 points _ that's 3 B grades, for an educational studies degree - it doesn't look like she stands a chance).
She's at Edge Hill today for an interview for primary maths with qts - she needs 200 points for that along with at least a D in maths - she has GOT to pull up for her final exam and her resit.
She has decided to resit all but her English exams so will have 9 exams in June - I would hardly call that "easy".

I wish her well, unfortunately I cannot comment from a personal opinion as I haven't took a-levels recently, all I can go by is the word of the academics who teach at university who are telling me that A-levels are getting easier and A-grade students aren't as able as they used to be.

Whether they are right or wrong isn't so much the issue, as the fact that they are turning away students with B grades because they believe A levels are easier. And it's the academics in charge of admissions who current a-level students have to convince.

If no-one got higher than an E in this last module that says to me the teacher might be a bit rubbish, or just not capable of teaching to that level as voyager2002 said. Could your daughter get a bit of private tuition to help her? I got a low D in my maths mechanics module first time around and managed to pull this up to an A with just a few hours tuition from a mechanics teacher.

Lokolo

cupid_s wrote: »

I wish her well, unfortunately I cannot comment from a personal opinion as I haven't took a-levels recently, all I can go by is the word of the academics who teach at university who are telling me that A-levels are getting easier and A-grade students aren't as able as they used to be.

Whether they are right or wrong isn't so much the issue, as the fact that they are turning away students with B grades because they believe A levels are easier. And it's the academics in charge of admissions who current a-level students have to convince.

If no-one got higher than an E in this last module that says to me the teacher might be a bit rubbish, or just not capable of teaching to that level as voyager2002 said. Could your daughter get a bit of private tuition to help her? I got a low D in my maths mechanics module first time around and managed to pull this up to an A with just a few hours tuition from a mechanics teacher.

Its all a lie to be honest. The reason people think A Levels are easier is because you can now resit them. In the olden days you had one chance to do well and that was it, whereas now you can decide to pay to retake and up your grade. Well thats what my AI lecturer says.

melancholly

i don't know whether a levels are easier.... i think a major contributor is the lack of negative marking - so you can say something blatently wrong/stupid in an essay, but still get a good mark if you have enough other markable points. this doesn't apply at uni level which can trip some people up - the scattergun approach to an essay just won't get a good mark when you go into higher education whereas it scores well for a levels.

i think maths a level has become easier to a degree - we sat practice papers from previous years and scored lower marks with older papers. it could be due to changing emphasis in the syllabus, or teachers teaching you based on what they know will come up - so people are better at the exams, but not necessarily better at the subjects in general?

bestpud

I think A levels are easier now for those who find exams tough because their assessment is staggered throughout the course and also because that allows students to see if they need to work harder. Before they sat the exam and found out later that year if they should have worked harder! Too late by then of course!

That said though, I think it is incorrect to assume students don't work as hard to get good results.

The difference is, imo, because education has shifted in general, right from the start, and not because the students are less able. They have just been taught differently!

So today's pupils would struggle to complete an old style exam, but it is because the focus has changed and they have never been taught many of the topics.

That's a problem with the education system, not today's students.

System

Well there's no 'proof' that the actual exam is getting easier, just that more people are getting As. Last year 1 in every 3 grades was an A, for example.

This can be due to anything!
1. People taking more 'easy' subjects that require more skill than knowledge - such as art & drama.
2. Sixth form colleges being harder to get into as more people opt-in for further education (mine required a minimum of four As at GCSE), therefore people with low GCSEs dropping out of education in favour of going straight into work/claiming benefits.

I mean, there are so many explainations for the increase in As ...the syllabus in most subjects hasn't changed itself ... so I don't see how the actual exams can possibly "get easier" if the content hasn't changed.

Gingernutmeg

I don't think that A-Levels are getting easier, but I do think that the way they're approached has changed completely. I took A-Levels about 11 years ago now (just before they introduced the AS/A2 system), and my stepbrother took them about two years ago. Coincidentally, we took the same subjects - English Lit, History and Biology, and although to all intents and purposes the 'content' of the course was the same, the way he was taught was totally different to the way I had been taught. When I took A-Levels, the idea of the school handing out 'mark schemes' would have been viewed almost as a form of cheating, but my brother was given them as standard at the beginning of the course, and guided through EXACTLY what he needed to write to get the grade. It was totally different from the way A-Levels were approached back when I took them ... I don't think I was ever given anything like a mark scheme, and there was no question of those being given to us. Equally, we were never encouraged to use things like revision guides - again, they were a part of my brother's course. He spent a LOT more time than I did doing things like past papers, writing 'perfect' answers ... I didn't and I don't think that it was because my college wasn't 'good', but simply because that wasn't the way A-Levels were approached back then.

Just going off my own experience, when I took A-Levels it felt like getting a good grade was, to a certain extent, down to luck. With my brother, it was definitely down to whether you followed the mark scheme to the letter. I found my A-Levels frustrating because of the lack of breadth and flexibility, but I would have gone mad if I'd been studying them now - it's definitely got worse for the students. I'm not saying that the way I studied A-Levels was great, but there was room for some 'independent thought' back then. I really feel that that's not the case now, and it's a shame. It's not the case that young people are less 'able' and 'intelligent' now, just that they're not given the same opportunities to do anything other than learn HOW to pass an A-Level. Considering that that's pretty much all that's taught from 16-18, it's hardly surprising that students are getting better at passing exams. In a way, the increasing number of A grade A-Levels is an indication that students are still good at learning things, even if the only thing they're given the chance to learn is exam technique ...