Well done all our A level students for getting all those As

[Gizo 1,275]

On 8/23/2018 at 9:59 AM, gettafa said:

It would be churlish indeed to start another thread in relation to today's GCSE results.

Anyway, well done kids for all the hard work and I hope everyone gets great results.

But I'll save you all that nail biting this morning - you all got grade A* passes with a smattering of As.

I'm over 90% or whatever sure of that.

I believe 0% got grade A or A*. 

[Chinahand 2,674]

Cough.

Students at King William's College are celebrating an excellent set of results in the 2018 IGCSE/GCSEs.

• 86% of all exams awarded A*-C (or 9-4)
• 35% of all exams awarded A*/A (or 9-7)
• Student Marie Cilliers achieved a clean sweep of A*s (or 9s) whilst Jessica Clucas, Mia Hall and Robyn Wickers were all within one or two grades of doing the same.

I'm sure students at other IOM schools have emulated Marie Cilliers' achievement.

Good on them for their hard work and achievement.

[gettafa 3,805]

13 hours ago, Gizo said:

I believe 0% got grade A or A*. 

Reverting back to my day, there was one girl who got 6 As.One of the lads 5 As. They were very bright and had parents who pushed them. I had followed the results for the previous 4 years and for the next 4 or so years. They still stood out

These days it seems unusual, perhaps a 'fail',  if you don't get a good handful of As or for that matter A*s (wtf?). Some are getting into double figures.

Not so long ago a teacher explained it all to me. As it happened he wore thick framed glasses and - I kid you not - had leather patches sewn onto the elbows of his tweedy jacket, but that is by the way. He explained that the teaching is getting better. Far better. And the "kids" are getting brighter as a result. Perhaps as he had retired after 30 years with a wack of a pension for the next 30 years he had to justify himself.

Perhaps he was right.

I do wonder though, what is the worth of a system where everybody is a winner.

 

 

 

 

[the stinking enigma 7,614]

It's a political thing. People be getting 108% in their maths exams soon just to continue the upward trend.

[Declan 5,338]

Gettafa - But schools should be constantly striving to improve teaching and results. Teachers and schools must learn from past successes and failures - if they don't they're failing. Plus we've invested large sums of money into education in recent decades - far more than was spent in my day.

I also find it hard to believe that there are any teachers as bad as the English teacher we had that gave up after Christmas and just handed out scrap paper so we could play hangman until the end of the year. Or the teachers who were incapable of being heard over the constant chatter. There's also now an expectation that it's not just the most gifted that will achieve high marks.

Society needs a large number of highly educated people, how is that achieved, if as you seem to suggest in your final sentence a certain percentage each year should be weeded out at this first hurdle to teach a life lesson? The point is did they reach the required standard and you have to remember O'Levels and GCSEs only ever demonstrated that you've reached a basic level of competence and general knowledge in that subject, I kind of think with good teaching and bit of application most people can achieve that level. 

Edited August 28, 2018 by Declan

[manx-person 131]

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Edited August 28, 2018 by manx-person

[wrighty 2,956]

1 hour ago, the stinking enigma said:

It's a political thing. People be getting 108% in their maths exams soon just to continue the upward trend.

That's not new.  I used to get scores like that doing my maths and further maths A-levels in 1988 - I'm not making this up, we thought it was odd at the time.  There might have been 12 questions on the paper, and the instructions were to answer 10 of them.  But, if you were a bright lass or lad and had enough time and did all the questions regardless then they were all marked, and you might come away with scores of 119% etc.  I did one past paper as a mock, the teacher marked mine first, gave me 115%, then went back to check his own and found that he'd made the odd slip not me, so pushed it up to 117%.

 

[John Wright 3,869]

1 hour ago, wrighty said:

That's not new.  I used to get scores like that doing my maths and further maths A-levels in 1988 - I'm not making this up, we thought it was odd at the time.  There might have been 12 questions on the paper, and the instructions were to answer 10 of them.  But, if you were a bright lass or lad and had enough time and did all the questions regardless then they were all marked, and you might come away with scores of 119% etc.  I did one past paper as a mock, the teacher marked mine first, gave me 115%, then went back to check his own and found that he'd made the odd slip not me, so pushed it up to 117%.

 

Whereas, on any sane marking system, you should have been marked down for not following instructions...

[wrighty 2,956]

6 minutes ago, John Wright said:

Whereas, on any sane marking system, you should have been marked down for not following instructions...

Don't think so.  It may be reasonable to have only marked the first 10 questions, or to have picked the best 10, but not marked down.  In any case, the instructions were probably along the lines of 'Full marks can be achieved by answering 10 questions...' - I'll see if Google has an example somewhere.

[GD4ELI 2,115]

27 minutes ago, wrighty said:

Don't think so.  It may be reasonable to have only marked the first 10 questions, or to have picked the best 10, but not marked down.  In any case, the instructions were probably along the lines of 'Full marks can be achieved by answering 10 questions...' - I'll see if Google has an example somewhere.

Same sort of thing when I was at school if memory serves correctly.

[quilp 7,654]

Bloody swots... 

[gettafa 3,805]

Just read the local rag and there's a lass got 9 A*s.

Good on her of course, but in my day that would have made national headlines; newspapers, BBC and ITV.  And possibly the Guinness book of records (although maybe not).

It all goes to justify teachers' salary, early retirement and big pensions.

And, I suppose, given the arguments above, fair enough.

[paswt 3,080]

5 hours ago, wrighty said:

That's not new.  I used to get scores like that doing my maths and further maths A-levels in 1988 - I'm not making this up, we thought it was odd at the time.  There might have been 12 questions on the paper, and the instructions were to answer 10 of them.  But, if you were a bright lass or lad and had enough time and did all the questions regardless then they were all marked, and you might come away with scores of 119% etc.  I did one past paper as a mock, the teacher marked mine first, gave me 115%, then went back to check his own and found that he'd made the odd slip not me, so pushed it up to 117%.

 

I was quite good at arithmetic, we used to call it 'sums' , the ability to do mental arithmetic  doesn't seem to be valued these days .

 

[La Colombe 2,271]

5 minutes ago, paswt said:

I was quite good at arithmetic, we used to call it 'sums' , the ability to do mental arithmetic  doesn't seem to be valued these days .

Lol, oh to be back in primary school. Now drink your milk. 

Edited August 28, 2018 by La Colombe

[Chinahand 2,674]

Agreeing with Wrighty, in the 1990s Durham University maths department was exactly the same.

In the final exam you had 12 10-point questions and the final mark you got was your “percentage”. 

Mathematicians!