BXProject

[stu]

I iz proud.

My favourite adopted niece (I have several, they're all my favourites) got excellent results today - she's pleased to bits with herself, can go on the college course she wants, and is justifiably out celebrating.

[Philhod]

Yes the success rates are up yet again...... It's funny though when they get to college and we do the assessments for Maths and English levels, 70% yes 70% come out at level 1.
Which is below C grade GCSE, the supposed pass mark....,strange that.

[Father Ted]

GCSE's are deffo easier these days.

[Scarecrow]

I think it has a lot to do with the way teaching is concentrated so strictly on the curriculum these days, i.e. no more distracting Mr. Plumbridge by asking him about his flying machine thus avoiding a double period of maths - or if you actually listened, a very useful insight into aerodynamics and perhaps one of those oft desired links between dry-theory and reality.

I understand that the rules and time-tables are applied so strictly these days that teachers are unable to allow unstructured learning (which I think is the best form of learning for many)... I certainly wished at the time that had been the case with my biology teacher and sex education. I still remember getting A+ for my sex dictionary

[Vanny]

GCSE's aren't getting easier, just the schooling system is getting more savvy at getting kids through the curriculum. Having seen what goes into modern GCSE's i'd say if anything they are much broader in the topic than than they used to be, which is potentially a good thing if this is built on in A-levels.

[Stinkwheel(Matt)]

I like to compare exams to driving tests.

Driving instructors teach you to pass the test NOT how to drive well

Teachers show the kids how to pass exams NOT give them a wide ranging useful knowledge base.

[Philhod]

It's the breadth that is causing the problem for the less able Vanny. They just get left behind with no one picking up the pieces. This is an intervention which will be piloted this comming year.
As for times tables. which once learned make maths easy.
I could randomly pull one student from 40 and get one that didn't know them every time.

There is a huge gap between what gets taught and what is learned, caused by this curriculum system, that needs to be addressed. An educationally deprived underclass has been produced for a while now and it's about to bite people in the ars.

[stu]

I did mine in 1996 and quite honestly they were a piece of piss then - I don't see how they could get much easier.

Vanny and Stinkwheel are quite right - I used to teach and I KNOW I can train a student to pass a particular exam without actually having a working knowledge of the subject. It doesn't do them (or society as a whole) any favours and it's one of the reasons I got out of the industry when I did.

For further reading I highly recommend It's Your Time You're Wasting by Frank Chalk.

[mat_the_cat]

It's the breadth that is causing the problem

Yeah, I find that too…

A levels seemed to be the same - when I did them (in 1998) our Maths teacher made us work through past papers from the 60s onwards. One thing we noticed is that (apart from the same questions coming up from year to year!) is that the questions get easier over the years, but the various fields the student was expected to know increased. Having said that, there was usually the choice between a number of questions, so you could pick the ones that you knew well.

Also, there was only one teacher who tried to show us the value of working things out from first principles, rather than trying to remember - fortunately I could see the benefit although it surprised me the number of people who tried to blindly remember stuff!

[Philhod]

Well I never had any formal qualifications but started a mechanical apprenticeship at 15.
This took me through 6 years of practical and technical training and gave me a whole range of hand skills and a HNC in mech eng,g.
The funny thing was, although I failed my 11+ the maths I encountered was understandable due to my maths teachers insistence on doing things the hard way.... by the rules.
There wern't no calculators then. The same went for english, we had a very traditional teacher who made sure we understood the finer points of language and who had a bit of a fixation with spelling, hence we all could spell well.

[mat_the_cat]

hence we all could spell well.

Even the title of this thread?

[Philhod]

Fuck off.....you ....,you Arse


Hole

[mat_the_cat]

Well done Phil! I hope you didn't have to copy and paste...

[Philhod]

Don't know what you mean