According to the BBC, it's A-level totty season.
The people who used to compile all the A-level totty photos have done a very serious post explaining why they are not going to update it any more. Does anybody know where the new 'official' outlet for this sort of nonsense is?
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We prefer to describe the photo subjects as 'wildebeest', with their long legs and manes flying as they leap incongruously into the air; to be honest, I've always felt the pictures would be improved with the addition of a crocodile or a pride of lions snapping at their heels.
meanwhile, in previous years, any suggestion of grade inflation has been met with a chorus of emotional blackmail - 'to say the exams are easier is to belittle the achievements of all those hard-working young people' and so on.
What, I wonder, will those people be saying now the numbers of top grades have dropped for the first time in years?
McH: "What, I wonder, will those people be saying now the numbers of top grades have dropped for the first time in years?"
Thirteen years of Labour under-investment in education?
I just wish that the journalists had been educated enough to realise that the "improved" A Level results were just due to a change in the type of exam from "selection test" to "criterion reference test". See Record A Level Passes Again.
J, that's a fair enough article, but I still see no reason why A-levels (or any other exam) can't still be both 'selection test' as well as 'criterion reference test'.
" the "improved" A Level results were just due to a change in the type of exam from "selection test" to "criterion reference test". "
Well they are not. If this were the case, we would expect a step in the graph at the point of change, rather than the climb that you see. The improved A level results are the result of this change AND the exams getting easier. Obviously, if you are running a selection test, there is no point in making the exams easier, which is presumably why the change was made. Young people are swindled by politicians again, shock.
I would disagree with the article. Scholarship and entry exams have to be selection tests, because there are only a fixed amount of scholarships or places available, but A levels should be a criterion reference test, as the supply of A levels is not limited and they are supposed to be a measure of intelligence and knowledge. The fact that they are no longer this is more to do with the politics of education than the nature of the exam.
may I offer for consideration this example of retrospective engineering from GCSE results in 2009? (I'm quoting from my own post as the article is now behind the Times' paywall)
'The number of candidates awarded a grade C or above was predicted to rise by 2.4 per cent, and the number achieving an A grade to increase by 0.8 per cent, based on marking by exam boards.'
Until Ofqual chief executive Isabel Nisbet stepped in, that is. A little billet-doux to the exam boards was all it took.
'When the results were published, the rise in grades C and above in science had been scaled back to 0.9 per cent, and the increase in the top grades of A and A* was up by 0.2 per cent.'
Perhaps this is the reason?
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/a-level-students-20-less-fit-than-last-year-2012081738435
VFTS, I noticed that yesterday. The Daily Mash article isn't actually a spoof, it's a reasonable assessment of this year's crop. I'd put the figure at about 40% less fit but let's not quibble.
The A level ones were indeed disappointing but the Telegraph has made up for it today with some excellent GCSE examples.
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