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A-level history/general downgrading

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
edited March 27 in Work & Study
Anyone else in year 13 doing history? We've just got our results back from the January modules. We've already gone through an appeal back in year 12 because we were all robbed on a paper. There's a class of 14 of us, and TEN of us got A's at A/S, then we got our A2 module results back on thursday, and I got the best mark in the year- with a B, in a roomful of people some of whom are applying to Oxbridge and they all got either D's or E's. A lot of sixth formers up and down the country are being absolutely robbed in order to keep grades down to avoid people saying exams are too easy. They say exams are getting easier, well if the exams are getting easier, then the outrageously harsh marking outweighs that by a mile. Anyone else fallen foul of disgusting marking? I remember in the papers last year stories of people who were Cambridge/Oxford student who were told by their teachers their history coursework was A standard, and they got a U on results day. It's bloody unbelievable. :mad:
Post edited by JustV on

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yea I know!!!

    But :lol: - at my school they gave the teachers the wrong sylabus so the whole year fucked up!! I think they are appealing.... But with all this malarky going on then surely employers are going to lose faith in A-Levels...

    Why can't people accept that people are getting smarter. In yr.6 I had a teacher who said the exams she had were far harder (O-Levels) and that even if we got an A that wouldn't be as good as her. Furfucksake move with the times....

    Thesedays you have to realise that as soon as you have left school there are people right behind you who have had a better education, and will be smarter. Recently the government is getting good at making the schools work and now we are seeing results we have to tone them down. Fucking ridiculous. I think they do it to keep C grade average...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    A-Levels are getting easier. The universities show that. Now they actually ask for GCSE's at so many grade A's etc. Back before the curriculum 2000 course came in Gcse's weren't in general asked for, as long as you had passed Maths and English.

    But then they were easier in my day than 10 years previously. Basically one of our lecturers at uni turned round and said to us that everything we were learning and struggling with in our first year used to be part of the A-Level course 10 years earlier. thats how much easier things have become.

    But yes the marking does seem to be somewhat fucked up for A-Levels these days.

    But Shyboy, already A-Levels aren't wanted by employers anyway. The majority want either 16 year olds they can pay shit wages to and train themselves, or people with degrees since degrees are that easy to come by and there are that many people out there with them. thats why I'm going back to uni in Sept, I can't get a decent job on A-Levels alone, even though i don't have bad results.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    .
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Just so infuriating that some prick sat by his fire somewhere is potentially screwing with people's lives. It's a disgrace that anything like it can happen.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yup, my friend who's going to Oxford got all As and a D in history, totally unexpectedly.
    The whole thing is ridiculous, they need to sort out the education system bigstyle!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Museman
    Just so infuriating that some prick sat by his fire somewhere is potentially screwing with people's lives. It's a disgrace that anything like it can happen.

    My Dad marks history papers, i look at them when he does them and frankly a lot of them are a disgrace.

    I don't give a toss what uni they are meant to be going to, if the work is shit they will not get the grades.

    Having said that though there do appear to be faults in the system :p
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My friend is an A student in Psychology and she got 40 in her January module exam. Just enough to get a grade. Our teacher is asking for the whole lot to be remarked. I didn't do as badly, but there were two parts to the paper and the current theory is that one was marked right and the other wrong.

    I'm also getting my Statistics paper remarked. I'm an A student (the only one in my school) and I teach the stuff. There was no way I could have gone from 91% to 58%. I need A in Math for university.

    It pisses me off, and my friends, because we don't have any indication of what we need to do before June and it's really demoralising.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    .
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Fair enough.

    But isn't there always an element of comparitive marking for A-levels i.e if everyone does ver well then those at the bottom of that group will be marked doewn?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Last year 15 kids did History at our school and about 11 got A's. This year in a group of 14, who the teachers agree are a much better bunch of kids, only two uf us are anywhere near getting one. Whereas last year everyone was absolutely slated on coursework and other papers seemed ok, I think they're planing off marks at every component so that it is more subtle. The January Cold War paper was the absolute easiest paper I have seen in my life, and there's kids in my class applying to Oxbridge who got E's. Applying to uni has become a total lottery because thousands of kids are having to do summer retakes and have absolutely no idea what grades they may end up with because of the way they are marked. Last year in our school 'one of the thickest kids I've ever taught' (quote from teacher) got an A overall at A-level. Everyone in our class is going to either Oxbridge/Sheffield/Warwick etc. and have straight As across their other subjects, and all but 3 get D's or E's. Never before has a B made me feel so good!!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah it all seems pretty random, the grade boundaries are just being fiddled all over the place.
    I reckon that since they know that they're gonna have to be much more careful in the summer this year after the scandal last year, they're trying to get as many people down in January when not many people really notice and then in the summer they can get away with it better, while still achieving the same aim, ie. not giving away so many A grades.
    It's all pathetic. A-Level grades are literally turning into a lottery now. It's almost as though they're just going down the list and allocating grades in alphebetical order, with no relation to the actual paper at all! Crazy shit.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My whole Health and Social Care class failed! I got 26/100 someone (an A-grade student) got 4/100

    It is a complete disgrace! i work really hard for my grades so how they can ruin our lives is terrible!!

    My biology was downgraded too! i got an E usually get c's the whole class were below the targets!

    AQA and OCR!:mad:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah my psychology coursework was downgraded from full marks, to only just scraping an A. Everyone's coursework was downgraded, My teacher is sending them back to be re-marked, my god was she angry. The thing is the examplar courseworks they sent her were marked at A's and she thought most of ours were of a much a higher standard. She's been marking coursework and papers for years too, so it's not as if she's inexperienced either.

    It seems to me they are manipulating the grade boundaries to meet the quotas they want. So x amount of people get As, x amount Bs and so on. It should not be that way, if someone is worthy of a certain grade should get that grade. A students suddenly getting Ds, Es and Us just does not fit. They're fucking with young people's futures.

    It'll happen again this summer. I read an article about 5 months ago and apparently it's already falling apart because there simply aren't enough markers for all these new exams they decided to create.

    I only have 1 final choice on my UCAS, I'm determined to work stupidly hard to get the grades I want, but if I don't get the grades I'm not going to uni. So lets all hope it runs smoothly this year. :rolleyes:
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