A level results

He'll enjoy York pal. Just graduated (well not officially, I'm waiting for the Zoom graduation at the end of this month) from York in June.

If you need any advice about colleges for accommodation, or anything else, give me a shout!
Cheers pal, hes quite, well in fact very studious ! Like his mum . I lived in York a while back and love going back as its so nice .Hes doing physics , we are just so relieved .
 
Thanks to New Labour, anybody can get in to Uni.

And thanks to that charlatan Gove, the new, allegedly more robust A levels will have made no difference at all.

Here’s why: concerns about grade inflation resulted in new syllabuses getting devised and implemented very much on the hoof. In the subject that I taught, so much additional, superfluous and dull content was introduced that I had to adopt a cramming approach from day one in order to get through everything in 5 terms. This not only took the joy out of classroom teaching but also deprived my students of opportunities to engage in the type of evaluative, logical and lateral thinking that is essential in order to access the highest grades.

Additionally, the terminal examinations could include questions about anything on the course. For example, the summer 2019 paper included a question on the ethics of something called ‘PGD’ or Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis. This is a form of IVF that includes screening for devastating childhood illnesses like Tay-Sachs.

As it happens, it is a topic that know a fair bit about. However, the only textbook for the new course that had been published up to that point contained all of two sentences on this specific variation of IVF. And my students were expected to write for 30 minutes on the subject.

Fortunately, a few of them sussed out what it was and were able to improvise.They did okay. But the weaker ones were left high and dry. And none at all received the benefit of my extra knowledge because there was no time to impart it and I did not anticipate the possibility that there would be a substantial question on such a small bit of the syllabus. Fortunately, the students also still did well overall so I did not leave teaching with a poor set of results with this final cohort.

You may at this point be wondering where all this is leading. Well, because the new courses were introduced in such a cack-handed fashion, the examinations were marked extremely generously. So the upshot of it all was that students ended up with pretty much the same grades that they might have received had they studied the content of the older A level courses.

So what Gove (abetted by that other idiot Cummings who was assisting him at the time) effectively did was to introduce reforms that must have cost millions and have bequeathed to the nation a vastly inferior qualification.

The same is also true when it comes to GCSE.

There’s one other thing: more than four years after these new courses were phased in far too prematurely, there are still no adequate textbooks covering some aspects of the content for my subject. I am a published author and very well-placed to fill the gap now that I am semi-retired. However, I figured out that it would take me about four years to produce something half-decent, a project that I am disinclined to undertake because - as I have already mentioned - much of the ground I would have to cover is balls achingly boring.

In summary, whatever problems New Labour have created as far as our education system is concerned have been vastly compounded since.

There’s one other related issue that is worth a mention : Gove also made it easier to get rid of incompetent teachers. That may sound all well and good, but again the view from the inside is different. What actually happened was that cash strapped senior management used this new system to get rid of the older, more expensive members of staff, precisely the ones with the expertise to deliver the new syllabuses.

Okay, rant over. But just in case anyone is wondering, I taught in the independent sector for two decades and therefore avoided the aforementioned cull. I was also able to walk away from the classroom a bit earlier because I was could draw on personal savings in order to do so.

I realise that I have digressed here but someone needs to point out how much worse the system has become. And so if I was a parent with bright kids who have yet to sit A levels, I might start to see if any schools in the area offer the IB qualification as an alternative to A levels, as it is, for my money, a superior qualification that encourages independent thought and the cultivation of skills that are essential for university study, qualities that teenagers might not otherwise get to develop because there is simply no time for them to do so because of Gove’s inept reforms.
 
Feel so bad for all those who have been marked down. Especially when it has come completely out of the blue. My wife's niece was predicted AAC and has gone in this morning and been awarded CCE. As a result her place at Bristol University has been withdrawn and she's obviously devastated. The lowest mark she got in anything in the 18 months she was doing her A Levels was a C in one module of one subject so how the hell she's ended up with a C being her best mark is ridiculous.
 
And thanks to that charlatan Gove, the new, allegedly more robust A levels will have made no difference at all.

Here’s why: concerns about grade inflation resulted in new syllabuses getting devised and implemented very much on the hoof. In the subject that I taught, so much additional, superfluous and dull content was introduced that I had to adopt a cramming approach from day one in order to get through everything in 5 terms. This not only took the joy out of classroom teaching but also deprived my students of opportunities to engage in the type of evaluative, logical and lateral thinking that is essential in order to access the highest grades.

Additionally, the terminal examinations could include questions about anything on the course. For example, the summer 2019 paper included a question on the ethics of something called ‘PGD’ or Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis. This is a form of IVF that includes screening for devastating childhood illnesses like Tay-Sachs.

As it happens, it is a topic that know a fair bit about. However, the only textbook for the new course that had been published up to that point contained all of two sentences on this specific variation of IVF. And my students were expected to write for 30 minutes on the subject.

Fortunately, a few of them sussed out what it was and were able to improvise.They did okay. But the weaker ones were left high and dry. And none at all received the benefit of my extra knowledge because there was no time to impart it and I did not anticipate the possibility that there would be a substantial question on such a small bit of the syllabus. Fortunately, the students also still did well overall so I did not leave teaching with a poor set of results with this final cohort.

You may at this point be wondering where all this is leading. Well, because the new courses were introduced in such a cack-handed fashion, the examinations were marked extremely generously. So the upshot of it all was that students ended up with pretty much the same grades that they might have received had they studied the content of the older A level courses.

So what Gove (abetted by that other idiot Cummings who was assisting him at the time) effectively did was to introduce reforms that must have cost millions and have bequeathed to the nation a vastly inferior qualification.

The same is also true when it comes to GCSE.

There’s one other thing: more than four years after these new courses were phased in far too prematurely, there are still no adequate textbooks covering some aspects of the content for my subject. I am a published author and very well-placed to fill the gap now that I am semi-retired. However, I figured out that it would take me about four years to produce something half-decent, a project that I am disinclined to undertake because - as I have already mentioned - much of the ground I would have to cover is balls achingly boring.

In summary, whatever problems New Labour have created as far as our education system is concerned have been vastly compounded since.

There’s one other related issue that is worth a mention : Gove also made it easier to get rid of incompetent teachers. That may sound all well and good, but again the view from the inside is different. What actually happened was that cash strapped senior management used this new system to get rid of the older, more expensive members of staff, precisely the ones with the expertise to deliver the new syllabuses.

Okay, rant over. But just in case anyone is wondering, I taught in the independent sector for two decades and therefore avoided the aforementioned cull. I was also able to walk away from the classroom a bit earlier because I was could draw on personal savings in order to do so.

I realise that I have digressed here but someone needs to point out how much worse the system has become. And so if I was a parent with bright kids who have yet to sit A levels, I might start to see if any schools in the area offer the IB qualification as an alternative to A levels, as it is, for my money, a superior qualification that encourages independent thought and the cultivation of skills that are essential for university study, qualities that teenagers might not otherwise get to develop because there is simply no time for them to do so because of Gove’s inept reforms.

That's a very informative insight. The implementation of the new syllabus sounded like a shambles with it being rushed, something that is consistent with the tories.
 
When I did mine back in the 80's, you could choose what era/ location of history to an extent which lead to mucking around at dig sites in the South West being the "proper" archaeologists skivvies. This was pre Time Team, where every professor came across as likable and charming, but it was a very much "them and us" even to the extent of one dig where we weren't allowed in the same bar as them.

It really helped with the history to see it all in situ.

I've had a look at courses available now and a lot of them include anthropology and are mainly set up for ancient European history.
We get a decent deal of freedom to chose our modules and by extension, periods and places (for example, I mainly did Medieval European modules). However, there is a complete lack of practical experience like you had - I suppose that is a symptom of the commercialisation of university, with the huge number of students in each year group.

History, like a lot of the humanities, has very much been influenced by the emergence of postmodernism. An appreciation of many of other subjects is really important (as I suppose it always has been for the subject). For example, philosophy was used a lot by some of my lecturers.

Out of interest, where did you do your degree?
 
Feel so bad for all those who have been marked down. Especially when it has come completely out of the blue. My wife's niece was predicted AAC and has gone in this morning and been awarded CCE. As a result her place at Bristol University has been withdrawn and she's obviously devastated. The lowest mark she got in anything in the 18 months she was doing her A Levels was a C in one module of one subject so how the hell she's ended up with a C being her best mark is ridiculous.
The advice here was to call all unis concerned and fast, a lottery.!
 
Cheers pal, hes quite, well in fact very studious ! Like his mum . I lived in York a while back and love going back as its so nice .Hes doing physics , we are just so relieved .
I think York will suit him well then! Good mix of academia and leisure. I think there is going to be some huge changes in view of Covid, especially for a STEM course, but I believe the university have committed to keeping the experience as real as possible.

I can really sympathise about this whole fiasco. I have seen some absolutely shocking 'moderations' on Twitter and the like. Rest assured though, your lad is in good hands.
 
That's a very informative insight. The implementation of the new syllabus sounded like a shambles with it being rushed, something that is consistent with the tories.

It was definitely rushed in a lot of instances, though AQA did a pretty good job of producing something coherent. Nevertheless, their syllabus just goes on forever for my subject.

I would also say that Gove is to blame rather than the Tory party as a whole. What is odd is that his stock has risen as a consequence of his spell as Education Secretary. But it isn’t difficult to figure out why.

It intuitively sits well with outside observers when they hear that GCSE’s and A levels have been toughened up. And it also seems unarguable that incompetent teachers should be rooted out.

But the reality has been much different. I was so lucky to spend my career in the private sector, as I might not have lasted in a state school.

Typically, what would happen is that older, more expensive teachers would have their lessons observed by senior staff (Heads, Deputy Heads) and would subsequently be informed that their teaching was inadequate. This would be the start of a process that would end up with them getting eased out, something known as ‘Capability’.

Obviously, I do not have first-hand experience of this. But if you go back to before schools were closed, there were lots of cases catalogued in the ‘Workplace Dilemmas’ section of the very active TES Forum.

I don’t feel entirely at ease with having worked in Independent schools. I suppose that it is the equivalent of espousing socialism but stumping up the fees for the private sector when it comes to your own kids.

But when I see what has been going on in state schools for a long time now, and how dysfunctional the education system as a whole has become, I can live with the cognitive dissonance quite comfortably.
 
I think one of the key elements here is that its actually very much a buyers market when it comes to Uni places this year. The number of international students taking up places will obviously have collapsed so the grade requirements from Universities will have had to be lowered as well to try to fill as many places as possible.

true. A lot of universities only seem to care about the fees international students pay. My girlfriend was on a course at quite a good uni and 68% of the class was from China/ international student

I get they want funding/ desperate for more money, but Lots of these courses seem like a money making exercise
 
Feel so bad for all those who have been marked down. Especially when it has come completely out of the blue. My wife's niece was predicted AAC and has gone in this morning and been awarded CCE. As a result her place at Bristol University has been withdrawn and she's obviously devastated. The lowest mark she got in anything in the 18 months she was doing her A Levels was a C in one module of one subject so how the hell she's ended up with a C being her best mark is ridiculous.

Same as my daughter. Marked down and now has lost her place at Manchester Uni.
 

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.