So its that time of year again, and GCSE/AS/A level results are all out. And yet again there is the usual spate of "Exams are getting easier" comments from the media. Every time this happens I start thinking about the whole exam situation and how stupid it is Firstly; I always thought the point of an exam was to measure your skills and to provide feedback (to you and your teacher), it seems that nowadays the point of exams is too pass exams (and get good grades so the school gets good grade stats). Am I the only one who finds this absurd? I remember some subjects at school and college were completly based on learning exam technique, to pass an exam, so you could learn more exam technique.... to pass another exam etc etc. Secondly; why on earth should average exam grades (ie % of A-C, % of A*-A etc) go up year on year? It seems like a rediculous assumption to make, in my opinion it should remain fairly stable (maybe with a very slight upwards trend). Kids don't get more intelligent every year as far as I know... Anyway end of rant type thing, what do you people think? (I am talking about the UK system, but feel free to comment about the way your country does things)
Grades get better as teachers get better at teaching kids how to pass exams.. and the focus each year is more and more on the exams, rather than the learning. We really need a much much better system, a total overhaul, really.. No one learns any life skills or social skills at school anymore, it's all purely academic.. And that's wrong.
Grades get better as chavs drop out of school earlier, leaving those with half a brain to get decent grades and bringing the average up
Yeah, schools are scrutinised all the time. If they dont perform people get sacked and funding gets cut. And yeah you're right that it is all academic, but lets face it, it works! Life skills and whatnot are great and all but you know for a fact you wouldnt go to a doctor who's crap and scraped past his exams based purely on his people skills.
I'm not sure why they do. The whole idea of having UCAS points is that they're adjusted. Doesn't seem to work.
Of course I wouldn't go to an underqualified doctor.. But a better system would make sure that those with the potential to be a good doctor can get there. Objective analysis of a student's knowledge is easier, but it isn't fair. There are people out there for whom the education system just doesn't work, they get bad grades, they lose hope. These people just don't think in the way that our current education system supposes they should do, they don't learn the same way as a person who gets straight As. Until the education system in this country recognises that different people learn in different ways, education is going to remain very inefficient and wasteful. Then, on the opposite end, there are people who get top marks but know absolutely squat outside of what they've been tought to pass their exams. They have next to know common sense or knowledge of important things like mortgages, budgeting, how banks work, how to clean properly, how to cook well etc. They just don't know how to live alone, sustainably, and it's really important that they do learn, and it should be up to schools to make sure they are educated in such matters.
I think the reason behind this is: money (as it is for most other things) If a school performs well in exams, it gets more money. If a school consistently performs poorly, funding is reduced and the school is closed down. As a result, the school adjusts its attitude so as to obtain the best exam results. Naturally, this does mean that they need better teaching, but also, they have to try a number of things - like exam specification based teaching, so you learn only what is on the specification, which gets you through exams but doesn't give you the best knowledge. They also get rid of the most distruptive kids earlier on. The school I went to, the cheeky buggers, they made everyone do a GNVQ in Intermediate ICT. Now this is the most useless, most boring course you could ever think to do and only helps if you want to be a retail assistant, but in the older league table, it counted as 4 GCSE's at grade A-C. SO what did they do? They took students out of lessons for entire days on end, forcing them instead, to get a passing grade in their GNVQ. And then all they needed, was a C in any other subject. In this way, The P***** L*** quickly made it up to 1st and then 2nd place on the national comprehensive school league table. However, when the government decided passes were needed in English, Maths and Science, and GNVQs weren't accepted, they plummeted to 11th in Lincolnshire (FAIL)... but they still have the nerve to claim that they are the best school in the UK... :angry: Its all politics and economics... MGT
This is a huge problem.. It's the underperforming schools which need to money more, surely? And if a child is difficult to teach, you shouldn't get rid of them, toss them a side, you should be trying even harder to teach them, and encouraging them to learn.
Exams don't test your skills they test your ability to remember stuff. Speak to any lecture at uni and they can't remember most of the stuff they were taught only what is there subject area. So why should assignments be solely about what you can remember isn't the skill of being able to find out the answer to something you don't know and understand that answer a much more important skill. That's what life is al about. its not about being a a big box of answer, without the ability to apply that knowledge its useless. School are coming very good at cramming knowledge into pupils heads but leaving them with the inability to apply that knowledge in a meaningful way.
I dislike exams, but thats because im awful at them. Which you can tell from my GCSE results, there so average. I'm really good at coursework though, hence why I'm off to college. Exams getting easier? I disagree, the learning subjects change, teachers get better at the subject etc... The students are getting more clever if anything.
QFT. There's a big misconception that knowledge = intelligence. When in fact, intelligence is the ability to apply whatever knowledge you have in a useful way.
Personally, I have no problems with the exam system, or indeed being examined. If its co-ordinated in the time-honoured, punctual way it should be, I have enough time throughout the academic year to acquire knowledge, and then regurgitate it fluently on a piece of paper. On the economic side of things however, the lack of cash in under-achieving schools appears to be the biggest problem. As Timmy suggested, it should indeed be the poorer performing schools which get the help they need, financially and also in running the school, rather than being scrutinised by local papers and being left to stagnate until the point it is closed down. On the other end of the spectrum, I'd like to point out a few developing countries. In India, private schooling has become quite the popular enterprise, raking in thousands. My cousin pays admission fees, exam enlisting fees, monthly tuition fees, private tuition fees, first time entry fees and even then, they have to buy their own books. And after all that, teachers refuse to teach properly, suggesting that in order to gain a better understanding, they must contact that teacher in out of school hours for private sessions at exorbitant rates... Thus is the disadvantage of private schooling - it is a business, not an institution of learning. What we need here, in the UK, is new initiative for funding for schools which allows for new staff in pastoral conditions and also allows for funding in all areas of the curriculum, so individuals can study their favourite subjects enough to be able to go into higher education and beyond. Schools should not get funding based on their pass rate, but instead, based on the number of pupils and members of staff, and then, should be given grants for different causes (such as improving English grades or whatever). Perhaps as an incentive, the top 5 schools should get a bonus... but after that it needs to stop. How do I propose we get this funding? I said it before and I shall say it again "Let us choose where our taxes go". Understandably, you could take 20% of our taxes and spend them how you wish (every cause has some needs) but we should be able to say that we want this much money to go into the NHS or schooling, instead of some godforsaken war or in the hands of the drug dealer who supplies the unemployed...
Bad idea... I'd much rather leave that to the elected officials with experience, rather than leave it to a public who mostly think that tax money somehow still belongs to them once it's been paid.. Taxes really have nothing to do with you, all you have to do is pay them..
Well... then we should be able to at least see where the money is going on the local scale... and then MPs would have to back up their claims of 'support' for better schooling and whatnot... I don't suppose that could happen because you quite simply couldn't trust the figures...
