Are A-Level results really front page news?

[BrandNewGuy]

Without wanting to sound like a "when I were a lad..." old grump, when I were a lad, A-Level results day passed without comment on the news or in the papers. Nowadays, it's front page news and every last detail of how a bunch of 18-year-olds have done in their school exams is dissected for signs of hope or despair or whatever. There are several possible reasons:

1. It's an opportunity to show sexy young women jumping in the air;

2. It's the silly season - but it was the silly season thirty years ago too;

3. We're obsessed about Education with a capital E - except for The Guardian and New Society, thirty years ago I don;t think any newspaper or current affairs magazine had a separate "Education" section.

So is this preoccupation with education A Good Thing? Has it led to cleverer / more employable / happier youngsters? You might have gueseed from my tone that I suspect the answer is 'no'...

[dulwichgirl2]

Everyone getting five As at A level is a major story to me as it leads to employers and universities having no idea who is actually clever and it disadvantages the academic elite. The latter was a deliberate move by Noo labour and worked in conjunction with massive expansion of tertiary education leading to disappointed youngsters holding degrees in non subjects and nursing entitlement complexes. All of the above perpetuates lack of competition of British goods and ultimately hastens the decline of the uk.

This is why the Limpicks have been so important, encouraging proper competition and showing youngsters that nothing worthwhile is obtained without work.

Re your original query, declining numbers of passes are not newsworthy I totally agree but constantly increasing ones certainly were.

[uncleglen]

If the education system was working properly and was producing youngsters with skills that employers need and there were not schools dotted around where only 2% of students get 5 A-C grades at GCSE, then we could afford to sit back and let the powers that be get on with it. But since education became a political football there has been general decline in the calibre of its output and that is of concern to everyone.

[ianr]

BrandNewGuy Wrote:

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> Nowadays, it's front page news and every last detail of how a bunch of 18-year-olds

> have done in their school exams is dissected for signs of hope or despair or whatever. There are

> several possible reasons: 1. It's an opportunity to show sexy young women jumping in the air;

It's a tired old format. I'm surprised there have been no attempts to refresh it. A celebratory flash or streak custom would probably catch on pretty fast.

[Jessie]

i don't remember ever reading that 'everyone' is getting 5 As for A-levels. Ever. Nor do I buy into the correlation between being clever and getting good grades - there are many other factors which make young people do well in A Levels.

[Marmora Man]

Most outcomes - measured across a sizeable population would describe a bell shaped curve normal distribution with a few at one end of a spectrum, a few at the opposite end and the majority straddling the middle point.

Weight of individuals, IQ, hospital lengths of stay, accuracy of sniper recruits, distribution of frogs, financial performance of financial advisors. You name it, the normal distribution describes it EXCELT for A level exam results. 98% pass rate with 25% at the top level is skewed obviously toward the higher end. Back in the 60s, when I took my A Levels they were marked not against a theoretical "absolute" standard as is the case today. Instead the results were plotted and the normal distribution then "cut" such that the top 10% of results in that exam year obtained an A pass, the next 15% a B pass, the next 15% a C pass and so on down to an E grade. Roughly 30% failed to obtain a pass at all.

This had a number of positive outcomes.

1. It was clear who were the best 10% in any year.

2. A B or C pass, and a D & E were still valuable in identifying bright students.

3. Students were taught the subject rather than how to obtain an A grade.

4. It was possible to differentiate between the brightest and best without the need for "ad quals" such as membership of the debating society, Duke of Edinburgh's gold award, head boy/girl post etc etc. (This is not to devalue these activities but many, today, undertake them to differentiate themselves rather than thru any desire to be truly involved).

[david_carnell]

Although the downside to that methodology is that it fails to accurately measure one year against another and your results are skewed by what others do around you rather than your own performance.

[Jeremy]

Instead of fitting the results to the distribution each year, you could use data from previous years to determine the boundries. Although of course, that would rely on the exams staying at the same difficulty level.