Celebrating exam success?
A levels: are you celebrating? Hundreds of thousands of exam results will be revealed this morning. It's the culmination of many long hours of work - and pass rates are expected to go up for the 27th year.
We spoke to Adam and Helen who are students in Durham (pictured) as they opened their results. Both will spend the day working out where they are going to university because they didn't quite get the grades for the place of their choice. Update 09.10 both have now spoken to their first choice Uni's and have been told they have been accepted. Helen is going to Northumbria and Adam is off to Teeside.
Have a listen back to their interview below:
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Are you a student with news of your grades? Are you a proud (or perhaps worried) parent? Are you a teacher assessing how your pupils have done? And what's going to happen to those who won't get the grades to get a place at university?
Give us your A level result by posting here - or by joining Shelagh on the phone-in at 9.
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Comments
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The weird SATs test results every year and the findings of Year 7 teachers about literacy levels do not correspond with the hike in pass rates of kids hardly any older than those apparently doing so well in GCSEs and A Levels. Something must be up. My local school dropped French A Level Literature because they said it was too hard for the students, and replaced it with the spoon feeding French exams that debase and demean all that the students from even five years ago achieved.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I doubt actually that half the A2 English candidates would recognise the reference. When my daughter took A Level English Lit nine years ago she had learnt over 70 extracts to quote in her possible essay answer on Hamlet. This year the students taking the exam will probably not even have read half the set plays, just the important bits (!) and many won't have read it they will have watched some Branagh film. No wonder the Universities are suffering record drop out rates not surely just due to money problems, and students who find it all just too hard.
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"hardly any older than those"
sorry I didn't reread before pressing post. I am hardly worthy to comment. It should read:
"who are hardly any younger than those........."
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I don't understand how if you don't get the required grades for a degree, you can still study it. There is either a benchmark or there isn't. I think it's all part of the 'everyone must go to University' mindset that prevails now which as Carries says often ends in disaster.
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I had a look through an A-level maths paper and thought that it was exceptionaly easy compared to the Scottish Advanced Higher, which until this year was given the same status for uni applications. Ask how many pupils in a school (even a private school) get 3 A's at Advanced Higher and the answer is very few. Down south, 3 A's at A-level seems to be a common thing amongst the more intelligent students. Instead of introducing a new grade because so many pupils are getting top grades, make the exams harder!
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Just to say that in England about 12% of A level students get 3 'A' which is about one in 8 for those readers who are arithmetically challenged. Its about 1 in 16 of the total year group.
Universities can admit who they like.
GCSE and A levels are supposed to be criterion referenced, that is if you meet the marking criteria you get the grade. In the old days grades were determined roughly by ranking marks with cut off points
On the hardness of subjects: A higher proportion of maths students pass A level Maths than the proportion of students of Media Studies passing Media Studies A level.
I would like to hear more about the performance of Scots' system which is very different from the rest of the UK.
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if you ask 5live they would say that the programming (or presenters) has not 'dumbed' down , i think this must be true in the same sense that A levels etc havent 'dumbed' down either.
the difficulty i have though is that the country doesnt feel as if it is any more smarter/intelligent and university admissions/lecturers of the 'old school' do feel that there has been a 'softening' of the qualification.
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" I don't understand how if you don't get the required grades for a degree, you can still study it. There is either a benchmark or there isn't. I think it's all part of the 'everyone must go to University' mindset that prevails now which as Carries says often ends in disaster."
universities get paid for 'bums on seats' so if there is an empty chair it has to be filled , quite simple really. universities are more ready to give 1st / 2.1 than before because it provides a higher status for that institution ie its becomes a good university.
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just a question - does shelagh do any preparation for any of the phone ins .. because there is not much input that would suggest that she does.
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I was going to post the Scottish exam results from a couple of weeks ago, so I typed 'Scottish Exam Results' into the search and it appeared with news articles from 2000/01. I added 2009 to the search and it simply came back with the A-levels. Clearly the BBC needs to change its name to the EBC. In the side bar it has UK exam results 2009 but no link to Scottish results until further down the page.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8183290.stm
The reason for such a high pass rate at Standard Grade is that you sit a 'back-up' paper at a lower level so whilst you can only achieve a much lower grade if you fail the main paper, you still leave school with some form of qualification.
Anyway, once you are off to Uni, thats where you really learn!
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Richard Jackson:
My best wishes for all of those are celebrating their exam results....
=Dennis Junior=
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Richard:
Update 09.10 both have now spoken to their first choice Uni's and have been told they have been accepted. Helen is going to Northumbria and Adam is off to Teeside.
I am very happy for those 2 young folks and their acceptances....
=Dennis Junior=
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