A level results

I assume that for most people who now want a career in engineering / practical science, they need a solid theoretical knowledge to set a foundation at degree level.
Maybe in the 60s it was much easier to get a good engineering job with an A level, and then learn what was needed on the job. Today, people ask for degrees, and specific ones at that.
 
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Do we need teachers ? seems that the less teaching is done the cleverer the pupils become. Quite a financial saving if we just binned off the teachers.
 
One of the specific reasons for the grade inflation is that each teacher has only assessed each of their students on what they've been taught.

So if a school was shut for 3 months and a year group wasn't taught a quarter of the syllabus, they only get assessed on the 3/4 of the syllabus they've been taught. Another school might have only taught 50% of the syllabus because of a combination of teacher and student absence and that school assesses on the 50% of the syllabus they've been taught.

That sounds fair, except for the fact that you then can't compare one student's achievements against another because they're being assessed to different standards. An 'A' grade from one school is not the same as an 'A' grade from another because they don't have the same level of knowledge and they're not being assessed on ability over the same breadth of knowledge.

Hence some universities saying they're going to get their applicants to sit an exam so that they can make an equal selection based on knowledge and ability of the subject.
They need to know not only that a student has the ability to succeed on a course, but also that a student has enough background knowledge of a subject that they are all similarly positioned to start learning from the same point.
 
Munroist said:
Do we need teachers ? seems that the less teaching is done the cleverer the pupils become. Quite a financial saving if we just binned off the teachers.
Click to expand...
Less?
The last year or so has been a nightmare for teachers. Perhaps you should educate yourself better before spouting nonsense.
 
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noseall said:
Less?
The last year or so has been a nightmare for teachers. Perhaps you should educate yourself better before spouting nonsense.
Click to expand...
Yes, teachers have spent less time in front of pupils actively teaching this past 18 moths and the pupils have apparently performed better.
 
One interesting comment I heard on the radio from the ofqual bloke; every year 10% of bad results are because students 'have a bad day' and don't do as well as anticipated. I can easily see that. We all have bad days where we don't do our best work. The teacher grading thing this year takes that out. He said with teacher grading that isn't a factor so gradings will automatically be up by 10% on previous years.
 
I think I heard on the radio that 70% of kids in private schools got good results compared to 39% in state schools. Well, there wouldn’t be any point in paying for private education if they were going to get the same results as in a state school, would there?
 
jeds said:
One interesting comment I heard on the radio from the ofqual bloke; every year 10% of bad results are because students 'have a bad day' and don't do as well as anticipated. I can easily see that. We all have bad days where we don't do our best work. The teacher grading thing this year takes that out. He said with teacher grading that isn't a factor so gradings will automatically be up by 10% on previous years.
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Equally we also have days when we are on the ball and everything just works out well with the greatest of ease. So the 10% that have an off day will be balanced by those having a good day. Overall the results should just be the same even if it is not the best way to assess someones ability.
 
In retirement I teach STEM a bit at a secondary school.
Key, important chunks of syllabuses were missed. Up to half in some cases.
Kids were "prepared" for the exams they did.
From previous fake GCSEs we already have kids doing first year A's who aren't up to it so will drop out or fail.

A large proportion of our kids have one sort of mental problem or another because of it, too. Some are really sad.

Not just A grades at A level, there are far too many kids getting B & C grades who shouldn't, so they'll be off to Unis, to drop out and blame covid/the system. Some unis will have their own exams/assessments so they know what they're dealing with - or whatever.
Only the brightest kids can study well remotely, they tend to have more professional parents and discipline at home. It's much harder for teachers to provide effective remote learning, some really can't manage. Private school teachers tend to more able so do that better too.
All over teaching there are no standard comprehensive sets of teaching resources so each one ends up doing their own Powerpoints, experiments etc. I've done masses. Little is shared, each teacher guards their own efforts.
All a bit of a lottery.
 
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But hey, old Filly floated his turd in the pool and the acolytes swam over for a sniff...

Apologies Charlie if I offended you, that wasn't my intention, I thought (and still do) it was a topic worthy of debate.
FWIW teachers I know have made the best of a bad situation given the circumstances, my gripe last year was mainly with the unions who did their utmost to discourage teachers from returning to work, and yes I do think there is a left wing element in the profession who were happy to go along with this, although I hadn't raised that on this occasion.

I am sceptical of the grades and how they were arrived at and think it will be damaging and create difficulties in University selection.

You touched on how the grading was done before deleting your post, why don't you tell us more about that?
 
bernardgreen said:
"A" level science education in the 1960's.....We were given in an depth knowledge of the basic rules of science together with training in to how apply those rules when solving complex problems. Today's curriculum seems to be primarily aimed at giving the answers to problems with the basic rules not being taught in sufficient depth.
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My own impression too, FWIW..
 
Munroist said:
Do we need teachers ? seems that the less teaching is done the cleverer the pupils become. Quite a financial saving if we just binned off the teachers.
Click to expand...

Yep, on the face of it - we only need one quality teacher per subject, for the entire UK.
 
Same problem with GCSE grade inflation reported today.
 
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