Making the grade.
Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsbeat/newsid_7575000/7575406.stm
I found this video linked from somewhere on the BBC News website. 8 DJs took GCSE Maths and the video shows them getting their results. Only one of them passed and they got a C with a mark of 28%. At 1:53 in you can see the boundaries for C through to A*. The cut off point for an A grade is 51%. 51. For an A. If you are barely more than half competent in GCSE level Maths then you get an A. For A*, the mickey mouse grade supposedly designed to distinguish the high achievers, the cut off is mere 65%.
Maybe I'm demonstrating a gross lack of understanding of how exams work but I find these figures quite appalling. How can 51% merit an A?
Apart from anything else it means the grading system is heavily bias towards those with low marks and high marks get little reward. If you get 100% you've effectively wasted 35% of your effort because you'll be given the same grade as someone who only got 65%. If grades were done away with and people just got given their percentage score instead then the person with 100% comes out looking a lot better than someone with 65%. And rightly so.
Mike Willis
22 Aug 2008 13:30
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Steven Carpenter
I saw that just now and thought the same thing – those grading boundaries are ridiculous.
22 Aug 2008, 14:29
The question is not why are more people getting A grades, but why aren’t the rest!
22 Aug 2008, 15:41
Mathew Mannion
Since I got 100 points over what I needed for A* Maths at GCSE (I was shown my mark breakdown to convince me to do Further Maths at A-Level), I’m inclined to agree to an extent. Saying that, there’s absolutely no point getting high marks at GCSE in anything – if you get high marks then you go onto AS/A-Levels and GCSEs become the most worthless piece of paper you’ve ever received. I got 2 A*s and 8 As at GCSE, the best marks in my school (of 500 pupils) and I don’t even bother putting them on my CV, they’re absolutely worthless after 2 years.
22 Aug 2008, 15:43
matthew
Presumably they are the boundaries for the higher tier paper? People would normally only take this if they were predicted a B or above, so its not that surprising that the boundaries are low.
22 Aug 2008, 18:31
Matthew Jones
[Only a few days late to this post…]
The second Matt is correct. The grade boundaries are as they are as it is a higher-difficulty paper. There are at least 2 (and I think 3) tiers of paper for maths, with the higher paper deliberately much harder. Sure some people will get 100%, but the idea is that most people will not get near 50% due to the difficulty. You are assuming that everyone who takes GCSE maths takes this paper, but they don’t. This is why grades are important and percentages are not. Getting 80% on the lower level paper is not the same as getting 80% on the higher paper, so why should they be the same grade?
Having said all that, Mat M is right that GCSEs are worthless as soon as you start A-Levels. I couldn’t even tell you where my GCSE certificates are.
27 Aug 2008, 11:50
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