crap

OK, sit an exam of an equivelant standard from 20 years ago and see what happens.

Douglas

There was someone phoned up the Jeremy Vine show this lunchtime who'd school had done just that.

This is was a Spanish A-level paper.

When they did a 'mock exam' using the 20 year old paper he scored an E, in his real exam he scored an A. He admitted himself that the current papers were far too easy. When pressed for more detail he specifically mentioned spelling and gramatical correctness wasn't properly marked on current papers.

I'd say a basic requirement to getting a decent English Literature grade would be to have proper spelling, punctuation and grammar skills.

Its something silly like 5% of the final mark, depends on the paper.

Current A level exams are quite strange, for instance my Nazi Germany exams were based upon sources and 60% of the mark was attributed to using those sources. So if you answers the question set without referring to the sources, even if you were completely correct... you could only score 40% of the total available marks... and of course unless you had been referred to the previous years mark scheme, you wouldn't have a clue about the distribution of marks of the said exam and there is no indication that the exam is heavily source analysis based.

You appear to have found apostrophes and put them in the right place, and lost your shift key and a few vowels :-)

So you're going to Sunderland then?

Go for a more popular music based course then. But make sure you go for something that offers you some sort of future regarding studio work and stuff. Do you have much of an interest in sitting behind a mixing desk engineering recordings? Some sort of studio based thing might be for you. Then, you might be better off going the business route, and sticking to music as a hobby, even if it is a major hobby that might take over your life. If you're in a band that's a bit s**te, you may well meet much better musicians at uni and form something better there and make a go of that. And having a music degree or not isn't going to make a jot of difference as to whether your band succeeds or not.

I worked in an Office World store for a while a few years ago and decided I'd like to travel the world. There were loads of GCSE and A level books in stock so I looked in all of the georgraphy books for a map of the world. There wasn't a map of the world in about 10 geography GCSE/A Level books. I eventually found a mousemat with a map on it and used that.

It's very true that we're all taught how to be exam passing machines rather than given any real world useful knowledge. Standards haven't necessarily reduced, it's just the formulaic way of teaching we have these days and it sucks several yards of dick

That's not what the rest of the country seem to be saying, and the fact that more people than ever are getting A grades, making it more difficult than ever before to differentiate between the good students and the s**te ones.

Just heard on the radio that the exam boards are having to provide full breakdowns of modular scores in order to choose between candidates, as there's too many people scoring high grades.

They wouldn't have liked me then - when I did the last module of A level Maths I'd got the results back from the first 3 (2 were maximum modular points), so I knew exactly how little I needed in the 4th one to still get an A. Good job, as I'd only covered about half the syllabus (got full marks on the questions I could answer though, lol) due to concentrating my efforts on other things.

Well, it will be allot cheaper for me to live up there than Warwick, but it is more prestigious. I'll see how the Sunderland open day goes and move on from there I suppose?

I was chatting with a girl who is attending Warwick on the same course I am interested in, and from her description I deduced that it is very much a course designed to create a film critique. I would rather create than pull some one elses work to pieces tbh, and Sunderland provides that option with practical film modules.

The pass rate for A-levels back in 1981 was 68.1%, compared with 96.2% this year.

The marking schema is much more lenient now, and (at least for the subjects I have looked at) the content of the syllabus significantly reduced. In other words standards have dropped - exams are now easier than they have ever been. How else will the government reach it's target of 50% of 'young people' going to university?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Very much so!

The college I attended after leaving school (as my school doesn't have a six-form) was purely a 'certificate factory' Mainly catered to old people who fancied doing Basket weaving for Beginners and Chinese/Arab students who's parents had coughed up serious dough.

Your actual typical student (fresh from school, aged 17-19 etc) has got fairly differing needs to old ladies and foreign students, and the support available was laughable. My Personal Tutor (kind of like a form-tutor or something) went AWOL numerous times, so the problems I had there went un-checked until I had to leave.

And I was representative of about 75% of students in the respect.

Fortunately, I've gotten a place on a residential course to do an Access To Uni thingy, so I get to get to do something I like (in a years time) and should have the chance of a half interesting job at the other end! (though my aims at Uni are: have fun, escape the s***ty town I currently live in, meet people, study some)

And they say standards aren't slipping...

Richard. (But, those are 'grate' results, really ;) )

No idea about the courses, but Warwick has an excellent Student's Union, one of the best I've been to! :)

AOL!

I did GCSE resistant materials (CDT to all the old gits ;) ) My coursework didn't happen (it started to, teacher was replaced by an ex-RAF dick head who decided he'd get me to change my practical at a slightly late date)

So I ended up submitting no coursework, no practical coursework, and in the exam I wrote a short note to the examiner, to apologize for wasting their time, as my school refused to let me drop the exam.

And my grade? A G.

G != N,F,U .'. G = Pass.

Both my brothers went to Sunderland Uni, the last one finally finishing his "Professional Student" career last year. One good thing is that there is tons of part time work there, mainly call centre, if you don't fancy leaving Uni £12k in debt.

I past my english Language 'E' level just now, and gave me they an A greyed because they, said eye did kewl in spell and sommat i forgot and of coarse grammer.

My mate Bob didn't turn up, but he was appealed so he got a C so will got all the way to Kilmory University and he was hoping for it as they live near his aunty.

So you can not say that standurds have falled. I did good in mathimatics two, A is hire than C so I know I gotten more than Bob

;) ;) shakes fist at nobody in particular