Ewan's Musings

100% A Grade Passes

Spotted an article on the Tube comign into work on how the projected A level resutls this year will see 96% of people pass the exam, an a projected 100% pass rate in a few years.

Now this might be a bit old fashioned, but what is the point of havign an exam where everyone passes? You can't go on about rising standars in schools like this, because the population at large isn't getting any smarter.

A lot of this can be blamed in the culture of today, where you cannot tell someone they aren;t good enough. They need to feel special. Which is all well and good when they are growing up, but exams are a passport to work and your future. When you get out there in the big bad world, you will be immediatly judged against your peers.

If you go to University, they hit you with "bell curve marking," where the top 5% of the class get an "A," the next 10% get a "B," the next 15% get a "C," and so on. The actual mark is only used to grade you against everyone else who tookt he same exam.

I think this should be brought back into schools. It woul immediatly show everyone who is the best performers over the UK in exams, and it would mean that it doesn;t matter if exams are easier than previous years, because the mark is only used to grade people taking the exam, not used to generate the final mark.

So if one year the exam is really hard, the top 5% may be in the 75/100 to 100/100 scoring band. Next year's (easier) exam has the top 5% in the 94/100 to 100/100 scoring band. But each group is easily compared with the other - not something that an employer can tell nowadays.

But this would mean telling someone that a lot of peopel are better than them, and that it would be imposisbel to trumpt about rising standards of easier exams.

Which is a shame. If education has a role in teaching you about life, then exams should reflect the world - not some silver gilded perfect utopia where everyone has the same grade.