Conclusions that don’t add up about exam standards

From: Anne Hobson, Heaton Grove, Bradford.

I REALLY wish Stephanie Smith would stop droning on about the older generation (Yorkshire Post, August 17).

This week we are denigrating exam results; a few weeks ago we were accused of treating our children with disrespect and inhibiting their lives.

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I failed O-level maths twice at school about 50 years ago, so with the encouragement of my two older grandsons, a couple of years ago I decided to have another try. I enrolled at Bradford College, did the course in a year, and passed with a grade B. I have several observations to make, the first being the excellent teaching at the college. This was inspirational, I can’t praise it highly enough. The syllabus had changed and no longer included calculus, but the biggest change of all was the way the exam papers were written.

In my era, I can remember scanning the paper for a question I felt I could tackle, but now the questions are graded, the first being at grade D and working through the paper until the final questions which are at A*.

It seemed to me that if you could get halfway through the paper you were almost guaranteed a pass. I also noted that with the recent exam there was no course work; just the exam at the end, which everyone thought would make it more difficult. My conclusion was that present day exams have to be easier, or how otherwise could exam results continue to improve year on year? Pupils are not more intelligent than their forebears, although I grant the teaching was better.

I don’t want to belittle the efforts that pupils put into working for exams. Of course they work hard and deserve success, but there is today a culture of not allowing failure at all costs, which is to the detriment of standards generally.

From: Derek Gledhill, Talbot House, Elland.

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PERHAPS you should ask a follow-up question to “Are A-levels easier than they used to be?” (Yorkshire Post, August 18), and ask the 75 per cent who replied Yes: “How many have taken A-levels in the past and in recent years, and how many have read this year’s exam papers?” I suspect the answer is not many.

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