De-valued Qualifications

[philbell]

Each year we hear that more students than ever have scored A*’s and A’s in their GCSE’s or so many more have 1st Class Honours Degree’s etc.

The arguments go that the exams are getting easier on one side or that the students are working harder on the other.

I don’t want to get involved in that argument, there is hell of a lot of coursework involved in the modern system as well as the exams. It could be said that the marking of coursework can to a point bring up the overall result as the students can be coached into where to improve the work in order to obtain a higher grade. I know for a fact this happens as I work in a school and see this happening all the time.

Anyway, the point I was going to get to is this. The more A’s that are awarded then the less value they are. Same with Degrees and any other qualifications. In my last job we gave trials to 6 appropriate Degree candidates and each one was useless, the job finally went to a candidate with a HND and not such an appropriate background. I feel that because 1st class Degrees are being awarded to too many people that they also are not as valuable as they should be. You will get a genius student being awarded the same qualification as someone with a fraction of the value, as they have been able to tick all of the boxes on the coursework & exams, but may have just scraped through.

Would it not make more sense to give the highest grades to the highest scorers? So the students with the top 5% scores overall get an A 5-15% get a B 15-30% get C etc.

As things stand the highest grades are being diluted down and are becoming of less value. Should there not be a limit to the amount of top grades awarded? This then gives them more of a value and something more to gain for putting in the work. It also puts a stop to people moaning that the grades are achieved because the test were easier this year. If the test is easier the grades are still relative to all the others that took that test in the given year.

There may be cases in some areas such as NVQs or the like where a qualification is there to prove a certain amount of knowledge in an area, so fair enough a graded system that exists may be a fair representation. In qualifications such as degrees and the like there should be a value on being top of the game.

[Lad]

I think only 10% get a 1st. It is extremely hard to get that. It basically means you have to study continuously and certainly be very able to study.

I disagree though about the exams standard. If everyone works hard everyone should get given the result. If everyone is getting good grades because they work hard they should not be denied them.
However, coursework does allow the A-levels to be diluted as it allows for cheating. In my opinion this is the ONLY weak point in our system. I did GCSEs and A-levels, they are not easy and I did not get all the top grades and I worked hard. The media evey year spout out how easy it is to get grades and just isn't true.

[Tony]

although very unlikely 1 argument could be if everyone did bad and say only got 60% correct then under your scheme they could be given an A.

Im sure there would need to be other rules such as you could only get an A if you got above 90% in your exams/coursework and also 1 of the top x% of people in the country. and the same on A, B, C etc

Nice idea though however i think it would be quite hard to implament and no political party would want to be seen in the light whereby they bring in something that makes the whole country look thick. It would take a VERY brave PM to do that.

*on a sidenote im moving this to a more appropriate category as i dont think it fits in with law and punishment

[Lad]

I couldn't think where to put it, so I left it to someone else Tony.

A certain percentage should always have an A, B, C etc. This irons out any especially difficult papers. To give you one very extreme example; my friend did medicine. The lecturer told them they were going to sit a really really hard exam that was to just to see how well they could do. He said most practitioners would fail it and they were not expected to do well. My friend said he got less than 15% of the paper correct (had no idea on the rest) and won a medal for outstanding achievement for being the best in the class! So all the others (about 200) got more than 85% wrong! Obviously in this scenario the pass mark for an A might have been 8 or 9% correct or something.

[philbell]

Sorry if things go in the wrong section, by the time I get to posting I forgot where I should be lol. The point above by LAD kinda makes the point tho, in that case everyone would have failed.

The Tony example is valid also, maybe do a mix of both!!

Have a graded system as exists but then still have a system whereby the top grades are awarded propotionately.

[Dom]

It's an interesting idea for sure, but like someone has said, if everybody puts the work in, everybody should be rewarded. I agree it would stimulate students to work that much harder if they thought that there were only a certain number of them who could achieve top grades, but that system would only mark the students relative to each other, and not relative to the scores overall. So one year, there might be a higher than average number of students who do well, but the scores would be exactly the same - i.e. 15% with A's, 20% with B's etc, when in reality a lot more students have achieved a level of A or B.

Perhaps they could introduce both systems. They could keep the traditional grade - which scores you according to the percentage of correct answers in an exam - but they could also rate you according to where you were placed amongst others in your year group. So you'd have a typical grade (much like you have now) and also another grade, that says how well you have done compared to everyone else who took the exam that year.

That way, people with A grades can boast that they have put the work in and achieved their grades, but the ones who did exceptionally well (and were amongst the top highest scorers in the country) could also use that to their advantage. They already implement something a bit like that (by announcing who did the best for each exam that year) but if everyone was graded like that as well, that allows you to see the cream of the crop, so to speak. Whereas how else would you determine who, of the fifty million people who got A grades, was the best?

[Lad]

When 50 million get A-grades it is down to other factors on the CV. Relative work experience and just general social and work attitudes. I know people with great grades, but boy I would employ anyone but them!