*gush*gush*

[enismirdal]

Awwww! My widdle Enibrother got his A-level results through today, and he's going to Cambridge!! Following (more or less) in the footsteps of his big ol' sis!

'Binson, watch out!

Now there's the usual media whine over A-level exams getting easier...nearly a quarter of people now get the top A grade on exams. I can see why this might be a complaint - how does that distiguish "the best" from merely "the quite good"? Maybe they should be controversial twerps and do something like the Tripos grading system - the best 10% of students, regardless of their actual mark, get As, the next 30% get Bs, the next 30% Cs, and so on... But I guess for that to work, there has to be a minimum standard over which you cannot fail - it'd be stupid to say the bottom 5% fail regardless of their score if one year half those "failers" got a perfectly respectable score and were just unlucky that others did better... Dunno. Introducing the A* grade at A-level should be useful anyway.

I just wish British exams were less about being taught the bare minimum of syllabus to pass exams and more about teaching as much knowledge as the kids can gobble up.

Comments

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[cobalt-skye.livejournal.com]

Yay, go him! What's he going to study?
I think the AEA's (provided your school offers them) work quite well to catch the top people and distinguish them from the rest...

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Are those the same as or different to STEP papers? Our school offers STEP papers as in, "We can enter you for them," but provides NO preparation whatsoever, not even past papers to look at, and refuses to devote any teaching time to them. If AEAs are something else, to the best of my knowledge they don't offer them at all. Which probably sucks - I hadn't thought of them, but if bright people were entered for them more routinely they'd be a good plan. I just get the feeling only private/public schools and students trying to get into Maths/Physics courses are likely to do "extra" exams like that. (Or am I misguided?)

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

AEA stands for Advanced Extension Award and is supposed to replace STEP and S-level, which it not entirely succeeded at. Entering people into them seems to be somewhat uncommon; they do occasionally appear on university offers but it isn't exactly common - many Univerisities have revived entrance exams instead. I've never looked at an AEA paper, TBH.

(FWIW, my school was willing to order me STEP past papers and provide moderate amounts of help such as marking some of my attempts at them. I looked at STEP Maths I, Physics and Chemistry and did Physics and Chemistry (you can only be entered for two)).

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Aah, that makes sense. I knew what it stood for but wasn't totally sure how it fitted into the rest of the system. If it was more successful, it sounds like a good idea in principle.

[illusive-shelle.livejournal.com]

I never even heard of STEP and S-levels until I came to Cambridge and there's some part of me that wished I'd known. In my school, an A was an A, and if the student was going to get the A, why bother wasting teaching resources to make it a good A? Why encourage the student to learn anything else? It's taken me three years of tripos exams to unlearn the lessons about just needing to know the minimum.

[cobalt-skye.livejournal.com]

AEAs are offered by many schools in the avergae, state-comprehensive sector as far as I can gather. My school (average, bog-standard) offered them to me and I know l_j_b took one for each of her three A-Levels at her Sixth Form college. It may have been that I came from a good place, but my school was willing to give me some extra tuition for any AEAs that I require, including past papers (I think you can get these free off the net anyway). It was just very uncommon for people to take them, apart from in Chemistry, but I believe more people have taken them since I left, as knowledge has grown. The only pain is where the exams are situated- after the last exam in the appropriate subject, but potentially in the middle of other exams, which meant I chose not to take two of the AEAs I could have done as I was worried about my A-Level Chem mark.
When I got my interview at Pembroke one of the questions I was asked (on the pre-interview form) was whether my school offered AEAs and if I was entered for them. I never really knew about STEP, to be honest and presumed it was something just associated with Phys-Sci. As to whether kids are more likely to take such things in private/public schools that may be true, but I think it's just due to awareness, not anything else. Depends how much people want to go for the challenge and just see it as a bit of fun! I admit I failed my only AEA (in Chem)...
Going to the subject of the Scottish Advanced Highers with links to AEAs- I found the first term of Chemistry (and the rest of the course!) tough at Cam, but I have been told that from the point of view of a Scottish student there really wasn't much new, relatively speaking. Now, the stuff we did in that first bit of the course would have allowed anyone to get a very good mark in that AEA... The Scottish system does seem to be better at pushing the bright ones and getting them to think...

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, and he's going to do Law, as nybiara said. :)

[nybiara.livejournal.com]

Yay for the Enibrother. :D Did you say he was going to do Law?

If I remember correctly, the way the Tripos results are bellcurved means that you can't be downgraded to a 3rd or a fail (or perhaps it's just fail) if you get above a certain minimum mark, even if everyone gets above that mark. It's annoying me that I now can't remember where I heard this, but I think it was a Chemistry lecturer who ought to have known how the system worked.

Now that the pass-rate is so high, it's not a system that they could introduce for A-levels, though, if it meant a sudden drop in passes from one year to the next. (I'm possibly not the best person to comment, since I did Scottish Advanced Highers, and I'm trying to suppress a rant on that topic.)

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Yep, he's doing law. Look out for him in 10 years' time when he's an evil corporate lawyer...

[nybiara.livejournal.com]

Wow, it takes that long to go from starting university to becoming a proper lawyer?

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

LOL I have no idea, but 5 years sounds a bit toooooo ambitious, even for him. I just sort of plucked a plausible figure from the air...it'll probably take him that long to get famous, anyway!

[nybiara.livejournal.com]

Heh. Sorry, I've heard they have to be taken on by a firm after they graduate and do more training, or something like that, but I didn't know how long that sort of thing took. My sister (studing Law and French) has now decided that she is not going to become a lawyer because the French bit is much more fun. :)

[(Anonymous)]

They have already had to put up with me. I'm sure the college will survive.
Abner
Yes- I'm back.