Have GCSE's really become easier?
Discussion for GCSE students, including those studying for IGCSEs and O Levels.
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?No, only a set percentage of people get A*, As etc as the percentage is controlled by the government. So THEY change it, not students. All these GCSE statistics are pretty skewed if you ask me!(Original post by fudgesundae)
Really? The percentage of people getting A* and A grades has been increasing every year for the last 25 years or so. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?Source? I doubt that is true, never heard that before. What do you mean they are skewed? Too many people getting top grades?(Original post by Plums&Peaches)
No, only a set percentage of people get A*, As etc as the percentage is controlled by the government. So THEY change it, not students. All these GCSE statistics are pretty skewed if you ask me!
Are you saying that exams aren't getting easier and that the government is just lowering grade boundaries? -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?I thought everyone knew that? I thought it was common knowledge(Original post by fudgesundae)
Source? I doubt that is true, never heard that before. What do you mean they are skewed? Too many people getting top grades?
Are you saying that exams aren't getting easier and that the government is just lowering grade boundaries?
It is very much true. Grade boundaries are determined by looking at top percentages for example the top 20% of people get A* etc. Otherwise there would be a possibility of everyone getting A*s (far fetched but) which simply isn't feasible. I very much assure you that grades are awarded by the top percentages. This means that more people passing every year does not mean the exams are easier it means the government has changed the constraints. So I wouldn't use GCSE statistics really :/ 
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?You said the government control how many get A grades and A* grades. I know that grades are awarded by percentages, I just thought it was the exam boards who decided how many get what grade.(Original post by Plums&Peaches)
I thought everyone knew that? I thought it was common knowledge It is very much true. Grade boundaries are determined by looking at top percentages for example the top 20% of people get A* etc. Otherwise there would be a possibility of everyone getting A*s (far fetched but) which simply isn't feasible. I very much assure you that grades are awarded by the top percentages. This means that more people passing every year does not mean the exams are easier it means the government has changed the constraints. So I wouldn't use GCSE statistics really :/
I said you don't have to look at the statistics. Look at the actual exam papers and what academics have been saying for years. Try a GCSE Maths paper from 1990 or 1980, you simply won't be able to score as highly as you could on a paper from this year. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?You can still get IGCSEs where you have to write around 200 words in total of french, plus answering comprehension questions in French.(Original post by Giant)
Yes definitely, if you look at GCSE French for example, 10-15 years ago you would need to be able to write creatively and on the spot in exam conditions about a given topic. Nowadays you get 2 weeks to prepare a pretty simple piece of French (which you can get anyone to do for you to be honest) and simply memorise and copy it out. The exams are also a joke, there is no actual writing in French required, just ticking boxes and answering in English for one question. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?THANK YOU!(Original post by magicmuggle)
You can still get IGCSEs where you have to write around 200 words in total of french, plus answering comprehension questions in French.
Oh i thought you were questioning the percentage(Original post by fudgesundae)
You said the government control how many get A grades and A* grades. I know that grades are awarded by percentages, I just thought it was the exam boards who decided how many get what grade.
I said you don't have to look at the statistics. Look at the actual exam papers and what academics have been saying for years. Try a GCSE Maths paper from 1990 or 1980, you simply won't be able to score as highly as you could on a paper from this year.
No because there are different exam boards, UMS is used to standardize across these boards otherwise it would be easier to get an A* with one board than the other. Which is then centrally controlled by the government, I think. Yes but then grade boundaries would have compensated. They balance themselves out.
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?In my opinion it's just a memory test. For the past exams I have done, most of the subjects (apart from English and maths) is just recall. Science-> recall. Humanity subjects: recall.
To be honest there is no challenge other than being bothered to learn it, which is the hard part. I have personally passed almost all my subjects simply recalling useless information, and those that actually test your ability in thinking (english and maths) I have got lower grades on.
I personally think they're useless. No academic examination, it's just a memory test. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?umm no actually. there is a whole paper on directed writing in CIE IGCSE which is a question given to you on the spot.(Original post by Giant)
Yes definitely, if you look at GCSE French for example, 10-15 years ago you would need to be able to write creatively and on the spot in exam conditions about a given topic. Nowadays you get 2 weeks to prepare a pretty simple piece of French (which you can get anyone to do for you to be honest) and simply memorise and copy it out. The exams are also a joke, there is no actual writing in French required, just ticking boxes and answering in English for one question. -
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Its true for French, but I took GCSE Russian, and had to write two mini essays in about an hour on the spot. I wasn't told the topics therefore had nothing to prepare. It was possibly the hardest exam i had to sit, even with Ukrainian being my first language too. I have also taken French and Spanish from the same exam board therefore i dont think you can say that its got easier!(Original post by Giant)
Yes definitely, if you look at GCSE French for example, 10-15 years ago you would need to be able to write creatively and on the spot in exam conditions about a given topic. Nowadays you get 2 weeks to prepare a pretty simple piece of French (which you can get anyone to do for you to be honest) and simply memorise and copy it out. The exams are also a joke, there is no actual writing in French required, just ticking boxes and answering in English for one question. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?I think as some people have said it does depend on the board, I mean the yr 11s in my school did edexcel sciences and history and like half of them got A*'s and many got full marks in their exams. However my year are doing AQA Science and in our first exams no one in the year got an A*! But your point on English language is very true plus the aqa english lang grade boundaries are quite high.(Original post by `God)
^Title^
This is my opinion:
1) GCSE's have not become easier, it's just that people are becoming more aware of it's importance so more people are getting better grades, this does not mean the exams have actually been degraded but people doing better in them.
2) The hindsight argument, university students saying A-levels were a walk in the park, A-level students saying GCSE's were a walk in the park and so on.
I think - compared to 6 yeas ago - GCSE's have actually become harder, in previous years there was coursework where the candidate can virtually get a family member to assist them and achieve A* in 40% of their English Language grade, a lot of subjects had coursework. However, the start of this school year (year 11's) coursework's have been scrapped and now we do controlled assessments in exam conditions.Last edited by Farhan96; 08-06-2012 at 19:38. Reason: Missed a point -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?The course/exams have gotten harder on the whole, as I understand it, for most subjects. e.g. I believe you never used to get books in the English Lit. exam years ago, and had to memorise the plot in intense and tiny detail, memorising as many quotes as possible.(Original post by `God)
^Title^
This is my opinion:
1) GCSE's have not become easier, it's just that people are becoming more aware of it's importance so more people are getting better grades, this does not mean the exams have actually been degraded but people doing better in them.
2) The hindsight argument, university students saying A-levels were a walk in the park, A-level students saying GCSE's were a walk in the park and so on.
I think - compared to 6 yeas ago - GCSE's have actually become harder, in previous years there was coursework where the candidate can virtually get a family member to assist them and achieve A* in 40% of their English Language grade, a lot of subjects had coursework. However, the start of this school year (year 11's) coursework's have been scrapped and now we do controlled assessments in exam conditions.
But I've always heard people say, and even got the impression myself, that people tend to get better and better. Whether this is due to the course getting easier, or whether it is due to more past papers being available to practice on, or whether it is due to exam boards holding more and more teacher talks to improve pass rates by giving tips, or whatever. List goes on.
This means grade boundaries become higher as more people do better. They will fluctuate over the years, but if you look at the past years closely you may notice, in some subjects at least, the boundaries are slowly creeping up.
In other words, my opinion is that GCSE courses are getting easier, but getting the grades are getting harder. Weigh those too up on the magical academia scales and you pretty much come out with the difficulty being the same. (Although things have changed). -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?GCSEs are slightly easier......if you have ever seen past papers from like 1999, they are so bloody hard compared to the ones we have now.
Yes, more people 'care' now which has made more competition when it comes to getting each grade, but the government has also raised the percentage of people getting A* and A now.
The biggest issue with GCSEs now, are that anything below an A* is considered a fail by people. Back 20 years a go, a C was an achievement, and anything above was a bonus! An A* was something that very few people got! -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?I do Edexcel History, and am currently doing a topic on Nazi Germany. My teacher gave me and two others in the class a book for 'extra reading'. This was a GCSE textbook from 1997. It has a lot more content than the one I am doing, which would make me think that they have become easier in terms of content.
However, I do think that they are gradually becoming harder, since about 2009 (when coursework was replaced with CAs). As well as this, the new science courses are so pedantic on mark schemes it makes the exams much harder (on a 2008 paper I got 80%-A/A*, on the specimen from this year I got 48%-C/D).
Basically, over the past 20 years, GCSEs have got harder, at their easiest around 2 years ago. However, since then, they've become harder. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?Controlled assessment is the most ridiculous form of assessment. It is basically coursework, but we have to sit in our rooms for weeks on end learning 1500+ words which we will write up. So cheating/plagiarism can occur anyway, and parents/tutors can still write the actual pieces.(Original post by `God)
However, the start of this school year (year 11's) coursework's have been scrapped and now we do controlled assessments in exam conditions.
The UK's exam system means that we spend our lives cramming pointless facts - such as the fact that 4m high flood walls were built at Fort Meadow to prevent flooding at a cost of £200,000 - rather than learning stuff that's actually going to help us become more intelligent, articulate and sophisticated people. It's also a joke that at GCSE, we only read two pieces of literature - e.g The Crucible and OMAM - and twenty years later they are still the only books that people have ever read. -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?True, but for us, GCSE English Lit was a joke. We had to literally cram TKAM/Inspector Calls AND Poetry in, in a very short space of time. If we had more books to study, god knows how we would have done it!(Original post by ArtisticFlair)
Controlled assessment is the most ridiculous form of assessment. It is basically coursework, but we have to sit in our rooms for weeks on end learning 1500+ words which we will write up. So cheating/plagiarism can occur anyway, and parents/tutors can still write the actual pieces.
The UK's exam system means that we spend our lives cramming pointless facts - such as the fact that 4m high flood walls were built at Fort Meadow to prevent flooding at a cost of £200,000 - rather than learning stuff that's actually going to help us become more intelligent, articulate and sophisticated people. It's also a joke that at GCSE, we only read two pieces of literature - e.g The Crucible and OMAM - and twenty years later they are still the only books that people have ever read.
My idiot teacher spent way too long fussing over English Lang the first year! Most of us didn't even know they were 2 seperate GCSEs until recent! -
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Re: Have GCSE's really become easier?Yeah, the pigs. What are we meant to do about it if it is true? It's not our fault.(Original post by blueray)
No, and I don't know why older people are complaining.
Anyway they are the jammy bastards who were paid to go to university
It is very much true. Grade boundaries are determined by looking at top percentages for example the top 20% of people get A* etc. Otherwise there would be a possibility of everyone getting A*s (far fetched but) which simply isn't feasible. I very much assure you that grades are awarded by the top percentages. This means that more people passing every year does not mean the exams are easier it means the government has changed the constraints. So I wouldn't use GCSE statistics really :/ 
No because there are different exam boards, UMS is used to standardize across these boards otherwise it would be easier to get an A* with one board than the other. Which is then centrally controlled by the government, I think. Yes but then grade boundaries would have compensated. They balance themselves out.
