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Is Jeremy Clarkson right to downgrade the importance of A-levels?

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Reply 20

Jacob-C

Original post by barnetlad

Should we not downgrade the importance of Jeremy Clarkson?

He does that himself with some of the comments he makes.

Reply 21

HarrietGilbraith

I wouldn't say he was downgrading the importance of A-levels. He was trying to reassure people that bad grades aren't the worst things in the world and that success depends on more than a set of exams you sit when you're 18.

Reply 22

tgwktm

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

I got BCC.

Sixth form was generally a really **** experience for me.

Wasn't even trying to get into a top uni so didn't really care other than wanting to do the best I could.

You can't blame the students though. They live in this moronic bubble where the only thing that measures your worth as a human being is the ability to regurgitate information on a piece of paper. When that is all you know it is understandable when people get stressed. I can remember a girl in a chemistry class randomly bursting into tears :s-smilie:

Then you hear all this crap about how they are getting easier. How the fact that students getting higher grades couldn't possible be a good thing. Hearing how 'maths is to easy now' from idiots that can't even add up is bloody annoying. Being told A-levels are so much easier than they used to be when you are having to work hard just to get C grades is very demotivating.

I agree. I hate being told that A levels are easy cause they are not. If they were then i wouldn't spend hours revising and practising.
Exams don't give a real indication of how well a person understands a subject anyway. We are taught to pass exams. And some people are better at exams than others, doesn't mean they understand what they are writing.

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Reply 23

Jammy Duel

It won't be long until they do mean absolutely nothing, how long is it going to be until it's a simple pass/fail (with a pass rate of 99% or more)?

Reply 24

ChaoticButterfly

Original post by Jammy Duel

It won't be long until they do mean absolutely nothing, how long is it going to be until it's a simple pass/fail (with a pass rate of 99% or more)?

Have you actually ever taken A-levels?

Reply 25

Jammy Duel

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Have you actually ever taken A-levels?

Yes, have you ever heard them say "the amount of students getting A grades has gone down?", although, the funny thing is that they have actually gone down but the media seems to think it's gone up none the less.
The closest you get to that is the whole "for the first time in 32 years [if I'm remembering it correctly] the number of students passing has dropped"

But seriously, what are we looking at, a quarter get A/A*, a quarter get B a quarter get C, which is of course highly informative(!) When you then couple the increases in the top grades with an actual decrease in capabilities you have a problem; percentage getting 5A*-C in GCSE has gone up over 30% since the start of the millenium, actual capabilities in Maths, Literacy and Science have dropped 6%.

If you look at the trends from a few years back (namely 2009), by 2018 nobody would fail a subject and over a third of entrants would get an A/A*, and an A at A level in 2009 can worth about as much as a C in the 80s, so people who in the 80s would be barely passing would now be getting the top marks. And before you say that D and E are also passes, I live in the real world, not the "nobody can be called an idiot" world.

Reply 26

Yux

apparently back in the 1990s and before not everybody went to uni so i guess back then A levels meant a lot more but in 2014, i guess your degree means a lot more than A levels........and in the future more and more people will probably do postgraduate education so by then bachelor degrees wont be worth as much by then...

Reply 27

Sandtrooper

Volunteer Team

I think he's right, to an extent.

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Reply 28

Mackay

Original post by Jacob-C

He does that himself with some of the comments he makes.

Amen.

Reply 29

Baldness

Original post by Mackay

I think the message he is trying to get across is that you don't need to take an exam to achieve greatness.

That said, he's an annoying racist bigot. So...

it is not really helpful.

You could win Le Mans in a battered old mini but it is unlikely.

I think a lot of these types of statements from people are as much about self congratulation as they are about genuinely offering encouragement for people who haven't achieved academically.