England's examinations watchdog has issued a stark warning that standards in the new GCSEscience exams have been compromised.
The quality of assessment for the qualification is a "serious cause for concern", Ofqual said.
In a damning report, looking at science GCSEs in 2007 and 2008, the regulator highlighted a number of issues which require "immediate action".
The report said that in many cases the exams did not challenge the brightest pupils, suggesting that they were not hard enough and it was easier than in previous years to get a top grade.
It said: "In each case, Ofqual was concerned that the question types used provided insufficient opportunity for more able candidates, particularly those at higher tier, to demonstrate the extent of the scientific knowledge, understanding and skills."
It found that the syllabuses offered by England's three main exams boards were "over complicated" and there were too many "options" of papers that students could take in order to get the qualification. This made it difficult to compare students' achievements across the board, it said.
In addition, Ofqual found that too much emphasis was placed on pupils sitting multiple choice, or "objective tests."
In the case of courses offered by the AQA and Edexcel exam boards, these tests accounted for 75% and 60% respectively of the overall total.
Schools minister Jim Knight admitted that public confidence in the science exams would be affected, but insisted there was not a problem with the exams system as a whole.
Mr Knight said: "This shows why it is so important that we have a robust independent regulator to guarantee high standards in our exam system. I welcome the immediate actions on science being taken by Ofqual - covering both this year's exams and ensuring any problems with GCSEscience are fixed in the longer term."
Gcse's are easy anyway and they mean very little. I went in to my science exam drunk, threw up, had to be carried in to do my paper, cant remember doing it then passed out. I passed.
I'm assuming it was a foundation version of general science. Of course that's going to be easy, especially compared with the subjects properly sectioned and taken at a decent level.
My old school wasn't allowed to do anything above foundation level, and I did general science and got a few marks short of top marks and got a D. It's pointless having an exam that you can only fail in!
I think they are too easy, the first two modules of my seperate sciences were multiple choice. You could come out of that exam, with no revision at all and still get a C.
Gcse's are easy anyway and they mean very little. I went in to my science exam drunk, threw up, had to be carried in to do my paper, cant remember doing it then passed out. I passed.
Short answer questions should be severely curtailed as they reward exam technique, not knowledge or scientific ability.
Time to give a lot more weight towards in depth essays describing how certain processes work and why.
With these changes to the exam themselves the exam boards will be forced to change the syllabus to give students the ability to answer these kind of questions.
I took OCR Triple Award Higher Tier. It was harder than I thought it would be, and in fact there were a lot of "describe" questions (although lots of short-answer questions too). I'm not sure whether my grades really reflect my scientific ability or not.
The new science exams are pathetically easy. I am generally not a "standards are dropping!" kind of person, maths getting easier annoys me slightly but I see the reasons. However, GCSEscience has just become outrageous. Even the people who do them say they're a pathetically easy waste of time.
Short answers don't reward exam technique, they reward knowing the answer. Long essays do reward it though.
Not at all!
With short answers, marks get given out for saying the "right" things. In longer answers, these count for a lot less because there's plenty of content to evidence your knowledge and you can say it how you like rather then how the exam marks scheme likes you to say it.
In short answers, you tend to get marked for using buzz words.
In long answers, you're forced to reveal the true extent of your knowledge.
These comparisons only work for intelligent students with different levels of exam technique. I agree short answers catch out dumb students, but they differentiate between smart ones in terms of exam technique.
In addition, Ofqual found that too much emphasis was placed on pupils sitting multiple choice, or "objective tests."
In the case of courses offered by the AQA and Edexcel exam boards, these tests accounted for 75% and 60% respectively of the overall total."
If I'm being honest they should completely do away with those objective tests - or at least make the answers much more plausible , one thing I found quite a bit was that it was mostly a game of logic to eliminate nonsensical answers.Certainly there's no way they should count as much towards the whole assessment.
Most of the problem with GCSE Sciences is that the questions generally tend towards basic recall of knowledge with some description (at the higher end questions can be a bit longer).There's not a lot of emphasis on depth of understanding being tested with longer more rigourous questions where you have to carefully apply knowledge.I also think there's a massive constraint on the questions they can ask due to the low level of maths needed (I suspect this is why suvat equations aren't in Physics GCSE) - questions needing rearrangement of an equation in Physics I recall were only allowed in Higher Tier.
All GCSEs are easy to some degree. But the science one's take the piss. The new '21st century science' is a complete waste of time, glad I was the last year not to do it...
The point is its not science, but the context, which they try to test in these things. I'm sure the normal Physics, Biology, Chemistry, triple award are still rigourous enough. But the rest are complete farce. Surprised ofqual had the backbone to say it.
I loved it how the OCR [Oxford and Cambridge :O] papers and books were full of typos and had passages that made no sense whatsoever.
And apart from that, the lack of scientific knowledge needed is quite worrying - yeah sure not everyone can be a scientist but they should at least get the jist of how their own respiritory system works, or the reason why they have to wear a seatbelt [you could say its natural selection but they probs won't know what it is as the teachers are too scared of offending anyone]. I didn't revise at all, I got A*A, now I'm doing AS physics and my teacher says that he can't believe we got such high grades because we really don't know anything.
Yes, GCSEScience was rediculously easy, and lulled me into a false sense of security about being "good" at Science, however, the reality of A Level Chemistry hit me like a bolt of lightening. To be honest, GCSEScience wasn't anywhere near the required preparation for best success in A Level Science.
As someone who sat OCR GCSE Biology, Chemistry and Physics last year, I'll say that:
- the content of the syllabuses are good. They contain good, solid science, and I learnt quite a lot.
- the content, format and level of the exams are abysmal. Anyone with any common sense can achieve at least 50%, whether they've learnt the syllabus or not. Most of the difficult parts of the syllabus are generally given little attention on the exams.
- the coursework was woeful, and consisted of practicals which teachers were free to fabricate the results of and "science in the news" essays which were marked, not according to their scientific content, but according to the level of English and other such trivialities, which is a travesty. Also, the essays had nothing to do with the subject (e.g. "are supermarkets green enough?" was the title of my Chemistry coursework).
I did AQA single science last year, as I'm not at all a science fan. Despite this, I got A*s in every module. I think that the exams themselves are ludicrously easy in that most of the wrong answers can be ruled out pretty much immediately (leaving you with, at worst, a 50/50 guess on the majority of questions), so it's not hard to do well. But I seem to remember that not many people actually got an A* overall, because you have to do well on every modular test... which you could resit as many times as you liked at the school's expense.
I think that a GCSE based on 6 multiple choice exams and one assessed practical was a bit of a joke really, and I think that questions that require actual written answers would probably be more appropriate, especially for a subject with as much content as Science.
Informal discussion on any topic (within reason). Use the 'Chat' forum for informal talking.
Is GSCE-Science Exam "too easy"?
Not at all!
