Unfair bias against private schools

To use a similar situation to as I did recently...

You get beaten up for doing well in tests at school, you had to spend evenings looking after your siblings, your peers forced you into a life of drugs and vandalism, your inner city comprehensive teachers don't give a shit, they say that all that matters is getting a grade C, they don't care about you as you're "sorted", you're slowed down in the classroom by people who are struggling, your mother suffers depression, you didn't have the money for books and your mate was shot etc, then try getting AAA.

Someone who got ABB in the above conditions is likely to perform better at university than an AAA student who had it easy.

Yer, but jools you know very well that the majority of people do not suffer all these problems, and even pupils in private schools have troubles at home, drug abuse and depression.
What is irritating me is that some people assume that all comprehensives are inner-city with awful violence and drug abuse, when i can say from experience that they are not!
There may be some cases when people are seriously held back through circumstances but many are not.

Matrices are not in depth. It's just different things. I've done pure6 and mechanics3 simultaneously, a single maths student may do mechanics3 if he's doing maths with mechanics. And pure6 wasn't harder than mechanics3, it was just different. I think the hardest stuff for me in either maths or further maths was the M2/M3 statics. So I wouldn't say it was more indepth, it was just more pure maths instead of more applied maths.

Well, as far as I can see, there is more maths in P1/2/3 than half of AH maths, and I can assure you the applied is just as hard as the pure. And as I said, the pure3 module is absolutely notorious for its indepth-ness, and trickyness.

It is indeed a better perspective than you or I could have, but it's still not a fair analysis to do a single Alevel and then conclude that the english have it easier. I'm sure if I did say 5 Alevels, and an AH, then concluded that the AH was a piece of piss compared to the Alevels, you'd appreciate that my analysis wasn't very fair.

In this thread I've referred to the ABB person as from the "school from hell" rather than "any comp". Obviously I'm not saying unis should always favour any state school person with lower grades over any private schooler - especially since there's a sizeable overlap of state schools better than privates - just maybe the bottom 5-10% of schools.

I just realised that at some point in that argument I forgot completely about the Higher maths course, which explains why I was fighting such a losing battle before - we were comparing a 2 year A level to a 1 year AH.

I was comapring directly to the A2 component, the Higher corresponds to the AS, the AH to the A2, but the Higher falls a bit short of the AS, and then the AH picks up the slack, and reaches A2 level, and goes beyond in pure terms.


Bigger than P4-6?


This stuff is all in depth, but no more in depth than a statics question where you have to select tactical places to take moments, take advantage of newton's III law, and solve the resultant sets of equations without any guidance. And it's no more in depth than a stats3 question I'm sure.

I'd always been under the impression that Highers were larger than AS, though I suppose in this case it may be that Higher maths is wider ranging but not in as much depth since AS is designed to "follow through" to A level, while Higher is effectively a standalone.

I may not have done it in maths, but having done AH physics and about to do an engineering degree, most of that comes fairly natural to me, so I can't really give a fair comment on it. In a way I'd have been interested to do AH applied maths aswell, but this would have meant teaching myself 3 full subjects which sounds rather insane!

With all due respect, higher maths is like half of an AS judging by the syllabus I'm looking at. It's like a perfect match for P1 + exponentials + circles + P2 calculus. It's the AH that covers by far the most of an Alevel.

Yes, I don't know what's on your AH physics, I don't think it's very much like physics alevel which was just mishmashing things like relativity to electricity to simple harmonic motion, the amount of calculus used in physics alevel is very very limited.

Aww fuck off, really.

Yes, I'm insecure - in fact I'm just about to go and check all the windows are locked, pull the blackout blinds and phone all my mates to check they still like me. Get a grip.

I gave the number of people to show it was small. I gave my grade requirements to show the ridiculous AAAAAA you suggested was wrong, and that I had unconditional offers to show that my Highers were obviously valued by universites, both of which back up my argument. Hence neither was without reason, prick.

I'm not going to go and look for/type out my entire maths syllabus, I've got better things to do to be honest. The fact remains that our "ordinary" maths syllabus contains a large amount reserved for your "further" one, which obviously suggests it's harder.

Wow, well done for expressing your arguments so cleanly. I've always thought people who resort to drastically dirty language are those who know they've been speaking rubbish really and have no idea as to what to say when they're point has been proven wrong.

Perhaps you should be telling yourself to get a grip dear, seems like you need the advice more than me!

Sure dearie, and you might want to filter out the bad language whilst you're at it, it might even make your point seem vaguely plausible. I tend to switch off when people run their mouths like you seem to do.

How is that a fact with literally no evidence? You use your own laziness as an excuse to not bother backing up a point, and then claim that your point is a certain fact, your logic is an embarrasement to yourself. Be very ashamed and I hope for your sakes that you're not planning on being a lawyer.
"I'm too lazy to produce any evidence, but the fact is, the defendant is innocent because I say so!" Haha indeed.
I suspect there are topics in our syllabus which aren't covered in yours at all, thereby balancing out the fact that some of the topics in your syllabus are done in FM, otherwise it makes no sense to me how the time would balance out, ie how could you have time to do the equivalent of maths and FM alevel for AH, and 2/3 other AH subjects, whereas we have time only for single maths A level and another 2/3 subjects. This would suggest that your AH maths syllabus must take the same amount of time as ours and so must contain a similar number of topics, meaning that although you may do a couple of topics in FM, there may be topics that we do in single maths Alevel which you don't cover.
You never answered me as to whether you do Mechs/Stats/Decision, and if AH does only consist of pure, then you'd be better off comparing AH maths to Alevel pure maths ie P1-P6, where I might add that all the topics mentioned so far by yourself are from what I understand covered in modules P1-P6. In this case, comparing AH maths to normal single Alevel maths is not a fair comparison as our extra time is taken up by mechs/stats/decision maths, so whilst you may be doing complex numbers, we might be doing Collisions or Normal Distribution.

I believe I've dealt with all of that already. I agree that there may be areas which we do not cover which are in "ordinary" A level maths but would argue that the ones we replace them with are harder, and based on the fact that these appear in what is often regarded as the hardest A level this appears to be the case.

Since you ask, AH maths is now a pure course, though until last year it was available with mechanics/statistics/numerical analysis as the third unit (remember this is a 1 year course), but this has now become a seperate 3-unit course in applied maths.

I still believe our exam system is definately harder, and is much more like the "old style" of a big paper at the end of the year. I've certainly never heard anyone say exams are getting harder.

Highers are harder than AS btw. My computing teacher has experience of the same subjects in both systems before you say anything.
In his opinion A2= Higher and a bit more, and he agrees that AAAAA at Higher= AAA at A-Level.
6th year isn't the important year for us academically you see. It's a skive year for almost everyone, unless they're need more qualifications for uni.

scottish AH maths syllabus:
Unit 1
Advanced algebra
Advanced differentiation
Advanced integration
Functions
Matrices
Unit 2
Further calculus
Complex numbers
Sequences and sets
Elementary Number Theory
Unit 3
Vectors
Matrix Algebra
Further sequences and sets
Ordinary Differential Equations
Advanced Number Theory


This is a slimmed down version of pure4-6, the modules which form A2 puremaths alevel.

You said it yourself, it's "almost further maths." Well what you were actually saying is "it's almost puremaths A2." Both are done in an equivalent time, at an equivalent age. When it benefitted your argument, a more expansive course was a good thing, now you're saying it's a bad thing because yours is more 'in depth.'

I'm sorry to have to keep on about this, I don't particularly like getting caught up in petty comparisons of syllabuses, but we're a tad sick of hearing that Alevels are pissy jokes, and that anything we achieve pales in comparison to your 'proper' exams. It's clear that if you actually compare equivalent qualifications, they're both similar in content.

Hang on - how is it "slimmed down"? I've looked for A level syllabus but can't find them.

Higher maths is pure1 + exponentials + circles. I think that's like 1.5-2 modules. If you did 5 subjects and they all contained that much content, that would be (liberal estimate) 10 AS modules, which would be just over 1.5 Alevels. I would sincerely argue that that does not equal AAA. Can you get into say UCL with AAAAA at higher and no AHs?

To use a similar situation to as I did recently...

You get beaten up for doing well in tests at school, you had to spend evenings looking after your siblings, your peers forced you into a life of drugs and vandalism, your inner city comprehensive teachers don't give a shit, they say that all that matters is getting a grade C, they don't care about you as you're "sorted", you're slowed down in the classroom by people who are struggling, your mother suffers depression, you didn't have the money for books and your mate was shot etc, then try getting AAA.

Someone who got ABB in the above conditions is likely to perform better at university than an AAA student who had it easy.

Why do UCAS value an A at AS equal to a B at Higher then, and 5 Highers/3AH/3A-level are all worth the same?

Higher maths is pure1 + exponentials + circles. I think that's like 1.5-2 modules. If you did 5 subjects and they all contained that much content, that would be (liberal estimate) 10 AS modules, which would be just over 1.5 Alevels. I would sincerely argue that that does not equal AAA. Can you get into say UCL with AAAAA at higher and no AHs?