English Exam Boards- Ludicrous overspending. Your tax money wasted on rubbish.

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Da Boss**

One of the most shocking things to me as an Irish immigrant to Great Britain was how your examinations are administered. Most things in your education system are massively better than the irish system, but the way examinations have been privatised is completely insane. Not only do you still have to pay for your exam entries, you have to pay ridiculous fees for useless vocational qualifications that require minimal moderation and are barely ever updated. Corruption is rife, with exam providers competing for the most "attractive" exam. (Read: Easy).
So despite this expense for poor service, you still have to pay a government agency (Ofqual) to regulate the exam boards (ineffectually).

Teachers are bamboozled by spec after spec changing all the time in the hunt for 100% C and above surety. Students are completely confused as to the worth of their qualifications. And you are being massively overcharged.

In Ireland, we just have the state set the examinations, and the department of education reviews them. Students have a number, so they are anonymous, and teachers are hired to mark the exams over the summer. The whole thing is moderated by the department of education. Much more efficient, much cheaper, much less open to corruption from the profit motive. Here's an article on the BBC about how much you are being charged as a taxpayer so your kids can recieve mostly useless qualifications.
Stuff like this undermines the entire profession. Privatisation doesn't work for everything damnit!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18010515

**Leigen_Zero**

As I was told by my (somewhat bitter) chemistry teacher when I started my chemistry A-level (also, I paraphrase a little):

To pass the exams you don't have to learn chemistry, you just have to memorize the syllabus, if you can regurgitate the syllabus you will pass the exam. Since we don't have enough time and/or resources, that's what we are going to do.

IMHO the whole system of examination in primary and secondary level is a load of crap, simply because it requires the memorisation and repetition of what the examiners have set forth, and is in no way related to actually knowing the subject you are studying.

Take for instance, English Literature, you pass the exam by memorising the exam board's opinions and comments on the given texts, not by being taught how to examine a text and form opinions on it based on justification, interpretation, metaphor etc. You might think Romeo & Juliet means something completely different to what the WJEC/OCA/EDEXCEL/etc examiners think, but that means squat to them (regardless of how eloquent and knowledgable your interpretation is), they just want you to vomit forth what they fed you, and mark you down if your handwriting is a little messy.

IMHO the entire system is fundamentally flawed, we have created a dull, simplistic and demotivating educational experience, and then complain that kids hate going to school. If we created a learning environment that actually stimulated and engaged pupils (instead of the current 'write this down, learn parrot-fashion, repeat in exam, pass) we might actually be able to improve the pass rate without having to go through another session of dumbing down the exams.

**Medium of Death**

I wonder if it is too heavily ingrained to be removed easily?

Presumably these poor exams and dumbed down educations are being reflected in the Universities?

Do you have a rough cost comparison with the Irish system?

**Revenent Reiko**

Absolutely. theres always such a big stink made over the exact percentages of C and above that no thought is ever given to the content of the exams themselves, or whether the students are ever learning and understanding, or just learning by rote to pass the exam. Have to say i wasnt as aware of the corruption and ludicrous spending involved as well, but after having only recently left the education system, it is very interesting to see the more 'grown up' side of the equation

Legion, i am 100% with you. Exams in this country (even up to degree level) are based almost solely on your ability to memorise whatever is on the mark scheme, there is very little else that is actually tested (some subjects do vary this however).

Even after being told in First year (pretty much the first day) that Chemists (people who have studied Chemistry, not Pharmacists) are lazy, and [we] would much rather look up data/an equation in a book than remember it, what was in one of my final year exams? thats right, memorising equations and data values...nice work everyone.

The same way as English Lit: Biology A-Level, you either memorise the exact wording that is on the mark scheme for any given question or you get a big fat zero as if you hadnt answered in the first place...

This whole thing is the reason why i have always hated exams. my memory isnt perfect, i can easily admit that, but being 'tested' almost purely on how good your memory is and not whether you have an actual understanding of the subject is just the worst way of doing things they possibly could have chosen. i cannot remember (

) how many times i have found myself 'unable' to answer a question just because i cant remember the exact word or phrase needed, whereas if there was any leeway at all then an explanation could have been given that would have answered perfectly well.

**purplefood**

It varies on intensity from board to board but by and large they are pedantic and rote adhering arseholes...

**Da Boss**

Medium of Death wrote:I wonder if it is too heavily ingrained to be removed easily?

Presumably these poor exams and dumbed down educations are being reflected in the Universities?

Do you have a rough cost comparison with the Irish system?

I don't have a cost comparison, though I am interested enough to try and find one, but it wouldn't be that useful because we cater to a far smaller student population. Ireland's got 6 million people, total.

I think that generally, when you get to university (especially if you went to a Grammar School) you sort of find your own way, but certainly University wouldn't accept some of the qualifications I'm forced to "teach".

I don't think it could possibly be so ingrained to remove easily. I don't want to talk too much about specifics. But seriously. A lot of these qualifications aren't worth bunk.

**Medium of Death**

This includes 300 different A-levels, 250 AS-levels and 800 GCSE options.

This part is just a complete 'what?' moment. How can there be that many options... really... really?

I think it might be filtering up the chain as well to be honest. A couple of people I know have got into teaching post graduates and while they are nice enough, I really don't see them as teacher material.
Maybe if they didn't piss away so much money on crap exams they could pay teachers more and get better ones by having a more selective candidate selection process.

**Da Boss**

Hah, mate, you want more people in teaching you gotta improve working conditions. Give me some more control, more ability to enforce discipline and make me less beholden to some half assed politically compromised framework, and I'd say you'd get a lot more people entering the profession. As it is, the job is so denigrated that you basically get no respect from kids, the government, the public or the parents. Paying more won't solve the raft of issues that we're facing- it wouldn't make me want to stay on here.

Edit: And on all the different qual types, well, that's the profit motive for you. When it's done by the government, there is no incentive to diversify like that. If the government did chocolate bars, they'd make a few flavours. Since it's private enterprise, you get a whole bunch of people making minor variations on the various flavours and marketing them different ways to try and sell their product. It's the same with exam boards. So you've got 8 flavours of Science GCSE, 4 flavours of crappy coursework Science, a Science BTEC, and so on. Profit drives all of this lunacy. It's a sterling example of why privatisation, especially done badly, does not improve everything.

**notprop**

Da Boss wrote:.....
I think that generally, when you get to university (especially if you went to a Grammar School) you sort of find your own way, but certainly University wouldn't accept some of the qualifications I'm forced to "teach"......

Are you trying to tell me the GCSE Peter Andre Studies A* I got wont get me into Cambridge? I am disgusted!

All of those pictures of Jordan I studied for nothing!!1!

Seriously though there is something wrong with qualifications in this country. I speak as someone who is currently having to do a NVQ level 6 (equivilent of a degree?.....my arse!) to get a health and safety card relative to my job. I already hold two honours degrees and nearly 15 years experience. This is typical of the BS in Britain today. It will cost my company £1200. Idiots.

**Da Boss**

It reeks of corruption to me, frankly. Why else should you have to do it? Who decided you needed that certification? I'm willing to bet they had links to the course/exam providers.

**purplefood**

It's odd because I've never met a teacher that likes an exam board but very few actively protest their existence, they do however seem to spend hours and hours trying to sway them to be more reasonable...

**Da Boss**

You credit us with far more power than we actually have, Purplefood. How would I protest their existence?

**purplefood**

Well Teacher's unions do seem to have some sway...
Wouldn't be too inconceivable for a union to start putting pressure on the government to nationalise exam boards...
Oh wait...
Tories...
Maybe in a few years?

**Medium of Death**

H&S does seem a bit over the top sometimes, the majority of the legislation comes out of a time in which heavy industry was the biggest factor in workplace related accidents.

H&S is very common sense for a lot of people, but it really just stops employers taking liberties with their workforce. That's what I like to think anyway.

Going back to the exams thing. I friend from my weekend job does some tutoring and she was saying that some of the past papers provided by private companies are simply abysmal.

Would it be difficult to expose this system as a complete waste of taxpayers money? A canny politician could use this issue to their advantage... sadly, I don't think we have any...

**purplefood**

Considering the criticism of the cuts it'd be a fairly good steppingstone for Labour to star regaining some popularity... or whatever it was they had when they got in...
Especially if you could show that the exam boards are in part responsible for the rubbish syllabus...

**SilverMK2**

I have to say that exams are a joke. But it's not even just in primary education but universities as well. There is so much variation between the exams and module contents in different universities for the same courses and subjects, hell there is a huge variation in how things are assessed in the same course within a university - and they are not trying to sell themselves in the same way that the exam boards are.

I like the sound of the Irish system (never thought I would ever say that!

). Certainly does not sound as brain numbingly stupid as the UK system.

My parents constantly complain about it (as they are teachers) and my wife has started to complain about it too (another teacher! Noooo!

).

**Da Boss**

The worst is not even the exam subjects, which while bad, are only just bad. It's when you have subjects that are 100% coursework where only a small number are moderated externally, the rest being marked internally...how do they justify the charges? I mean, I can see at least with exams, there's a bit of coming up with the actual content of the test each year.
But these coursework based courses, you come up with the spec and assessment criteria, and it doesn't change for nearly a decade, and some poorly paid moderator checks a small sample of each schools work, to churn out a whole bunch of "GCSE Equivalent" (yeah right) courses to keep the school's percentage of A*-C healthy for the league tables. Does the kids no good, and why does it cost so much? It's mind boggling.

**Leigen_Zero**

SilverMK2 wrote:I have to say that exams are a joke. But it's not even just in primary education but universities as well.

I will say that the greatest learning experience I have ever had was university. Although as you said, there is wild variation. I found that there was much less regurgitation of facts in the CompSci degree, the exams were very much 'apply the principles you have learned' rather than 'what is the definition of x rule concerning the topic y'.

Though I think, this will extend across the 'pure' subjects (e.g. comp sci, physics, mathematics, etc) moreso than the 'soft' subjects (e.g. sport science, etc).

If I were to give an example (based on a true story from secondary school vs extrapolated university experience)

While studying A Level chemistry, I was told that the Atomic Number of an element cannot ever be changed (thus lead can never become gold). So I raised my hand and said 'what if we used a particle accelerator to knock a few protons of a lead atom and make a gold atom'. The teachers response was 'There is nothing in the WJEC syllabus about particle accelerators etc, so as far as you are concerned, if you want to pass the exam you cannot change the atomic number of an element' (This is a true story).

Now, had I asked the same question in University (and had taken a chemistry degree instead of compsci). It believe the response would have been more like 'Yes, you are correct, however we don't have time in this lecture, perhaps we could discuss this after the lecture has finished?' and then there would have been a lengthy chat on particle accelerations and nuclear fission etc etc etc. (I base this on my experience of university lectures and lecturers).

**SilverMK2**

That is the case, but there is still huge variation between subjects or lecturers, regardless of whether they want you to just quote the lectures back or apply what you know, as to what counts as a 'passing' paper. Can't writ too much more as phone battery is dying

**Joey**

Girl at work got a B in English.
The other day we were producing a professional business document together and I had to teach her how to use capital letters, how to use commas (apparently all lists should be in bullet points...sigh), what a semi-colon is, amongst others.
So yeah, this is not news to me.

**liquidjoshi**

Well, I got an exam certificate for an exam that I didn't even take. 78/100, my name, student number, etc on the card, for an exam I never took.

Well, I won't complain. But I agree that some of the exam criteria is ridiculous. ICT AS coursework this year is a farce. Won't lie that I've seen part of the mark scheme and it does not add up to the task sheet given to us students. It's like they want us to guess the criteria for each question (it seems as though every one mark question has about seven or eight parts that have to have annotated evidence, despite them not telling us what those parts are.), effectively forcing us to guess the question and answer, rather than putting down a questions in a "we want to see X" manner.

Basically, I have not learned a single thing on my course, aside from the fact that the exam board cannot ask a straight question.

**purplefood**

Yeah, these days a good teacher is someone that teaches you how to play the exam board's game rather than the course...

**Leigen_Zero**

liquidjoshi wrote:ICT AS coursework this year is a farce

Let me just correct that for you, your 'How to use the microsoft office suite' AS coursework, because that's all I learned in ICT at school (that and how to get bypass the school filtering software to get access to flash games)

I remember in a back issue of PC Micromart the editor was complaining that his son was marked down for using keyboard shortcuts in programs during a 'all movements monitored by keyloggers/screencapture/etc' style coursework. When he complained to the exam board, he was told 'keyboard shortcuts are unprofessional and should be discouraged', which it turns out was a stance created because the monitoring software couldn't track ctrl, alt, shift etc...

Universities, businesses and everyone else has basically condemned ICT education in the UK, because it doesn't actually teach anyone about computers, just how to use a single software package.

**SilverMK2**

I'd agree. I dropped IT after AS when I got one of my papers back because I had apparently done poorly on it... on one section they asked the question "What kind of software would you use to create a flyer", to which I had answered "Desktop publishing software"... which they had marked wrong because the mark scheme said "DTP"...

I mean, wtf?

I practically carried several people in my IT class through GCSE and A-level by helping them do their work and could probably sit and do all the coursework in a single day with no prior knowledge of what it would be (as it was, I finished it all weeks ahead of everyone else, even working just 2 hours or so a week on it).

Decided there was no point doing a course which basically asked you to just do everything you had done in year 7, but with ridiculous documentation to show every minor thing you did...

Still got an A for my AS level IT even after basically deciding it was pointless about a month into the course.

**dæl**

I was under the impression that the Irish educational system was vastly better than that of the U.K. I could have done pretty much any of the exams from school/college with a frontal lobotomy.

Privatisation works for very little in my experience. Water companies have massive leaks and don't fix them because that doesn't make economic sense. Gas and Electric charge extortionate amounts and have irrational and confusing tarriffs leading to old people freezing to death in the 21st century. The trains are so massively overpriced that it's often cheaper to fly, and now they want to cut costs by not manning stations. And don't even get me started on the plans for the NHS and Police service. Fundamentally privitisation means the benefactor of a service is the shareholders, where as a public service is just that, a service run for the benefit of the public. Or at least it should be. I fear the corruption of the trade unions in the '70s has poisoned the well for any hope of taking on the more socially responsible aspects of socialism.

**SilverMK2**

Have to say that you seem to have hit the nail on the head dæl.

**Fifty**

Leigen_Zero wrote:While studying A Level chemistry, I was told that the Atomic Number of an element cannot ever be changed (thus lead can never become gold). So I raised my hand and said 'what if we used a particle accelerator to knock a few protons of a lead atom and make a gold atom'. The teachers response was 'There is nothing in the WJEC syllabus about particle accelerators etc, so as far as you are concerned, if you want to pass the exam you cannot change the atomic number of an element' (This is a true story).

Now, had I asked the same question in University (and had taken a chemistry degree instead of compsci). It believe the response would have been more like 'Yes, you are correct, however we don't have time in this lecture, perhaps we could discuss this after the lecture has finished?' and then there would have been a lengthy chat on particle accelerations and nuclear fission etc etc etc. (I base this on my experience of university lectures and lecturers).

There is not a million miles between thsose sentiments - just that your A-Level teacher did not have time for a discussion after class, as they had another lesson to teach. I teach A-Level Physics, GCSE Physics, Chemistry and Biology and used to, and may in the future, teach all three at KS3 as well. When kids start their GCSEs, I introduce them to the concept of "Lies-we-tell-to-children." It basically goes like this;

"Lots of stuff your teachers told you last year, including possibly me, was lies. We did this, because you were too young to understand the truth, but also too young to accept the idea we were telling you something hugely simplified, or even incorrect. Now you are old enough to udnerstand that sometimes you need to know a simple version of something, so that you can learn another idea, then come back and refine your understanding of the first idea. I will lie to you again during GCSE. If you do A-Level Physics, I will lie to you during A-Levels. If you go to University, you will be lied to again. If you learn my lies thoroughly, you will get good grades, and that is what I am paid for, and what your parents and the Prime Minister want. If you learn to question what you hear, instead of blindly accepting what you hear from me, you will find Physics much more interesting. You will also find you have to work a lot harder to answer your own questions. But then, you will probably come to love Physics, and become a proper Physicist, and probably one day become considerably better at Physics than I am. Your choice."

**LordofHats**

Sounds like an extreme version of the SAT to me. The SAT is a test of futility. Basic common sense and a little know how is all you need to get a good score. I didn't study at all for it and scored an 1820. Smarter people than me got 1200's and 1300's. It's a logic test and that we use it baffles me.

**dogma**

LordofHats wrote: Smarter people than me got 1200's and 1300's. It's a logic test and that we use it baffles me.

That's why we use it.

Granted, its not a great predictor of collegiate success (I got a 1600 when it was out of 1600 and graduated with a 2.9.), but it is a decent way of separating people with talent from those who work hard.

Note, I'm not trying to imply one is better than the other.

**Leigen_Zero**

dogma wrote:but it is a decent way of separating people with talent from those who work hard.

Note, I'm not trying to imply one is better than the other.

Judging by my minute knowledge of work ethic over in the states, I'd say the latter is better. It seems most of your companies judge performance based on how long you sit at your desk, rather than what you do when you're at it.