Are GCSE exams getting easier - thanks to #TNS #TheNowShow
This is one little subject that I've been pondering for a while (mostly due to tutoring the subjects to some really hard working pupils who are utterly, utterly let down by the current GCSE sylabus/examinations when they hit A Levels). So thanks to The Now Show for comparing two science papers, one from John Holmes' GCSE year, and one from last year (probably 21st Century Science :)).
From a GCSE paper from the late 1980s (at a guess, 1989).
The process of dialysis may be used for patients whose kidneys malfunction. This washes their blood with water purified from significant quantities of Calcium ions. A 10 cubic centimetre sample of water known to contain Ca2+ ions was passed through a resin column. the water was collected & in a titration it was found to neutralise 8 cubic centimetres of aqueous Sodium Hydroxide.
Assuming the patient needs water containing less than 0.01g per cubic decimeter of Ca2+ ions, decide if the water is suitable for use in dialysis.
From 2008's GCSE Science paper.
Sharon is riding a horse. She is wearing a riding hat. Give the name of the one organ that the hat protects.
OK, it's not a fair comparison. There are more testing questions, but very few that will stretch the most able. There's far too much multiple choice, join the ideas with a line, work out which opinion/fact supports idea A or B, and short-answer questions (showing an iGCSE paper, or an A Level paper to students who have taken the 21st Century course usually brings out cold sweats as there might be a question with more than 2 lines to write your answer in - they get this in other subjects at GCSE, but in Science, it always seems to stump and disturb).
The current courses do encourage a far wider range of understanding, trying not to leave people behind and give everyone a reasonable science education (something that I encourage, and would never put down), but it lets down those who are to continue and specialise in a subject. Oh, and they waste far too much time on 'opinions'... This isn't an attack on the students who work hard and succeed in their GCSEs today. Just the system itself.
My two pence :).
Photograph courtesy of.... ugh. The Daily Mail. God, I've just seen myself ranting in the pub brandishing a copy of the Mail shouting 'Immigrants, Lesbians and Teachers are destroying our childrens' way of life'. Quite humbling :).
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