Old exam papers. Dumb down? You decide!
April 25, 2009 in Down Memory Lane, School Memorabilia
We have been given a number of old GCE ‘O’ level examination papers from the late 50′s and early 60′s. These will be added regularly to the site. There are differing views on whether exams are getting easier, children are brighter or trying harder, teaching is better, etc. It is not my place to offer a view, I shall just stimulate the debate. Below is the July 1959 Mathematics ‘O’ level paper 1 for your ‘enjoyment’.
Why not add the answers, using the comments box below, for the benefit of those of us struggling with the questions! Please note – comments will not appear instantly as they will need to be accepted by one of the website team, generally in the evening. Click on each page to expand to full size; click on the Close button in the bottom right corner to return to this page. More to follow.
David Palmer
pippa said on April 27, 2009
Ouch !!
I’ve checked out the Geometry one (Q8) using my CAD draughting software here at the office, and the angle is 108.07 degrees, and the chord length is 57.16mm
Were we expected to be that accurate?
No tables? (No calculators, of course?) How on earth did we stand a chance?
David JM 1961
pippa said on April 28, 2009
I even passed this on to an old pal who went to Sheerness Tech., he got “O’s” and “A’s” and went on to become a research programmer at Shell Research and Abbotts. Guess what?
He didn’t have a clue where to start. He used to, that’s for sure, but time can be cruel.
So. What’s all this refusal to believe that education and exams are being dumbed down??
Kids today don’t know they’re born…………….
Thank goodness I’m about as educated as I can manage – and that’ll do me.
David JM. BGS 1961 (GEH breathed a sigh of relief when I left – or was that a pulmonary coming on ???)
martynlawrence said on July 4, 2009
Greetings everyone,
Some would say that it is difficult to realistically compare the old GCE with the newer GCSE. From my own personal viewpoint, I am strongly of the opinion that the examination criteria of current GCSE is of a lower standard (ie easier) than the old GCE.
The style of GCE questions tended to be deeper, and to require more thought and reasoning ability – they stretched your real knowledge of the topic and its application.
Current GCSE questions are much “thinner” in content, shorter in length, but they do tend to cover a larger percentage of the syllabus as a result. There also seems to be a large number of questions in GCSEs that you could even get right by making a lucky guess.
In GCEs, the students had to remember most, or all, of the formulae used. In GCSEs, the formulae all seem to be given, all you have to do now is bung in the relevant numbers and out pops the answer!
Or (emotive question following)……..are students now just being used as “cannon fodder” by schools merely to generate performance statistics for the League Tables? Is that really education? Why do UK students compare so poorly with other European students in both literacy and numeracy?
So, what do other readers of this thread think about this question of “dumbing down”
I’ve had a go at some of the questions in the paper that has been published above. Below are my answers – I do not claim they are all correct, and would welcome feedback (or marking!!) from others.
I now have my own private tuition business, and can easily trace the significant increase in tuition demand over the past ten years or so. Why should that be?
All the best
Martyn Lawrence
Holsworthy Tuition
http://www.holsworthytuition.co.uk
Q1 (i) 0.806 (ii) 7 and 1/5
Q2 (i) (a + b)/4a (ii) x = 3.5 (iii) 44%
Q3 (i) 73.40 (ii) 50.75
Q5 (i) 4 (ii) 4.54 and -1.54
Q6 8.19 g/cu.cm
Q7 y = 138 – x
I’ll have go at the rest some other time
Phil Goldacre said on August 1, 2009
I just checked through quickly and found you left out the answer to Q1 (iii). I made it 9s 6d (47.5p). Happy days.
djenning said on August 20, 2009
The standard nowadays is lamentably lower. Even in the 70s, kids at school were learning topics such as differentiation and integration, for O’level Maths,by the London University Examination Board. Some of the questions set would now be regarded as ‘A2′-level standard, these days! Calculus is not studied at GCSE-level.
Over formal geometry, there is great deal of difference in having to prove theorems (often required for O’level) compared to merely having to apply them (as with GCSE)! The former is far more difficult.
At A’level, the modular system now requires a candidate to sit four, ‘Core’ papers to prove their competence in Pure Mathematics and each paper has roughly 12-13 questions on it. Compare that with the sheer elegance of a 1970s paper requiring a candidate to answer eight questions out of ten in three houurs in one paper only! In those days,the paper was structured so that weak candidates could ‘get by’ by ‘cherry picking’ parts of questions, but brighter students had far more opportunity to prove their worth. Overall, this makes for a much fairer assessment of students’ abilities, without the need for wasting their time (and that of examiners) by getting them to sit four, separate, ‘easy’ papers that fail to identify the gifted from the mediocre.
What gets me the most is not just that we’ve reached the stage where GCSEs and A’levels say so little about those who take them, that the whole system will need to be disbanded, but that the lowering of standards has the knock-on effect of discriminating against older peoples qualifications.
Say you’re an older person with little ‘office experience’ holding mediocre O’levels, applying for an office job demanding good GCSEs in Maths and English. An employer, mindful of the difficulties over literacy and numeracy with young employees holding A-grades at GCSE-level, would no doubt regard them as uncompetitive and not even bother to interview!