Rise in top grades boosts GCSE record – My son just returned with his GCSE results to a very proud Mum and Dad, and sister, with a clutch of excellent passes in his exams. Very pleased he got an excellent grade in chemistry, although he claims to hate "my" subject.
One thing I will say, is that despite the mathering of the O-level generation, these teenage trials are not easy, they're not dumbed down, and the effort the students have to put in to get the grades is just as much as we did for ours back in the day. Only difference seems to be they waste far less time writing up notes than we ever did! I'll spare his blushes and not list all 11 pass grades ;-)
As you can probably guess, we’re all very proud of the grades achieved. But, on a wider, more philosophical note: Shouldn’t they scrap exams altogether and have ongoing assessment and random intermittent trials of skills and knowledge, character, stamina, you know, like in the real world…
I’ve never understood how s(h)itting yourself in a room for three hours with a sheet of questions and a blank sheet of paper and a pen was meant to assess how good you’d be at any job or activity other than taking exams. More to the point, the timing of exams is the worst you can imagine. 16 years old and forced to ignore your hormones and happy genes to spend endless hours poring over textbooks and notes trying to prep for exams? What were they thinking?