7 Questions on GCSE Maths

[47137]

The BBC have posted a short quiz here, to give a flavour of GCSE maths questions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23779549

 

I got 7/7 and it took me about two minutes to do the lot, all in my head no calculator or "working out" ... if these questions are representative of today's GCSE Maths then it really has been dumbed down a huge amount since I did my O level in 1978 and A level in 1980.

 

Is this because multiple choice is inherently easier than actually working out the answer for yourself, or has something else given way?

 

- Richard

(I got a 'B' for both my papers)

[BoD]

Is this because multiple choice is inherently easier than actually working out the answer for yourself, or has something else given way?

 

On the actual papers it wouldn't be multiple choice.  That is the format  the BBC quiz.

[Metr0Land]

Afraid it's one of the tragedies of modern life. 

 

I invigilated exams in a local school for 4 years.  IMHO GSCE maffs is really dumbed down which creates a double whammy.  Kids are being given the impression they're good at it when they aren't.  What's worse is they go on to A level maths thinking they can do it, only to find A level maths isn't much dumber (IMHO) than 40-50 years ago.  Consequently a lot more struggle at maths and move to other subjects than struggle with other subjects.

[t-b-g]

Multiple choice was being introduced into school exams in the 70s, when I was doing O levels. I don't know if it is still part of the system today but no doubt there will be a teacher or pupil on RMWeb, who can confirm one way or the other. 

 

By pure gueswork, with a choice of 4 answers, anybody should get 25% without even trying. As most multiple choice answers seemed to me to include two that could be immediately ruled out, that left a choice of 2 to go at, making a 50% success rate easy to achieve.

 

So it became possible to pass an exam with a tiny amount of knowledge and a lot of sensible guessing.

 

Has anybody ever done an experiment where a maths pupil from modern times is set an exam from, say, 1975, without multiple choice answers in front of them, or a modern exam with the multiple choices removed?

 

I think it would be interesting!

 

Tony

[Ashcombe]

I'm not sure that this is actually a GCSE Maths paper as it says at the beginning that it's been taken from BBC Bitesize, a revision website for various subjects, which gives a flavour of GCSE Maths.

 

My most recent teaching experience has been with Year 6 (top end of Primary) where children take their KS2 SATS.  The Maths (Numeracy) papers undertaken involve a timed mental test (20%) using a CD; a written paper in which there was no multiple choice (40%) and another written paper (40%) for which a calculator could be used. There was a range of questions including a few to challenge the more able, who if successful, could achieve a Level 5. These papers were considered by teachers to be rigorous in testing what children of average (Level 4) and above ability should be expected to know but were daunting for those of poor ability. Unlike the situation at GCSE in Maths, where I believe students may be entered for a higher or medium paper, for KS2 SATS it was one size fits all!

[gordon s]

Is it me or is this diagram wrong?  Surely that angle is 18 degrees or has it just been drawn incorrectly?...

 

It's over 50 years since I was in school...:-)

 

 

Edit:  90-72 = 18 not 28...Dope!

[BoD]

Most diagrams on Maths papers come with the rider 'Diagram not to scale'

It's surprising how hard is to get even the best students to understand that means calculate don't measure!

[St. Simon]

Hi,

 

Yes, the BBC quiz is misleading, in a GCSE maths paper, the questions are not multiple choice, (bar from one when which is your first GCSE exam paper) and can be quite hard for some people, I found them hard from time to time! But I do agree with Metr0land in that the gap between GCSE and A-Level maths is huge, I got an A in maths and GCSE and have come out with a C in A-level maths, but only after several D's and a couple of resits.

 

Of course I look back to GCSE and think it's easy as do lots of people, but since doing GCSE we have go on to successfully complete harder things, so it would seem easier to us!

 

Is it me or is this diagram wrong?  Surely that angle is 28 degrees or has it just been drawn incorrectly?...

 

It's over 50 years since I was in school...:-)

 

Screen Shot 2013-08-23 at 10.31.21.png

 

Most questions in exams are not drawn to scale they are just a visual representations to help you, they usually bear little in common to reality.

 

Simon

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Has anybody ever done an experiment where a maths pupil from modern times is set an exam from, say, 1975, without multiple choice answers in front of them, or a modern exam with the multiple choices removed?

Just get hold of trad course London, Oxford or Cambridge 'O' level papers from the early 1970s. The same questions are now set at A level.

 

The examination system now operates on a completely different concept. The 'O' level was designed to be passed by the brightest 20%, and the 'A' level about 5%. It was not recommended to proceed to A level unless the O level pass was was a good one; either a 1 or 2 on the 1-6 pass scale, or an A on the A-C pass scale.

 

There was a separate CSE exam which operated parallel to the 'O' level back then: multiple choice, pass by guesswork fully possible, as those of us who had taken (and passed) Statistics at O level at 15 (Year ten) could at the time determine. How do I know this? This exam was marked by the staff at the school; or alternatively and unofficially by getting the sixth form to help out. Some of the questions were excrement of the highest order. I gave one kid a 'correct' on the question 'how do you measure the height of an aeroplane' for his suggestion of 'tape measure'. He had ignored the multiple choice options from which the 'correct' answer was 'altimeter'.

 

The idea now is to have an exam at 16 which the majority can pass, which is the GCSE, and it is the old CSE in all but name. The knock on is that graduate education has had to be extended from what were three year courses, sometimes taken in two (my MiL graduated at age 19 for example) to the four to five year norm of today.

[Baby Deltic]

Well, I have to admit that I am crap at maths, and I only found the first question and the VAT question easy. My knowledge of trigonometry is zero now, unless its a circle or equalateral triangle, and my ability with algebra is 0(FA). I got the fraction by multiplying 15's the hard way rather than as demonstrated on their answer sheet.

 

Yours shamefully,

 

Freddy F*~*wit

[Oldddudders]

The 'O' level was designed to be passed by the brightest 20%, and the 'A' level about 5%.

Just as the 11-plus exam was designed to take the top 14% from primary schools and send them to grammar school. When I started at the latter in 1959, there was a small 6th form, and a handful of pupils got into university. By the time I left in 1966, almost everyone went into the 6th form, and at least half went on to uni.

 

Most grammar schools were abolished by political edict in the late 60s/early 70s, because they were deemed undemocratic. They represented an educational meritocracy - most were not fee-paying, and pupils arrived solely by having succeeded at that 11+ exam. Dumbing-down began right there, when comprehensive was seen as the way forward.

[28XX]

This quiz had a rather pleasant consequence last night.  Peter (25) who flunked his maths 9 years ago and Lashana (14) who is starting GCSE run-up next month tackled it together, with a bit of prompting from me, and both learned something new.  Great stuff!

[bluebottle]

Seven out of seven! Thank you, BBC, for dumbing down the GCSE maths paper to a level which enabled me to reassure myself that I am intellectually superior to today's sixteen-year-olds. I suspect, however, that I might not have fared so well had I had to tackle the real thing ...

[47137]

Just get hold of trad course London, Oxford or Cambridge 'O' level papers from the early 1970s. The same questions are now set at A level.

I may try to work up to an A level one but I will need a stiff drink ...

 

Here is one of the six compulsory questions in the 1980 Joint Matriculation Board Mathematics Ordinary Syllabus B Paper 1, this is simply the first old exam paper from "my generation" I found online:

 

 

This does not compare with the two equivalent questions offered by the BBC

If the BBC questions are representative (discregarding the given choice of answers) then today's exams are dumbed down, period.

 

The only possible consolation I see is to perceive my council tax, of which a big chunk goes on education, is paying for my own education all those years ago.

 

- Richard.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...Most grammar schools were abolished by political edict in the late 60s/early 70s, because they were deemed undemocratic. They represented an educational meritocracy - most were not fee-paying, and pupils arrived solely by having succeeded at that 11+ exam. Dumbing-down began right there, when comprehensive was seen as the way forward...

And what has happened since is that the private education sector has expanded to fill the gap left by the demise of the grammar school hothouse. Which means many publically educated and able teachers lost to the state system, because so many parents recognise that the state system cannot properly stretch their able children. And worse those who are very bright but from less well off homes have a reduced chance to be intellectually challenged, because what was previously funded by the state has now largely been put out of reach.

 

I was privileged to know a man who reached the top of the tree in his scientific discipline: born the son of a farm labourer in 1925. I wouldn't give much for the chances of a similarly gifted child born in equally impoverished circumstances today. This impoverishes us all.

[Pacific231G]

Just as the 11-plus exam was designed to take the top 14% from primary schools and send them to grammar school. When I started at the latter in 1959, there was a small 6th form, and a handful of pupils got into university. By the time I left in 1966, almost everyone went into the 6th form, and at least half went on to uni.

 

Most grammar schools were abolished by political edict in the late 60s/early 70s, because they were deemed undemocratic. They represented an educational meritocracy - most were not fee-paying, and pupils arrived solely by having succeeded at that 11+ exam. Dumbing-down began right there, when comprehensive was seen as the way forward.

 

The old system wasted the lives of an awful lot of intelligent pupils who weren't in the seven percent lucky enough- and luck played an important role- to pass the 11 plus. I did pass the 11 plus - partly thanks I suspect to coaching from my mother who was a teacher- but one of my friends who was at least as bright as me didn't.  John went to the local Secondary Modern which was not a good one and I happened to run into him about four years later. By then the spark had been very thoroughly extinguished and I think he ended up as a semi-skilled worker on a car production line. 

 

There is a theory that one reason the secondary moderns were abolished was because too many middle class parents who couldn't afford fee paying schools found their little dahlings going to them rather than the grammar schools they felt entitled to. Have you ever heard a parent say that they support the 11 plus or grammar schools because a secondary modern would be the ideal school for their own child?

 

The old selective system basically put the lion's share of the resources into providing a high quality education for a small elite while the majority of kids got a pi** poor education that this country should have been ashamed of and which IMHO was a major factor in our industrial decline.

 

When the 11 plus was being hotly debated during I think the early 1970s I remember a Panorama programme with a title that summed it up perfectly "If at first you don't succeed, you don't succeed"

 

BTW I tried the BBC test questions and, without the multiple choice element, which clearly wasn't in the original as it asked for answers to two places of decimals, they were at least as hard as those in the maths O level I passed in 1967. I also know several fairly senior engineers who still can't get their heads around a VAT calculation so I'm glad kids are being taught useful aspects of maths like that.

 

I'm not a teacher so have no axe to grind but my work has led me to spend quite a lot of time around education over the past twenty or so years. When I've been in schools the one thing that really has struck me is how much better the overall standard of teaching is than it ever was at my own "good" school during the 1960s.

[BoD]

Here is one of the six compulsory questions in the 1980 Joint Matriculation Board Mathematics Ordinary Syllabus B Paper 1, this is simply the first old exam paper from "my generation" I found online:

 

1980.PNG

 

This does not compare with the two equivalent questions offered by the BBC

If the BBC questions are representative (discregarding the given choice of answers) then today's exams are dumbed down, period.

 

The BBC show some representative questions but not a full representation.  Remember too that GCSE is aimed at all pupils and not just the top 20% as someone pointed out earlier. Here is an example of a couple of 'higher' questions

 

 

Dumber?  Yes.  But not as dumbed down as some would have you believe.

[Oldddudders]

 

When the 11 plus was being hotly debated during I think the early 1970s I remember a Panorama programme with a title that summed it up perfectly "If at first you don't succeed, you don't succeed"

 

 

The year I started at the grammar school, the local mixed secondary-modern school was split into two single-sex schools. Five years later, when I entered the 6th form, several pupils joined us from other schools. Among them was a girl who had started at the new girls' secondary school the day I joined the grammar school, and who had emerged from that school with 9 'O' Levels. She passed 3 'A' Levels and went to Newcastle Uni (I think) to study architecture. The secondary modern system had not failed her.

[Kenton]

I have always believed that education has very little to do with money.

 

It is about:

1. the will of the child to learn (in an environment where books and tuition are provided - by the state)

2. the encouragement of the parents in the child attending to and rewarding achievement (encouragement)

3. Not using failure as an excuse to stop.

 

Competitiveness has been removed from education "everyone has to have a Grade C" "no one must be given an 'F'ail" "10% must get an 'A'" - league tables and all other forms of nonsense that simply do not measure what is important - that the children of today should be at least as educated as their parents.

 

Where money helps is that it allows you into the network of all those who have succeeded (educated or not). If Daddy mixes socially with politicians, business leaders and doctors then the child is more likely to succeed than if Daddy spends all his time in the pub or betting shop with the only topics being discussed being football and cricket.

[Oldddudders]

Where money helps is that it allows you into the network of all those who have succeeded (educated or not). If Daddy mixes socially with politicians, business leaders and doctors then the child is more likely to succeed than if Daddy spends all his time in the pub or betting shop with the only topics being discussed being football and cricket.

And if Daddy went to a horrid boarding school which he hated, there seems to be plenty of evidence he will send his sons there too!

[shortliner]

"Character Building, don't you know?" or "Well, it never did me any harm!" or "I didn't get where I am today, without........" which is PRECISELY why the country is in the state it is!

I shall say no more - or a ban will loom over the horizon!

[ZiderHead]

I got 7/7 and it took me about two minutes to do the lot, all in my head no calculator or "working out" ... 

 

You can calculate cosines in your head? You should have stuck with maths, you sound like PhD material.

[Kenton]

 

"Character Building, don't you know?" or "Well, it never did me any harm!" or "I didn't get where I am today, without........" which is PRECISELY why the country is in the state it is!

 

Precisely - what I was thinking - ex boarding grammar school, with military ties (>50% ex military boarders) the one difference was that I was a dayboy intake (the riff-raff) and my father only aspired for me to go there. Definitely sums it up though "Character Building, don't you know?" (over 50% ended up in the military one way or another. and no it never did me any harm - though I can put one or two scars down to the regimen but I think the country is in the state it is in because of greed over work ethic, most of which started in the 70's and culminating in the compensation for stupidity culture that now abounds.

[APOLLO]

4 out of 7 and I guessed 2 of those !!.

 

God, I hate maffs.

 

Brit15

[47137]

You can calculate cosines in your head? You should have stuck with maths, you sound like PhD material.

No I don't. I didn't even think about cosines - I looked at the drawing, saw the angle was drawn much too narrow, and redrew the picture in my head. Thought about 1 km and they offered 1.05 - must be right.

 

I have never found much use for cosines - too much like tangents.

 

- Richard.