Funny how whenever school exam results are better than the year before, 
it is due to the teachers, schools and children getting better. If they 
get worse, it's because the exams are harder than last year.

Surely the obvious solution would be to award the top grade (A or A* or 
1 or 10 or whatever) to the top 5% of those taking the exam. But then 
these are the same people who are vigorously against performance related 
pay.

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> Funny how whenever school exam results are better than the year before,
> it is due to the teachers, schools and children getting better. If they
> get worse, it's because the exams are harder than last year.
>
> Surely the obvious solution would be to award the top grade (A or A* or
> 1 or 10 or whatever) to the top 5% of those taking the exam. But then
> these are the same people who are vigorously against performance related
> pay.

The problem with distributing grades along a bell curve, like that, is 
that in years where the class is full of genies, someone who has an 
otherwise good grasp of the theory ends up with a C, and years when the 
class is full of morons, you give an A to someone who doesn't merit one.

As one of my engineering teachers used to say: "would like to know that 
the "A student" who is designing the bridge (or plane, or whatever) only 
got her A because the rest of the class flunked?"

On the other hand, he was a bit extreme and if he was allowed to, would 
only give As and Fs.  In his own words, you either master the theory, or 
you're a menace to society.

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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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>> Surely the obvious solution would be to award the top grade (A or A* or
>> 1 or 10 or whatever) to the top 5% of those taking the exam. But then
>> these are the same people who are vigorously against performance related
>> pay.
>
> The problem with distributing grades along a bell curve, like that, is
> that in years where the class is full of genies, someone who has an
> otherwise good grasp of the theory ends up with a C, and years when the
> class is full of morons, you give an A to someone who doesn't merit one.

Agreed if only a small number of people are taking the exam, a handful 
of geniuses could well upset the balance. However for national exams 
like the GCSEs in the UK there are 700k people taking them, having a 
fixed distribution is surely much fairer than trying to ensure the 
standard of questions is the same each year (whilst trying to not make 
them too similar to previous questions).

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>> The problem with distributing grades along a bell curve, like that, is
>> that in years where the class is full of genies, someone who has an
>> otherwise good grasp of the theory ends up with a C, and years when the
>> class is full of morons, you give an A to someone who doesn't merit one.
>
> Agreed if only a small number of people are taking the exam, a handful
> of geniuses could well upset the balance. However for national exams
> like the GCSEs in the UK there are 700k people taking them, having a
> fixed distribution is surely much fairer than trying to ensure the
> standard of questions is the same each year (whilst trying to not make
> them too similar to previous questions).

The 700k population of students perhaps doesn't fluctuate much, but the 
difficulty of the questions surely does. But how to control for that?

I still believe that a qualification - ANY qualification - should have a 
fixed set of requirements, and anybody who meets those gets the 
qualifications, regardless of what anybody else did in the same year.

(Not that I expect my opinion to influence anything...)

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One thing about exams that I have noticed is that the exact same difficult
exam becomes much easier, even trivial, after several years of experience.

For example, I could probably nowadays get a 100% score on many exams
related to my hobbies and/or job that I had great difficulties to even
pass at school.

This makes me think: Why does this have to be so? Why couldn't we make
students achieve that level of knowledge and experience so that they
will trivially pass those exams with 100% score (for the simple reason
that they outright *know* the answers by heart due to experience and
practice)?

Of course there's the other side of the coin, though: There were many
exams that I passed, and which I would nowadays flunk completely, because
they have simply not been part of my life in any way, and therefore I have
got no experience.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 23/08/2013 7:44 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>
> (Not that I expect my opinion to influence anything...)

No chance. There is too much money involved.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 23/08/2013 10:28 PM, Warp wrote:
> One thing about exams that I have noticed is that the exact same difficult
> exam becomes much easier, even trivial, after several years of experience.
>

[snip]

>
> Of course there's the other side of the coin, though: There were many
> exams that I passed, and which I would nowadays flunk completely, because
> they have simply not been part of my life in any way, and therefore I have
> got no experience.
>

When you get older, you will know what you just said is true and why.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Le 23/08/2013 20:44, Orchid Win7 v1 nous fit lire :
>>> The problem with distributing grades along a bell curve, like that, is
>>> that in years where the class is full of genies, someone who has an
>>> otherwise good grasp of the theory ends up with a C, and years when the
>>> class is full of morons, you give an A to someone who doesn't merit one.
>>

If you want to really be able to compare grade along years, the only
sure way would be to have all the classes (even 10 years after diploma)
to take (or retake) the same test. Due to the burden, you could end up
with a test every 5 years instead of one each season.
But it would provides accurate comparable values.
Let's have a national evaluation week !


> I still believe that a qualification - ANY qualification - should have a
> fixed set of requirements, and anybody who meets those gets the
> qualifications, regardless of what anybody else did in the same year.

That would works only for "Hard-sciences".
Litteracy, Poetry, Philosophy, artistic performance, and plenty of other
evaluations would still be subject to the appreciation of the evaluating
jury.

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>> I still believe that a qualification - ANY qualification - should have a
>> fixed set of requirements, and anybody who meets those gets the
>> qualifications, regardless of what anybody else did in the same year.
>
> That would works only for "Hard-sciences".
> Litteracy, Poetry, Philosophy, artistic performance, and plenty of other
> evaluations would still be subject to the appreciation of the evaluating
> jury.

LOL "Litteracy". Irony, much? ;-)

I still think it's dubious that one should be able to get a 
_qualification_ in something which is highly subjective. I mean, sure, 
*everything* has some level of subjectiveness in it. But having a 
qualification in "being able to draw really pretty pictures" is far too 
vague; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Qualifications need to be 
based on something more objective. (And, indeed, art degrees are usually 
based mostly on technical skill rather than artistic merit.)

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> This makes me think: Why does this have to be so? Why couldn't we make
> students achieve that level of knowledge and experience so that they
> will trivially pass those exams with 100% score (for the simple reason
> that they outright *know* the answers by heart due to experience and
> practice)?

I'm going to say "because many students don't CARE about the subject 
they're learning, they just want good grades". Notice I said "many", not 
"all". But I know A LOT of people on my degree course appeared to 
absolutely HATE computing. (So why are you on a computing course? Oh, 
right - because you think there's going to be money in it...)

At school it's even worse; you get TOLD what you have to study, and 
there's no choice in the matter.

> Of course there's the other side of the coin, though: There were many
> exams that I passed, and which I would nowadays flunk completely, because
> they have simply not been part of my life in any way, and therefore I have
> got no experience.

My mum thought it would be great fun to make me answer some website's 
mock GCSE questions.

I'm not entirely sure how I got 6/7 for the History one, given that I 
know nothing about history. Then again, it's multiple-choice, so you 
have a 25% chance of getting each one right. Basically when it asks what 
measure was proposed in such-and-such a year, just think which ones 
sound too progressive.

For Maths I only got 6/7. This is due to me not knowing the cosine of 

excuse me, one quarter of root-5 minus 1. Obviously...)

I scored poorly on my recent LPIC exam due to a number of factors. One 
of them was the number of IPv6 questions. (Does anybody on Earth 
actually *use* IPv6 yet?) Also partly due to several questions about 
topics which are NOT IN THE BOOK! >_< So, totally worth buying the book 
then. :-P

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