Friday 15 March 2013

A Level Reforms??

I just heard about this and my only thought was 'What?' sure I'm no longer doing them but these changes don't make much sense and will make things considerably harder.

For those who don't know what they want to do or don't know what A-Levels are let me try to explain...
A- Levels are 2 years of education done in a sixth form at a secondary school after year 11 with the first year being called AS and the second year being called A2 but these both make up an overall grade. When I did mine we had coursework and did exams for each year on the modules covered in whatever subjects you chose to take; these all affected the over all grade.

The new proposal would mean that instead of exams in year 1 they would only be in year 2. Doesn't sound that bad? Well if you fail an exam in year 1 you can just resit it in year 2; with the new proposal this could not happen and the exams will consist of modules covered over a period of 2 years. For my psychology we had 4 exams and had 3 topics per exam; that would mean using the new proposal students would be facing 12 modules in a 2 hour exam where they may or may not end up with a pass.

So not only would these new exams cover a huge range of topics where learning it all would be difficult to do so there will also be the chance that the students will not have anything at the end of the course; they could waste 2 years of their lives.

These plans will also mean that all A Level courses will need to be rewritten.



The system works as it is already and allows those who do badly in year 1 to redo that year so they end up with a better grade; with the proposed system this could never happen and a considerable amount of students across the country may fail their A Levels. This won't help the ones who are already struggling at all and will make it much more difficult to reach higher education by going to university.


There's a link at the end to have a look at if you're interested.

Comment your thoughts and feelings as always guys!

Clare x


http://news.sky.com/story/1064915/as-levels-gove-urged-to-rethink-exam-reform

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