British bad at maths - exam cheats - dumbing down
June 4, 2008 3:56 pmIn the last few days…
From The Times (added 30th June 2008)
Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.
Write ‘fuck off’ on a GCSE paper and you’ll get 7.5%. Add an exclamation mark and it’ll go up to 11%
One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points.
From BBC News
A report this week by think-tank Reform laments the drop in numbers of people taking maths A-level, at an estimated cost to the economy of £9bn.
“The UK remains one of the few advanced nations where it is socially acceptable, fashionable even, to profess an inability to cope with maths,” it says, despite a maths A-level putting on average an extra £10,000 a year on a salary
Also University cheats ‘not expelled’
University students who are caught submitting plagiarised work are very rarely expelled, shows a survey.
A study found only 143 students caught cheating were expelled out of 9,200 cases - despite almost all universities threatening expulsion as a sanction.
Exam papers had answers on back
Thousands of teenagers are facing uncertainty over their exams after a GCSE music paper was found to have some of the answers on the back.
Students ‘had hints’ before exam
An exam board is investigating suggestions that some teachers gave students hints about what questions would be in an A-level biology exam.
I know this myself - I went to Reading College 11 years ago, and it was tough graft.
I went back 2 years ago, and it was a joke - they virtually stood there and read the answers out as the exam was happening! I blogged about it.
All this came to mind when I heard Harriet Harmon whiffling on about how educational standards are far higher than they were 10 years ago.
Does ANYONE believe that?!
3 Responses to “British bad at maths - exam cheats - dumbing down”
See also here, here and best of all, here.
unbelievable
I don’t understand why we are making people sit silly exams like this:
life in uk test
instead of teaching people English. You’d think that would be more important?
Care to comment?