What do you think of the high GCSE and A Level grades coming out every year?

It’s terrible. my Economics teacher said that it ‘s a bad thing they’re making the exams harder ‘cause then less students will have the opportunity to go to university - but if you can’t handle a GCSE exam you haven’t got a hope in hell of succeeding at Uni - it’s just wasted education. They might as well be redirected into a vocational course of their choosing instead, like they do in Germany.

Yeah I agree. Also, GCSE used to have quite a prestigious name (well in my country it does/did). You’d tell somebody that you did GCSE and they would be like Oh, wow really? (there are very few schools that do GCSE in New Zealand). But now, the name is going down down down haha. It’s not so great anymore. That’s also why I think (mostly in NZ) that Private schools are having trouble staying afloat. The education is just as good as state schools now. So why pay $20K a year for something you can get for free?

Well in these economic times it is something that needs to be done to be honest. not everyone can go to universiy or it might as well be mandatory, right? To me university is for people that want a future and want to try but because gcse’s and a-levels are harder more people get through that aren’t necaserily going to get a good level or job out of university.

It is hard to distinguish between students that’s why a* has been introruced in to a-level marking. Also in certain examination boards a new scheme is being laid out- one which the student does controlled coursework. Its where students are given the needed materials and are asked to complete the essay ina controlled environement with an essesor present. This gets rid of those who cheat and abuse the current coursework scheme. To have just examines would be silly, they’re more like rememberance games than testing ability.

university necessarily introduced environment assessor examinations