For A-Level results day, I traded comments with local socialist (Lib Dem branch), Neil Harrison, about the year-on-year increase in Tractor Production exam grades. Head over there to read in full, but pay particular attention to this gem in the comments:
"Unless we socially engineer massive change within the system, it is difficult to know how to crack it. The Irish used to allocate university places by lottery (to some extent - fuzzy on the details). We can't tell students which universities they should go to in order to have a better social mix. I do think that killing or changing the [personal] statements section of the application would probably help."
Suffice to say I'm also rather sceptical that similar year-on-year increases in the GCSE results imply that either student performance or teaching methods have dramatically increased in the last twenty years. But I thought I ought to have a look at some examples of exam papers before I comment further.
A quick Google search leads me to a free service from Edexcel, offering a selection of past question papers and mark schemes for their General Qualifications for download - both Alternative Ordinary Level (O-Level) and GCSE - in a variety of subjects. The web-page doesn't ask for a password, but only a five digit centre number. The copyright statement places constraints on how schools and colleges can use them for internal purposes, but doesn't mention the general public. Now I'm not totally sure whether this is supposed to be a public service, but I think it's legitimate to download a paper or two to get a feel for the standard of examinations.
I'm having a quick look at the Maths paper at both O-Level and GCSE to see what I can make of it.
Or then again I might have a go at "Leisure & Tourism", which is only available at GCSE.
