The content of A Level exams is under fire yet again after a report by Score (Science community representing education) has suggested that A Level science papers do not contain enough maths-based content to adequately prepare students to take on science degrees.

Graham Hutchings, who is the chairman of Score told the BBC, “Our findings are worrying. A significant proportion of the mathematical requirements put in place by the examinations regulator, Ofqual, for each of the sciences were simply not assessed and, if they were, it was often in a very limited way.”

Hutchings is particularly concerned about how the A Level science syllabus is missing key areas of maths, which underpin a lot of scientific topics. For example, calculus and converting between different units are not taught in many schools. Some exam boards assess more maths than others, but this disparity is also worrying because it means that students will have very different knowledge bases according to which exam they sit.

With the exam boards leaving out key areas that are essential to the study of the sciences at degree level, pupils are just going to have a much tougher time at university. Already many universities (as reported in a blog last week) need to offer remedial classes to first students who arrive as undergraduates without sufficient knowledge and skills to confidently begin BA courses. This shouldn’t need to happen; universities should not have to make up for poor teaching at school, and instead they should be able to imediately start expanding and challenging undergraduates’ knowledge and thinking.

Unfortunately it isn’t only the science A Levels that don’t contain enough maths; when the Nuffield Foundation looked at the A Level papers for economics, geography, psychology, computing, business studies and sociology in 2010 their report “concluded that with the exception of computing, the variation in mathematical content was so great that the qualifications did not give universities or employers a meaningful indication of students’ level of mathematical skill or understanding.” (Judith Burns, BBC).

These reports add further evidence to the argument that universities and employers should be more involved in designing A Level courses, so that they don’t exist in a bubble and can more adequately prepare students for the demands of employment and degrees.

I recently discovered www.funnyexam.com, which as well as providing a great deal of amusement, also offers some excellent lessons in how not to answer certain exam questions. But what can you do to get the examiners on side and, delight them and so earn yourself plenty of marks? Here are some tips to help you do just that…

-Present your work neatly.
Nobody likes to have to decode messy handwriting, so make sure your work is legible. Writing on alternate lines in the answer booklets will help to make your writing easer to read and easier for the examiner to mark because there will be plenty of space for them to write comments.

-Answer the question!
Although this sounds terribly basic, you’d be amazed at how many people just don’t answer the question. Take a moment to figure out exactly what you are being asked to do and then try and do exactly that, nothing more, nothing less, and no irrelevant tangents.

-Check your spelling and punctuation.
You can really let yourself down if you make lots of silly mistakes like getting apostrophes in the wrong place or using the wrong version of a word (there/their etc). Take a few moments at the end of the exam to look through your answers and make sure the spelling, grammar and punctuation are all tip top.

-Balance your time carefully.
Use the mark scheme to guide you when it comes to planning how long to spend on each question. Questions worth higher marks will require more detail and attention. If you take a moment to look through the paper and plan out how long you should spend on each section you should prevent yourself from running out of time or spending too long on a question that only requires a short answer.

-Be confident enough to be selective with your knowledge.
If you’ve done a lot of revision you can feel a big urge to show off everything you know, but examiners aren’t interested in you listing off thousands of facts, dates and quotes willy-nilly. Instead they want to see you using your knowledge effectively and in a sophisticated, well-structured way. Choose the best evidence to support your answers and weave the knowledge in stylishly, rather than just plonking in information wherever, and the examiners will be delighted with your answers.

There are lots of clichés about exams, some of which are true, buts some of which could really do with being dispelled. Here are some common thoughts about exams that should really be banned in order to make your life less stressful and so in turn, your approach to exams more positive and effective…

‘Failing the exams would be disastrous’
Of course you want to do well in your exams, and you should try as hard as you can to do yourself justice, but if something does go wrong and you don’t get the marks you hoped for, it really isn’t the end of the world. You can sit most exams again six months later, or you can reassess your options and choose a slightly different path to get to where you want to go. Exams are not a life or death matter, and if you spend too much time worrying about ‘failure’ you’ll waste valuable energy that could be channelled elsewhere more productively.

‘I need to know everything before I sit the exam’
It is impossible to know absolutely everything about a particular topic and all you can do is follow the syllabus, look through past papers, talk to your teachers about the course and base your revision on these things. Read around the subject, make sure you equip yourself with the essential topics, and then you should be fine. If one or two unexpected elements turn up in the exam, don’t panic and do your best to answer the questions with the knowledge you do have.

‘My memory isn’t good enough to do well in exams.’
Memory is a muscle that can be trained and honed. You also need to tap into how you remember things, as everyone’s brain works differently. Don’t rely on memorising things the night before, but instead build up your bank of knowledge gradually and keep using the knowledge so that it is easily accessible. As soon as you stop using things you begin to forget them…

‘I have to revise 24/7 in order to well in exams’
This is not true at all, and it much better to do shorter bursts of really effective revision than to work non-stop in the run up to exams. If you deprive yourself of sleep and relaxation then you will totally wear yourself out and you won’t be able to do your best in the exams. Yes, you do need to work hard in the run up to exams, but prepare carefully and make sure you look after yourself as well. Eating well and getting plenty of sleep is also a vital part of exam preparation.

Try and thing positively about exams, and see them as a way to bring all of your knowledge and hard work together and to show off how your brain has been developing. Do the best that you can, but don’t think of them as the be-all and the end-all, because in the grand scheme of things they are important but not the only thing that matters, in fact far from it.

It is pretty well established that drinking water is good for your health, but apparently it can be great for your academic grades as well. A new study carried out by researchers at the University of East London and the University of Westminster has revealed that students who took water into an exam achieved an average mark that was 5% higher than that of the students who didn’t drink any water during the period.

Interestingly, the researchers found that second and third year students were more likely to bring water into an exam than foundation level or first year studens. But since the improvement in results was the same for those who drank water in the exam, regardless of which year they were in, we should be encouraging students of all ages and in all years to take in a bottle of H2O.

Dr Chris Pawson, who was part of the research team at the University of East London, said that drinking water may help to reduce anxiety and nerves often hold people back in exams. He also suggested that water has a positive effect on thinking functions, which can aid exam performance.

There is still a great deal more research to be done, as this was the first study and only included 447 participants, however with examination season just around the corner, and water being easy to get hold of, candidates should really think about taking a bottle of it into the exam hall. With any luck you might even improve your marks by a whole 5%!

GCSEs can’t seem to stay out of the news at the moment, and the examination season hasn’t even properly begun yet.
There are some major shifts taking place in the world of GCSEs and a number of the changes are about to come into effect…
For a long time, GCSE candidates have been able to take modules along the way, so that they can study and then be examined on different subjects in chunks. However, Education Secretary Michael Gove is concerned that this makes the examinations easier to pass and that candidates only need to have a very narrow knowledge base in order to pass the exams. So from September all students starting their GCSEs in England will have to wait until the end of the two year course to take the full GCSE exams. Yet in Wales schools will be able to choose between the old modular style and the new style. Schools in Northern Ireland have yet to make a decision between the old and the new style.
A spokesman from the Department of Education told the BBC, “It’s down to the Welsh and Northern Irish administrations to decide how to run their education systems – we do what we think best for English students. We make no apology for breaking the constant treadmill of exams and retakes throughout students’ GCSE courses – school shouldn’t be a dreary trudge from one test to the next. Sitting and passing modules has become the be-all and end-all, instead of achieving a real, lasting understanding and love of a subject. Students shouldn’t be continually cramming to pass the next exam or resitting the same test again and again simply to boost their mark.”
Another change on the cards is the restriction on re-sits. At the moment, GCSE candidates have a number of opportunities to retake exams in order to improve their original marks. But Mr Gove is worried that this means that students don’t take the initial exams as seriously.
Beyond this, there are no other major plans to revamp the GCSEs until after the current review of the curriculum is completed. There are debates about whether or not the modular or end of the course examinations system is best, and there are also concerns that English and Welsh schools will not be in line with each other, and so the GCSE qualifications will not be perceived as fair and equal. Until the new examinations system has been in place for a few years it will be hard to ascertain the full impact. What do you think – are modules best? Or should students sit all of their exams at the end of the course?

GCSEs are always a hot topic of discussion, but it seems that over the past few weeks they have been in the news more than ever, and examination season isn’t even properly upon us yet.

This morning I read an article which reported that native English speakers are falling considerably behind non-native speakers in GCSE results. This suggests that many British teenagers are becoming increasingly lazy when it comes to preparing for exams, which is very worrying indeed.

Jack Grimston’s report in The Sunday Times published figures showing that 80.8% of students for whom English is not their mother tongue, achieve at least five GCSEs at C grade and above, compared to 80.4% from English-speaking families. Although the percentage difference is quite small, it is strong evidence to show that children from families who have recently immigrated to Britain are extremely dedicated to performing well at school and are starting to take over native students.

According to Grimston’s article, education experts believe that many white working class children have become alienated from school, and that their parents aren’t pushing them to strive for top results. On the other hand, families who have recently arrived in the UK are ambitious to succeed and so place a great deal of energy into encouraging their children to do well at school. While native families take educational opportunities for granted, new residents want to make the most of what’s on offer.

Kevin Collins, who is the CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation told The Sunday Times that he has observed “a disconnect between education and the family [in the white English-speaking community] where perhaps the parents had not done so well, where there had been a breakdown in the relationships between education and the family.”

What I believe to be imperative now that these figures are emerging is to find ways for less motivated students to be inspired and learn from their high-achieving classmates, be they native English speakers or not. If we can find ways for all students to be motivated, engaged and ambitious then standards and results should improve across the board, which is important no matter where your family comes from.

For many years now more and more pupils have been getting better and better A Level results. This has prompted a lot of people to say that A Levels are getting easier and not long ago the controversial new A* grade was introduced to help distinguish the most academic students, as so many school leavers were attaining straight As across their subjects. But do things need to get even tougher?

The examinations watchdog Ofqual has recently ordered the British examination boards to make the English literature, history, maths and geography exams tougher as a result of concerns that students are able to get good grades in GCSE subjects without actually knowing very much at all. Education Secretary Michael Gove has been particularly vocal recently about his opinion that too many students pass exams with only a very narrow understanding of a particular subject.

The Daily Telegraph recently launched an investigation into exam boards and found evidence that examiners were giving advice to teachers on how to make their pupils achieve higher grades. This scandalous discovery has prompted a serious tightening up of regulations and hopefully things will become fairer and more transparent.

As well as foul play between examiners and teachers, the GCSE curriculum has come under attack for only asking pupils to know a few topics before sitting the exams. For example, 90% of GCSE English literature exam questions are on only three novels: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies. I took my GCSEs really quite a while ago now and indeed studied two out of the three of these novels which shows how stagnant the curriculum has become.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said to the BBC “It is vital confidence is restored in the exams system. We are committed to raising standards for all pupils.” And indeed Ofqual appear to be trying hard to improve examination standards. The Chief Executive of Ofqual, Glenys Stacey, has said, “We are tightening GCSEs in these key subjects to make sure students cover the whole curriculum. We want our young people to have the best possible educational experience, with qualifications that prepare them for the future. The exam boards have welcomed this steer from the regulator and are to look again at these qualifications and how the rules are interpreted to make sure that young people taking them have to study an appropriate range and depth of the subject.”

First on the ‘to do’ list for improvements is geography GCSE, quickly followed by maths and then history and English literature will be given their spruce-ups by September 2013. Let’s hope the changes make the courses more exciting, challenging and enriching for students and the exams fairer and more stringent.

3,100 vocational qualifications will now no longer be counted as equivalent to GCSEs as a result of the government’s major reshuffling of the school examinations system. The government is concerned that too many schools are steering pupils away from traditional subjects in order to make sure they get good results and therefore rasie the school’s position in the league tables.

Some of the courses that will no longer be equivalent to GCSEs and so are likely to be dropped from many schools are horse care, nail technology, fish husbandry and practical office skills.

According to a report by Hannah Richardson at the BBC, the number of students taking vocational subjects as equivalents to GCSEs has risen from 15,000 in 2004 to 575,000 in 2010.

Education Secretary Michael Gove hopes that the changes will mean that only qualifications which will really help pupils to get good jobs or go to university will remain. Indeed, it is worrying to think that many schools will allow students to sit courses so that the school looks good, but ultimately won’t offer many long-term benefits to the students. Mr Gove has said: “The weaknesses in our current system were laid bare by Prof Wolf’s (who has been leading the review of vocational qualifications) incisive and far-reaching review. The changes we are making will take time, but will transform the lives of young people.For too long the system has been devalued by attempts to pretend that all qualifications are intrinsically the same. Young people have taken courses that have led nowhere.”
Unsurprisingly, the changes have been met by sme opposition, particularly from the engineering community. Engineering qualifications have been downgraded, but are thought by many to offer a rigorous and very valuable training. Some teachers are worried that many pupils will now end up being forced to do subjects that they are find extremely difficult and so are likely to get low grades, which will not help them in the future.
The review of GCSEs and vocational qualifications will continue in order to make sure they meet new standards to be set in 2014.

A lot of people take the opportunity to set retake exams in January in order to try and boost their marks from the previous summer. Hopefully you will have already spent a few weeks revising the texts and topics that you are going to be examined on, but here are a few tips to help you get through until the big day(s).

One of the most important things you can do is think about what went both right and wrong last time round. If you can, try and get hold of your exam script so that you can go through it and see what was successful and what wasn’t. For essay subjects the examiners tend to mark where you got marks for particular assessment objectives and may label them ‘AO1’, ‘AO2’ and so on. You may notice that you have no ‘AO3’ marks, so need to find out what that refers to and include more next time.

Gather all of your revision notes and schoolwork on a particular text, writer or topic together. Organise the work in a folder in a way that makes sense to you. The important thing is that you haven’t got hundreds of scraps of paper lying around your room. They won’t be of any use to you at all crumpled under your desk. Go through each topic and see where the gaps in your knowledge are. The chances are that you don’t need to relearn everything, and nor will you have time to. Focus your attention on where you think most work is required.

Get to know the mark scheme and the style of the papers. You are unlikely to do well if you don’t know what is going to be required of you or what the examiners award marks for. Perhaps last time round you weren’t familiar enough with the exam papers, so get your hands on some.

For essay-based subjects it is especially vital to get hold of some past essay questions. Or you could make some up (get your tutor to compose some for you). The format of the questions is often very similar, and you can just tweak them to make your own. Under timed conditions plan, write and check the essay. It is vital that you practise doing essays to time before the exam. Doing mock ones will also reveal the areas where you still have more revision to do. Perhaps you couldn’t remember a particular quote, or you couldn’t think of any contextual points to put in.

Try not to panic, and just stay as calm and collected as possible. If you get really het up and anxious you won’t be able to concentrate. Do as much well structured revision as you can and I’m sure you’ll be fine.

Good luck!

January will be upon us before you can say ‘leftover turkey sandwiches’ backwards, which means that very soon it will be time for many of you to sit school entrance exams. Hopefully you will already have been doing some past papers in preparation for the exams, but so that you make the most of the last couple of weeks before sitting the 11+, here are some tips to make sure you’re on top form.

1. The best thing you can do to prepare yourself is to try a variety of past 11+ papers. Some schools will give out sample papers and they are also easily available from many bookshops. Don’t stick to just one book, as some are harder than others. You need to get used to doing all sorts of papers so that you are prepared for whatever the examiners might give you on the big day.

2. Do the past papers under timed conditions. It’s no good knowing that you can get full marks if you take three hours, but can only get through three questions in the actual allotted time. If the thought of doing a paper in only an hour fills you with dread then build up to the specified time in stages. Try doing a paper in an hour and a half, then one and a quarter and so on, until you whittle it down to just an hour.

3. Learn from your mistakes! This is very important indeed… It’s all very well doing plenty of practice papers but you need to go through the mark scheme and your answers afterwards to find out what you’ve got wrong. Once you’ve identified common mistakes and gaps in your knowledge you can revise these areas.

4. For the creative writing part of the exam it is harder to ‘revise’ in a traditional way like you can for maths. Instead you should be working on improving your vocabulary and the quality of your ideas. Read lots of different things over the next few weeks and pick up new words that interest you. Maybe you could keep a little list of new words and then try and work them into sentences. Enjoy Education always posts a ‘word of the day’ on Twitter, so follow us and pick up the words we suggest as well as finding your own. Set yourself small writing tasks each day so that describing things and thinking creatively starts to feel more natural.

5. If you have an interview as well as an exam then have a think about the sorts of questions they might want to ask you. The interviewer will probably want to know a bit about you, your hobbies and why you like the school, so make sure you feel confident talking about these things.

6. Try to stay relaxed! Obviously you need to work hard over the next few weeks, but you should also try and remain calm and not get too anxious. If you’re very stressed then it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to do your best.

Remember that you can always call Enjoy Education and ask for some advice. Our tutors have helped thousands of pupils sit their entrance exams and we’d love to help you too if you’re in need of an extra boost.

Good luck!