Reply With QuoteCongrats! Excellent results
Hope he enjoys his time at Uni.
My eldest started Uni last year - equally proud dad here
Anyone else’s kids got their A level results today? The anticipation is over.
Proud Dad here. My son got A* Further Maths, A* Maths and A Physics. He was educated in a comprehensive school.
Off to Birmingham Uni to read Maths. Hope your kids got their university of choice.
Congrats! Excellent results
Hope he enjoys his time at Uni.
My eldest started Uni last year - equally proud dad here
Congratulations and well done to your son. He'll love Birmingham University - my alma mater!Originally Posted by noTAGlove
Congratulations, it's a major milestone for him.
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Well done to him.
My eldest got the results he needed for the course he wanted at his first choice of University. Really pleased and a bit surprised tbh - very bright but so laid back it’s crazy, somehow he always lands on his feet!
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Excellent results, I hope like get their first choices when they get their results.
It's just a matter of time...
Congratulations to your son for passing three of the toughest subjects.
I don't have children but vicariously my best friends' children did well. One is going to Cambridge to study medicine, the other is off to St. Andrews to do history. The future doctor is a hard working bright young woman, the historian is fey and feckless and god knows how he managed three As. I suppose today is not the day to mention grade inflation.
David
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
This time last year my eldest received her results and went off to Exeter. Today younger daughter received hers and will now be off to Royal Holloway.
How time flies....
Nice! Congrats. Things are called a little different here, but the end result is more or less the same: university (British uni as well, if you fancy that - one of my oldest son's classmates went to Exeter/History last year).
Menno
Doesn’t it just; my daughter is out the other side, married and in a career now!
Congratulations to all those that got the grades and commiserations to those that didn’t and won’t get to their first choices.
I didn’t, ended up at Leeds Polytechnic and had a great four years so it’s not all bad!
Good
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-level-decade/
That means the kids that earned their top grades actually deserve them, rather than previously over inflated results.
Well done!
Best wishes,
Bob
Good job on results, it is a very stressful time for kids. Clarkson as usual has a timely link on how he didn't need any for the less fortunate result holders.
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Congratulations, super results, you must be a very proud father indeed.
I'm 57 and very rarely dream, never mind suffer nightmares (wife is always dreaming, and for some reason thinks I'm interested in them). The one nightmare I have every blue moon is that I'm in the final stages of my 'A' levels and I get really anxious about the exams and all the ones to follow at uni. Pathetic!
BTW, it's a different system in Victoria. The kids do 6 subjects, English is compulsory, and they get an ENTER score, x/100. So 98 means they are in the top 2%, 75 equals top 25%. I read 25% of kids in the UK get an A or A*, so how do unis differentiate the really bright ones?
(a) In recent years, the growth in the number of degree courses as the process has been monetised has meant that this has been less important. The importance of being bright or of being amongst the best in order to get into university has reduced substantially. It has come to matter more than you are there (and thus generating revenue for the university) than that you are bright.[1]
(b) That said, there still were and are universities that were/are more discerning and there were and are courses (primarily STEM or STEM-like I think[2]) that needed more discerning entry qualities. In these cases, it seems to me that universities would do what they had always done: Look at GCSE results, look at the school, look at (and read between the lines of) head teachers' testimonials, and probe carefully in personal interviews. This subtle and admittedly somewhat subjective approach probably does work very well indeed in smaller volumes than would apply to the mass market universities and course types.
It is something of a relief to my mind that this year's proportion of good results were fewer in number -- as long as this is due to tougher marking and/or harder material, rather than a reduction in the quality of teaching!
Footnote:-
1: In recentish years I have been able to 'see inside' two degree courses.
The first was a sociology/history degree (sorry, I forget exactly what it was called but it had elements of both). This was being studied by my then-girlfriend (who was somewhat younger than me) at a university (a former polytechnic) in north west London. The very model of a modern mass market university. I've never studied sociology and I only did history up to O Level but the supposedly degree-level material seemed to me to be facile, lightweight and simplistic. Additionally, the teaching model seemed to be indistinguishable from my experience of A Levels, that is to say largely teacher-led. It was not what I was expecting from a degree course. My then-girlfriend was a management trainee for McDonalds (don't laugh, it's a good career) and I believe that getting a degree would have benefited her in her career at McD. But I have to say that, as far as I can see, there was nothing in the degree that would genuinely help her in her work: Not subject matter and, especially, not organisational ability or thinking. Indeed, it seemed to me that she would have learned more about organisational thinking from being at work. It further seems to me that treating in-work management training as a kind of apprenticeship and giving it the same status as a degree or apprenticeship would have been more useful all round.
The second was a 'web design' degree at Brunel University. Again, I forget the exact name of the degree but the subject matter was primarily the technical content required to be a competent web developer (or designer perhaps). This was being studied by the girlfriend of a good friend of mine. The subjects covered included the predictable areas: HTML, Javascript, Coldfusion (surprisingly enough since it was on its way out even then), CSS, PHP, databases, and so on and also design/layout concepts (using Photoshop or similar). I sometimes helped her with her work and gradually despaired more and more as she clearly fell further and further behind. The course was, unsurprisingly for this sort of thing, modelled around a dev project that, as it progressed, introduced more and more complex concepts (much as happens in real life). Students were expected to develop their own project to fulfil the stated goals. It was this that increasingly flummoxed my friend's girlfriend: She just couldn't grasp all the material, concepts and knowledge required. There was also, as I recall, a more art-based design element to the degree (covering UIs, UX, and visual ergonomics) and I think she was better at that.
In terms of technical training I thought there was actually nothing wrong with the course: It was teaching people what it purported to. At the end of it, someone who had kept up would indeed be technically competent and be aware of UI/UX design concepts. That said, it was all competent but unremarkable; it was not the elite education that I then thought university degrees were supposed to be providing. Why bother with a thing called a 'university' it is not going to be special? It was merely... workmanlike. The same end result (albeit not the bit of paper saying 'degree' on it) could have been gained far better by working in industry (again perhaps as an apprentice or equivalent) or, to at least the same level, by doing some online courses or just working from home and pushing oneself to learn more and more using web-based resources. Unfortunately in the case of my friend's girlfriend she did not keep up. At the end of the course she was, in my view, unemployable in terms of a competent, up to date, web developer or designer. Nevertheless, she got a 2:2 or 3rd (sorry I forget which). The key point there is that she got what was being paid for: A degree. It barely mattered that it meant almost nothing in reality. The degree certificate was to all intents and purposes a proof-of-attendance, not a proof-of-capability.
2: Although the Brunel example above shows that STEM is not immune from production-line over-simplification.
Last edited by markrlondon; 17th August 2019 at 05:30.
I note that a pass mark of 54% is needed to get an A grade!
That is indeed shocking. In my day that would have been a grade C
Yes, they're not what they once were.
Shocking indeed. And 25% of grades being A or A* is just ridiculous. Should be closer to 10%
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75% in UK get a 1 or 2i nowadays. In my day of 3 tv channels and no internet I reckon the figure would have been 25% max.
On both occasions I asked my kids what they got for their degree from Melbourne, both looked at me blank and said I passed. 3-year degrees are ordinary, need to do an extra year for honours, which consists of research training and a 15k word thesis. It looks like only the honours students fuss about the grade. Don't what the distribution of classes is.
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