UK Chinese exams are too easy

[adrianlondon]

GSCE is the equivalent of the "O" level.

[Saberu]

Re: GCSEs. The role of exams is to differentiate and recognise the differing abilities of students. If students are all scoring "A"s' date=' surely this just means that the majority of them have achieved the required standard. what they should do is push for the higher ability students to also take the higher level exams, A and AS levels.

I have no issue with different education streams for people of different Chinese abilities etc, but I do feel that the final exam should be the same for all candidates.[/quote']

Spot on, this is my thinking exactly. Exams are supposed to assess knowledge, skills and abilities; not your ability to pass an exam which a lot of subjects seem to be turning into:(

The fact is there is a lot of Chinese people living In the UK who can speak half-decent mandarin, and good on them I say. Being cross linguistic is a great ability to have and if it places them at an advantage over English students who aren't then thats tough, and this is coming from an English student who isn't. I have no bitter feeling over this at all.

Though I do agree that they should make the exams easier so that non-native speakers

have an achievable target. Then the native speakers who find it easy can sit the AS-level Chinese alongside the GCSE if they want as geraldc said. Without looking at the exam papers I can't say for sure though, it might just be a case that English students don't want to learn it because they don't realise the potential like we do.

Also I think it's a great idea to have a GCSE for Chinese, China is set to become the world's biggest country economically speaking; it's growth is phenomenal and between it's hard working ethic (especially in education) and it's cheap labor from the countryside moving into the cities it's growing so fast that the government needs to slow it down to stop inflation! Although that's also something to do with the government overvaluing the yuan in the first place

[HoVis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by geraldc

Re: GCSEs. The role of exams is to differentiate and recognise the differing abilities of students. If students are all scoring "A"s, surely this just means that the majority of them have achieved the required standard. what they should do is push for the higher ability students to also take the higher level exams, A and AS levels.

I have no issue with different education streams for people of different Chinese abilities etc, but I do feel that the final exam should be the same for all candidates.

Spot on, this is my thinking exactly. Exams are supposed to assess knowledge, skills and abilities; not your ability to pass an exam which a lot of subjects seem to be turning into "

As I said in my last post, there is no way all students can achieve A* - the exam boards skew the grade boundaries *after* the exams have all been scored to ensure they get the same number of each grade each year. Therefore an A in 2007 and an A in 2006 can represent a totally different number of marks achieved on the paper. They can only give a certain number of high grades . The idea that the exam boards are giving out A* like candy is a totally erroneous one and insults the achievements of those who manage to get them.