Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
They don't test intelligence at all, only understanding and recall.
Gcse maths test
- Thread starter lazybloke
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
They don't test intelligence at all, only understanding and recall.
MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
one could argue that intelligence is the ability to understand stuff
PaulSB
Squire
- Location
- Chorley, Lancashire
Well 7/7 but am I the only person who thought this question is wrong. The answer is obvious but the question, as far as I can see, makes no sense.
ebikeerwidnes
Guru
- Location
- Z’ha’dum
Looks like a misprint following by a failure in checking
gbb
Squire
- Location
- Peterborough
Yeah, I pondered a few minutes on that one, went back to make sure, still made no sense so assumed it was a typo.
7/7.
I always struggled with remembering percentage calculations so the 70% of blah blah got me for a minute or two while I racked my brain...got it after 2 or 3 minutes
I.like the idea it's (the test overall) two fold aspect. Read and understand what the question means, then calculate the answer. Lots of people perhaps fail at the first bit
All seems fair enough to me
- Location
- Inside my skull
Felt like the old CSE level maths.
- Location
- Inside my skull
Some ‘O’ Level questions
Last edited:
DaveReading
Don't suffer fools gladly (must try harder!)
- Location
- Reading, obvs
The question in the original paper (before the MEN tried to turn it into a multiple-choice) was simply:
ebikeerwidnes
Guru
- Location
- Z’ha’dum
Yes - but "O level exams were based on only the top tier of kids taking it
it was designed such that only the people getting what would now be a* and A (or whatver the top grades are nowadays) would be taking it
the rest of the kids would be taking CSE
and this exam is for the lower level of CSE exams
and it shows the easier questions from the exam
On top of which the concept of replacing O levels and CSEs with GCSE was flawed and they had to reduce the levels a bit shortly after the change
and they were changed again a while ago
both times downwards but a bit
then they changed to to be numbers instead of letters and made it upside down ( high number better rather than A being the best and G being the worst)
so it is an invalid comparison
- Location
- Somewhere wet & hilly in NW England.
As I understood it, back in the 70's the brightest 15% of the population would gain a decent A Level pass (although I am not sure how 'decent' was defined) and the top 5% would eventually gain a degree of 2.2 or better.
This might be totally wrong, though.
Nowadays, the pass rate for degrees is astonishingly high; leading to the debate re are graduates really smarter now or have university course standards dropped?
Very low sample number but both of the offspring of one of my friends needed significant parental intervention to craft their dissertation, and various essays & assignments, along the way, as, to quote him "they were poorly structured and, in places, incomprehensible" before he rewrote them.
For balance, I do know two friends offspring (First; Law & Finance and First; Astrophysics, he us now a full professor) who are astonishingly articulate and clearly know their subject matter.
- Location
- Inside my skull
Nope, the majority took O level.. It wasn’t top tier only stuff. O levels had grades A-E or U for unclassified. A-C was considered a pass.
ebikeerwidnes
Guru
- Location
- Z’ha’dum
My school was weird
but people I know who went to normal schools - including Grammar Schools say that they were advised - i.e. told - to take 'O' levels if they were likely to get an A or B
if that was not likely then they were put into the CSE class as getting a grade 1 at CSE was the equivalent of a C at 'O' level
but if you didn;t quite make it then a CSE grade 2 looks better than an 'O' level grade D which was thought of as a fail
people who went to the Secondary modern only tended to do CSEs
even the grammar school near where I grew up - only the top set would do 'O' level
I think a lot depended on the school
bit like the school where I was a teacher- the top set - maybe top 2 - would do the top tier of GCSE exam where you could get an A
the rest were normally just put in for the middle tier exam
the lower sets just got put in for the bottom tier
and the standards are lower than they were when 'O' levels were a thing - based on what the actual teachers teaching then and when I was there as a teacher said
AndyRM
XOXO
- Location
- North Shields
Might be worth getting checked for dyscalculia. When I found out that was the craic with my brain around numbers it helped a lot.
Dogtrousers
Kilometre nibbler
"Most people remember GCSE maths with a little shudder, remembering the time spent learning fractions, algebra and geometry."
Yet the questions involve none of these things, just some arithmetic. I think @markemark has hit the nail on the head here:
Yet the questions involve none of these things, just some arithmetic. I think @markemark has hit the nail on the head here:
7/7 for me. 
I was never that great at doing mental arithmetic (as I usually forget the numbers I'm trying to calculate!) and usually use pen and paper, but I still got those.
I am probably unusual in that I still often do calculate things on paper rather than use the calculator. People at work laugh at me doing it!
I was never that great at doing mental arithmetic (as I usually forget the numbers I'm trying to calculate!) and usually use pen and paper, but I still got those.
I am probably unusual in that I still often do calculate things on paper rather than use the calculator. People at work laugh at me doing it!
