I’ve never understood the reason for giving grades A-E or fail, like we do for O and A levels, or I:II:III:fail, like we do for degrees.
My father’s O-levels gave a percentile ranking, so he was e.g. in the 83rd percentile in the country for history.
So we must have changed over at some point. Does anyone know why? It’s always looked like throwing information away to me, and it’s also unfair to people on the grade boundaries.
Of course this may be motivated thinking on my part, I’d much rather have had a string of 100s for my exams than a string of As, and I’d much prefer to have got a 75 for my degree than a II (which covered percentiles 25-75) !!
I think a lot of people don’t like using percentiles because they are zero-sum: Exactly 25% of the class is in the top 25%, regardless of whether everyone in the class is brilliant or everyone in the class is an idiot.
But on the opposite side of the spectrum is saying: “Everyone is so smart because they can read and write, and thousand years ago most people couldn’t do this!” (Strawman example, I know.)
Generally I would prefer to have a list (tree, directed acyclic graph...?) of all human knowledge, and give everyone a report saying: “This person understands these parts.” But over time, the list/tree is growing. Of course it is OK to know a smaller part of total human knowledge, because the population is growing; but still, you need to know more than your ancestors (if your computer skills are the same as your grandma’s, then she is a hero and you are a loser); on the other hand some knowledge becomes obsolete.
I think a percentile across the whole country would be a good measure for comparing individual students or schools. And it would be nice to also calculate long-term changes to know whether the country as a whole is improving.
Of course, you could show percentage scores in the tests rather than where you sit in the country. That means that it should be consistent over time, although I agree that in a decent sized national subject it’s probably fine the other way.
My main objection to giving percentiles relates to the OP’s concern that there’s no such thing as a ‘very good’ A, At least with UK school exams, I think that getting 100% in most subjects tests for conscientiousness and not making silly errors at best and being well-trained in the exam system at worst. I am pretty sure that if percentages were public I’d have had to get better marks to get into uni, but also that in making sure I did so I would not have been using my time usefully.
What I think would be far preferable to a ‘who managed not to screw up a single question’ model of getting better than an A would be an extension paper that was genuinely challenging and couldn’t be straightforwardly taught.
I’ve never understood the reason for giving grades A-E or fail, like we do for O and A levels, or I:II:III:fail, like we do for degrees.
My father’s O-levels gave a percentile ranking, so he was e.g. in the 83rd percentile in the country for history.
So we must have changed over at some point. Does anyone know why? It’s always looked like throwing information away to me, and it’s also unfair to people on the grade boundaries.
Of course this may be motivated thinking on my part, I’d much rather have had a string of 100s for my exams than a string of As, and I’d much prefer to have got a 75 for my degree than a II (which covered percentiles 25-75) !!
I think a lot of people don’t like using percentiles because they are zero-sum: Exactly 25% of the class is in the top 25%, regardless of whether everyone in the class is brilliant or everyone in the class is an idiot.
But on the opposite side of the spectrum is saying: “Everyone is so smart because they can read and write, and thousand years ago most people couldn’t do this!” (Strawman example, I know.)
Generally I would prefer to have a list (tree, directed acyclic graph...?) of all human knowledge, and give everyone a report saying: “This person understands these parts.” But over time, the list/tree is growing. Of course it is OK to know a smaller part of total human knowledge, because the population is growing; but still, you need to know more than your ancestors (if your computer skills are the same as your grandma’s, then she is a hero and you are a loser); on the other hand some knowledge becomes obsolete.
I think a percentile across the whole country would be a good measure for comparing individual students or schools. And it would be nice to also calculate long-term changes to know whether the country as a whole is improving.
Of course, you could show percentage scores in the tests rather than where you sit in the country. That means that it should be consistent over time, although I agree that in a decent sized national subject it’s probably fine the other way.
My main objection to giving percentiles relates to the OP’s concern that there’s no such thing as a ‘very good’ A, At least with UK school exams, I think that getting 100% in most subjects tests for conscientiousness and not making silly errors at best and being well-trained in the exam system at worst. I am pretty sure that if percentages were public I’d have had to get better marks to get into uni, but also that in making sure I did so I would not have been using my time usefully.
What I think would be far preferable to a ‘who managed not to screw up a single question’ model of getting better than an A would be an extension paper that was genuinely challenging and couldn’t be straightforwardly taught.
Boy, are you setting a high bar for Erna Hoover’s grandkids.