High School
- Thread starter BubbleBelly542
- 9,458 comments
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- 7,551
- London
- MattyTheDog
Its annoying to think my whole future depends on a few exams. Though they are making GCSE's easier every year, so they lose their value more and more.
- 6,598
- United Kingdom
- MSTER232
- PS3 =/= Xbox 360
- 8,100
- Guelph, Ontario
*deep breath*
Here goes nothing...
There is a girl I really like at school. She is very beautiful and I would do anything for her. Anything. I'm pretty sure I love her, not just sexually attracted but she always ignores me.... What do I do?!?!
Does she ignore you or TRY to avoid you?
- 7,703
- Indy
- xXKingJoshXx
MSTER232*deep breath*
Here goes nothing...
There is a girl I really like at school. She is very beautiful and I would do anything for her. Anything. I'm pretty sure I love her, not just sexually attracted but she always ignores me.... What do I do
That's like every girl l like.
- 424
- Geneva
- GumI8all
*deep breath*
Here goes nothing...
There is a girl I really like at school. She is very beautiful and I would do anything for her. Anything. I'm pretty sure I love her, not just sexually attracted but she always ignores me.... What do I do
If I can contribute, let's just say I get 'mixed feelings' towards the girls I like, if you catch my drift
. Anyway, on study leave right now, meaning everyone in the non IGCSE course ('regular' 10th grade) is still at school, while I get the luxury of vacation time. Except I have to study. Meh, I do at most 4 hours a day. I'll let my genius, and the ridiculously low grade boundaries get me an A*
. Exams start Monday, and end on the 12th of June. Then I'm officially in IB
.
- 1,730
- Leeds
- mullac2k9
*deep breath*
Here goes nothing...
There is a girl I really like at school. She is very beautiful and I would do anything for her. Anything. I'm pretty sure I love her, not just sexually attracted but she always ignores me.... What do I do
Look if she's ignoring you I don't think she's worth, now I know if you feel love for someone it's hard to let go (happened with my 1st and only gf) But you learn that life moves on and soon there'll be someone else
- 2,046
- Wales
- GTP_Tyrrell
Actually I think they're making them harder, that is until labour come back in
. I can't see how they can make them any easier, especially History and Geography. Higher tier questions on a geography paper are things like, "Why might a city have higher crime rates than rural areas", or they ask you to state a More Economically Developed Country. Our Geography teacher is also an environmentalist who believes the world end by 2020 unless we install huge amounts of wind farms.As for History a typical question consists of being given a photo and then having to explain what it shows. For example, a picture of a destroyed Dresden circa 1945. The answer would be, "because RAF bombed it." A-Star just like that.
Exams are so dodgy, we had to do a biology past paper and the question was this; What is a tool ?
The only answer possible was, "An object used to do a job." Had you put the dictionary definition it would've been wrong. The WJEC sickens me /rant.
- 15,994
- United Kingdom
- haitch40
- Xbox?
It's a little more than that and you know it.
The thing you are talking about is entry levels being that easy.
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- 2,046
- Wales
- GTP_Tyrrell
No it really isn't, the questions get longer but not harder. You don't really need any knowledge to pass it save for a few dates, statistics and a basic overview of the war.
Ok maybe that answer wasn't A-Star but it was a certainly a comfortable C.
I've done two in Year 10 on USA 1929 - 1990 and it consisted of naming the influential presidents and saying their main policies and actions. i.e. Richard Nixon and Watergate and Roosevelt and the New Deal. Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were completely missed as they were deemed to have not done anything of any great importance.
I assume you didn't do the WJEC paper ?
Ok maybe that answer wasn't A-Star but it was a certainly a comfortable C.
I've done two in Year 10 on USA 1929 - 1990 and it consisted of naming the influential presidents and saying their main policies and actions. i.e. Richard Nixon and Watergate and Roosevelt and the New Deal. Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were completely missed as they were deemed to have not done anything of any great importance.
I assume you didn't do the WJEC paper ?
- 638
- Wollongong
Over in New South Wales (not sure how other states do it) the grade scale is A,B,C,D,E,N (N for completing less the 50% of the subject, not a mark under 50%). N is the only real fail mark while C is the average and where you want to be at as a bare minimum.
- 7,703
- Indy
- xXKingJoshXx
The kid l said that had to go to the hospital is actually one of my friends. He was playing softball in gym and the best baseball player in school (literally) hit it extremely hard and fouled it to the side and hit him in the face. Broke his jaw and gave him a concussion. Yesterday was pretty dramatic, a suicide and a kid to the hospital.
- 148
- ontario
- swampy_96
wow that's even worse. don't worry though i's just a rough patch of time, it's happened to my school too. a kid gets pummeled by a rain doing 60 and then a kid goes to the hospital with a broken leg. it will pass.
- 7,703
- Indy
- xXKingJoshXx
MSTER232*deep breath*
Here goes nothing...
There is a girl I really like at school. She is very beautiful and I would do anything for her. Anything. I'm pretty sure I love her, not just sexually attracted but she always ignores me.... What do I do
That's like me with this girl.
And no that's not a random internet pic she had her pic taken by a pro.
Edit: erased pic, not sure if I'm allowed to post it, it's not inappropriate, someone tell me if l can please.
- 30,061
- Bratvegas
- GTP_Liquid
A few points.
Yes. Yes, yes and yes again.
I love history and learn what I can when I can, but learning it in school is restricted by what the national/federal/state curriculums say needs to be taught.
As for languages, I know two and can converse a bit in two others. Even as someone who likes it, learning a language is tough and it often comes down to whether you have a genuine interest in it, rather than simply being good at it.
It shouldn't matter whether you go to a 'good' school or a 'bad' school. An A from a bad school isn't worth any more than an A from a good school. School league tables don't prove squat, and I'm sure every man and his dog can claim how awful their school is/was. My school was mediocre at best, but far from the worst in the area. We still had a catalogue of leavers with urine poor grades. If you can do it, you will. Try your best and you'll get your rewards.
Really? I sat my A-levels in 2009 and the highest you could get was an A.
Were you a good student? I can only speak for my school but for years 10 and 11 we were split into either top set or foundation. Top set grades went from A*-C only and Foundation was D-F/G only, but now I think about it, there must have been an overlapping group too because my two best mates weren't in top set but they definitely weren't foundation.
Same with any exam question which doesn't require your personal opinion then. Learnt the facts and figures. Play it by the book.
What do you expect at GCSE level? The United States is a foreign country, they're not going to go into great detail at key stages 3 and 4.
If you're really that interested, do what I do and look it up in your own time. Or pursure it further if you want a bona fide qualification in it.
I have. Living in or near the borderlands I did a mixture of AQA and WJEC, and possibly one exam was OCR. Didn't seem too difficult, but I put that down to being a good pupil in school. It's only easy if you know the answer. Otherwise everyone would be getting A stars.
---
Having spent the last 8-9 months working in a school abroad, I've had the opportunity to witness how other school systems work, and Germany's is quite complicated. And it's different in every Bundesland, because (West) Germany modelled itself after the federal system of the US.
My school has problems motivating its pupils in the later years because all of the good students have been cherrypicked for the grammar schools. So all we're left with are the students who can't do it or refuse to do it, then the education board clamps down on us for not having good enough average grades. But it's hard to motivate pupils who have zero interest in learning. Many of the older students repeat Year 10, the final year, two or three times and there is no embarrassing stigma about it, which speaks volumes about the attitude younger people have towards education.
I supervised yesterday's English paper and was astonished in that the pupils were allowed to eat and drink during the exam. And, bearing in mind it was a foreign language exam, they were allowed a dictionary and a thesaurus! Their English is miles, miles, miles better than my/our German was at 16 years old, but we had to struggle with whatever words were left in our brains. The atmosphere around their finals exam was no different than an in-class test. Too relaxed for my liking personally, but then again, I went to school in 'strict' Great Britain. To us ourselves, we're not that strict but I can tell you that we're stricter than Germany.
Yes. Yes, yes and yes again.
I love history and learn what I can when I can, but learning it in school is restricted by what the national/federal/state curriculums say needs to be taught.
As for languages, I know two and can converse a bit in two others. Even as someone who likes it, learning a language is tough and it often comes down to whether you have a genuine interest in it, rather than simply being good at it.
It shouldn't matter whether you go to a 'good' school or a 'bad' school. An A from a bad school isn't worth any more than an A from a good school. School league tables don't prove squat, and I'm sure every man and his dog can claim how awful their school is/was. My school was mediocre at best, but far from the worst in the area. We still had a catalogue of leavers with urine poor grades. If you can do it, you will. Try your best and you'll get your rewards.
Really? I sat my A-levels in 2009 and the highest you could get was an A.
Were you a good student? I can only speak for my school but for years 10 and 11 we were split into either top set or foundation. Top set grades went from A*-C only and Foundation was D-F/G only, but now I think about it, there must have been an overlapping group too because my two best mates weren't in top set but they definitely weren't foundation.
Same with any exam question which doesn't require your personal opinion then. Learnt the facts and figures. Play it by the book.
What do you expect at GCSE level? The United States is a foreign country, they're not going to go into great detail at key stages 3 and 4.
If you're really that interested, do what I do and look it up in your own time. Or pursure it further if you want a bona fide qualification in it.
I have. Living in or near the borderlands I did a mixture of AQA and WJEC, and possibly one exam was OCR. Didn't seem too difficult, but I put that down to being a good pupil in school. It's only easy if you know the answer. Otherwise everyone would be getting A stars.
---
Having spent the last 8-9 months working in a school abroad, I've had the opportunity to witness how other school systems work, and Germany's is quite complicated. And it's different in every Bundesland, because (West) Germany modelled itself after the federal system of the US.
My school has problems motivating its pupils in the later years because all of the good students have been cherrypicked for the grammar schools. So all we're left with are the students who can't do it or refuse to do it, then the education board clamps down on us for not having good enough average grades. But it's hard to motivate pupils who have zero interest in learning. Many of the older students repeat Year 10, the final year, two or three times and there is no embarrassing stigma about it, which speaks volumes about the attitude younger people have towards education.
I supervised yesterday's English paper and was astonished in that the pupils were allowed to eat and drink during the exam. And, bearing in mind it was a foreign language exam, they were allowed a dictionary and a thesaurus! Their English is miles, miles, miles better than my/our German was at 16 years old, but we had to struggle with whatever words were left in our brains. The atmosphere around their finals exam was no different than an in-class test. Too relaxed for my liking personally, but then again, I went to school in 'strict' Great Britain. To us ourselves, we're not that strict but I can tell you that we're stricter than Germany.
- 9,262
- Corsham
- lipming
At AS the highest is an A but at A2 it's an A*.
We had sets 1-5 in my school. I was in top set for everything except English. In Science some people did foundation papers, with those doing foundation having a C as their maximum grade. Literally never heard of a G grade before, maybe something that came in after 2009. Apparantely GCSE's became much easier, as getting 5 or 6 A*'s became the norm. I got 2 A's, 2 B's, 5 C's and an E.
- 87,877
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
With regards to British qualifications...
In the olden days (1988) you had an overall school qualification called the "GCE" (General Certificate of Education), which was a effectively summary of everything for school leavers. It was divided into three separate qualifications - the GCE A-Level, the GCE O-level and the GCE CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education). The last two were all-but compulsory, for ~16 year olds and the first was optional, for ~18 year olds.
The GCE A-Level still exists and it's still effectively graded in the same way. A, B, C, D, E are the passes. It has mutated a little bit - what we used to call A-Levels are now called "A2" - A* was introduced as a top level grade for A2 in 2008. Fail grades have been N (never officially named, but referred to as "Nearly"), U ("Unclassified" - a mark below E) and X (no name, meaning "Did not attend") but are currently only U and X. There was also, briefly an "O" grade which meant the student hadn't passed the A-Level but had achieved a grade sufficient to be O-Level equivalent. Originally there was no set pass mark - the students' grades were stuffed into a bell curve at roughly 5% A, 20% B, 25% C, 25% D, 20% E, 5% U. Seems slightly unfair on the face of it - a mark sufficient for a C one year might get an A the next - but it offered a qualitative way of distinguishing between students from different years. Any kid getting an A was in the top ~5% of his peers.
GCE O-Levels/CSE were a little different. O-Levels were originally what the smart kids did - as a prelude to A-Levels and university - while CSE was introduced so that more kids could leave school with qualifications to their name. The passing grades were, like GCE A-Levels, A, B, C, D and E, with U grades for fails. CSEs, however, had seven passing grades, numbered 1-7 - 1-3 was classed as an O-Level standard pass. The line got a little more blurry over the years - kids took both qualifications in different subjects - to the point where an A-C grade was classed as an O-Level pass.
When GCSEs were introduced, they smooshed together O-Level and CSEs. GCSEs are both sets of qualifications in one and, accordingly, there were seven passing grades - A, B, C, D, E, F and G - with U and X still as fail grades. A-C was still treated as an O-Level standard pass. However, where originally a small number of pupils ever achieved A-C O-levels or 1-3 CSEs, the majority of GCSE pupils were scoring A-C, so A* was introduced in 1996 to provide a way to distinguish between students who scored an A. In 2011 nearly 1/4 of all GCSEs scored an A* or A and nearly 70% got an A*-C.
In the olden days (1988) you had an overall school qualification called the "GCE" (General Certificate of Education), which was a effectively summary of everything for school leavers. It was divided into three separate qualifications - the GCE A-Level, the GCE O-level and the GCE CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education). The last two were all-but compulsory, for ~16 year olds and the first was optional, for ~18 year olds.
The GCE A-Level still exists and it's still effectively graded in the same way. A, B, C, D, E are the passes. It has mutated a little bit - what we used to call A-Levels are now called "A2" - A* was introduced as a top level grade for A2 in 2008. Fail grades have been N (never officially named, but referred to as "Nearly"), U ("Unclassified" - a mark below E) and X (no name, meaning "Did not attend") but are currently only U and X. There was also, briefly an "O" grade which meant the student hadn't passed the A-Level but had achieved a grade sufficient to be O-Level equivalent. Originally there was no set pass mark - the students' grades were stuffed into a bell curve at roughly 5% A, 20% B, 25% C, 25% D, 20% E, 5% U. Seems slightly unfair on the face of it - a mark sufficient for a C one year might get an A the next - but it offered a qualitative way of distinguishing between students from different years. Any kid getting an A was in the top ~5% of his peers.
GCE O-Levels/CSE were a little different. O-Levels were originally what the smart kids did - as a prelude to A-Levels and university - while CSE was introduced so that more kids could leave school with qualifications to their name. The passing grades were, like GCE A-Levels, A, B, C, D and E, with U grades for fails. CSEs, however, had seven passing grades, numbered 1-7 - 1-3 was classed as an O-Level standard pass. The line got a little more blurry over the years - kids took both qualifications in different subjects - to the point where an A-C grade was classed as an O-Level pass.
When GCSEs were introduced, they smooshed together O-Level and CSEs. GCSEs are both sets of qualifications in one and, accordingly, there were seven passing grades - A, B, C, D, E, F and G - with U and X still as fail grades. A-C was still treated as an O-Level standard pass. However, where originally a small number of pupils ever achieved A-C O-levels or 1-3 CSEs, the majority of GCSE pupils were scoring A-C, so A* was introduced in 1996 to provide a way to distinguish between students who scored an A. In 2011 nearly 1/4 of all GCSEs scored an A* or A and nearly 70% got an A*-C.
- 7,517
- Connecticut
- Cowboys965
I have a Global Studies paper due next week. I'm wondering what I should do it on...
Chen, a Dissident of China,
The Mexican Drug Cartel,
Or I could find my own topic.
Chen, a Dissident of China,
The Mexican Drug Cartel,
Or I could find my own topic.
- 15,994
- United Kingdom
- haitch40
- Xbox?
Those were my GCSE's I am doing 3 A-levels. History (Now performing at B to A standard eat that school), Sociology and Philosophy.
@Liquid: Under normal conditions I agree but mine wern't (don't ask). Although any employer would not care how bad your school was just the grade I agree.
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