Thursday, July 26, 2007

'A' levels not on the level


Sir Peter Williams has come out to say that the GCE 'A' level examinations - a British institutional exams adopted by Singapore for decades - have been getting easier over the last few years. No wonder Singapore keeps churning out so many students with straight As. Compared to my time, one would have thought that our children are getting smarter. In fact, it's not so much our student getting smarter but the exams getting 'more stupid'. Sigh, and I thought we have made great advances in our education system.

I'd imagine now that the egos of students (and their parents) who have gotten fantastic 'A' level results to be deflated somewhat by this news from the horse's mouth. It also assuages my ego to know that my 'A' level results were not all that poor compared to our kids' today.

3 comments :

Anonymous said...

Does this mean that students elsewhere in the world are getting dumber?

Anonymous said...

*smirk* That is one possibility.

Anonymous said...

Hey I'm currently taking my A levels in Singapore. I think the new H1/H2/H3 system is weird. The papers are tougher than past year papers, though those papers taken 15-20 years ago still triumph in difficulty.
But I certainly do think we aren't exactly getting smarter ;)