[gaius]

The first year of a degree teaches students what 6th forms used to in the old days. Fix the dumbing down in state schools first. A-levels have been devalued by politically driven grade inflation, so let's take it out of the hands of the politicians altogether and switch to the IB.

[SiVal]

There is great political pressure in most countries to "improve" the education of the population. This runs into other political, demographic, and scientific realities and produces some ironic consequences. For example, in the US, we have a higher and higher percentage of the population entering college each year. That means that the average IQ of those entering college gradually declines. (It wouldn't if the Flynn Effect still functioned, but gains from the Flynn Effect in the US ended 20-30 years ago.) The top 10% has a higher average IQ than the top 20%, which is itself greater than for the top 30%, etc. The higher the percentage going to college, the lower the average IQ of college students, and the colleges have to adjust to avoid an embarrassing rise in drop-out rates.

I saw statistics a week or so ago showing a gradual rise in the percentage of students who take calculus in high school, a gradual rise in the percentage who take Algebra 1 in eighth grade (instead of in 9th, 10th, etc.), and other stats that would seem to imply a gradual increase in math ability for any given age cohort. Yet, within a day or two, I also saw stats showing a gradual decrease in math ability for high school graduates entering college. In 1995, the College Board could no longer continue with the old SAT and had to "renormalize" it to get the mean score back up to 500. They had to dumb it down, in other words.

I've seen stats and reports from other countries (including Japan) that show the same trends. People demand that the schools do a better job of getting kids ready for college by, for example, having more of them take algebra in 8th grade. So, it happens, except that they aren't really any better prepared than before, so to prevent the embarrassment of rising failure rates, the course has to be dumbed down. The apparent increase in math ability is achieved by a relabeling of what they do, not by an increase in how much they learn. There is now a growing trend in Illinois for students (I assume from Chicago) to take calculus in high school and then end up in remedial math in college. They're not learning anything, but for political reasons they are given classes labeled "calculus" to show "progress toward social justice". I assume Illinois is representative of many other places in many countries.

[jonnathanson]

This is spot on, and in theory, it's why standardized testing was implemented in the first place: to get at normative ways to compare knowledge in a given subject across schools and learning environments. It was social engineering, really: by convincing schools that their students would be held accountable to universal standards, those schools would in turn up their games and make sure students were learning the real deal.

Of course, what actually happened was twofold:

1. "Teaching to the test," i.e., narrowing a broad subject area like Calculus down to whatever aspects would be covered on a standardized AP exam.

2. Following from the above, a reduction in foundational and principle education in favor of problem-based education. Kids would learn the what of the formulas, but not the why. Kids could calculate a derivative, but they couldn't tell you what it meant or why they would ever need to do so.

The result? A vicious cycle. Subjects narrowed and became divorced from their foundational purposes, which accordingly made them more about rote than about thinking, which made them less engaging subjects, which in turn discouraged student interest, which in turn led to declining scores. And the cycle repeated itself.

[Shamiq]

Apologies for my American-centered knowledge of an education system. Could you provide more background about this issue? A-levels vs IB (Internaltional Baccalaureate I think)?

[gaius]

There have been a number of tweaks to A-levels, once the gold standard of secondary education, to make them easier to pass. For example instead of one exam at the end of two years, it is split into smaller modules, which can be repeated, lower marks can be discarded, there is a consolation prize of an AS level, and pass rates have been going up every year. There is even a whole new grade, A* above A - whereas surely A* is really A and A is really B, but that doesn't look so good on the league tables.

Yet all the time that grades are going up, lecturers are complaining that the quality of freshers is going down, in terms of the level of literacy and numeracy that would be expected in previous years, and that most of the first year must be devoted to remedial teaching, filling in the material that wasn't covered in A-levels.

The International Baccalaureate is operated by an independent non-profit organization in Switzerland whose reputation rests not on conning the voters but on being the real "gold standard". Education is too important to be trusted to politicians.

Schools in the UK have the power to do the IB instead of A-levels but are strongly discouraged from doing so via the central funding mechanism, this is for ideological reasons, the New Labour government felt it was "divisive". Hopefully the current lot, who are all about decentralized decision making, will allow it.

[pedrokost]

Having recently completed the IB there are some things that are not really great (they may still be better than the A levels). I can only comment for the subjects I took.

Physics- too much emphasis on theory and step by step problems. I think solving a complete, complex problem shows much more understanding of physics, than the present state, where you can spend a month learning the theory by hard and then solve quite basic problems with lots of guidance, and pass the final exam with a decent grade.

Maths - great, I liked, even if it was hard. Much harder than A levels

Languages B (there a A and B, A meaning that it is intended for native speakers)- they could be a bit harder. It is unnecessary to study to get a decent grade. One can get a 6 or 7 (grades are up to 7) by just attending class.

Languages A- awesome. We didn't lose time learning much about history (there was just enough) like I would have to in the national baccalaureate system in Slovenia, but learned to write and speak. This includes blogs, journal articles, essays, political speeches, presentations...

TOK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_knowledge_(IB_course) The way it was taught at our school it was a waste of time. Apparently the professors were not well trained to teach it. This subject could be of great use if well taught.

Geography was nice and greatly taught, but I think its similar to the national system and the A levels.

What is the outcome of the IB for me? Now I am studying Computing at the public university where I get to meet people from all backgrounds, schools and educational systems. I can tell that I have a much deeper understanding of maths and physics than everyone else who didn't do the IB. Many students don't even understand calculus, complex numbers and vectors. Not to speak about physics. Some went to CS high schools before, but apart from some programming knowledge they lag behind by much. The result is that I am bored in class. We've spent the first month revising what I did in the IB, and we are still gonna do it for quite some time. Plus we learn LESS than in the IB. We don't go as deep.

So yes, I think the first year of university/college is quite a waste of time if you were an IB student and you were quite good.

The first year of university seems to me as a catchup for the 'bad students'. We don't build on what we learned in high school, but instead relearn it with less insight into the principles of the subjects.

[gaius]

It was quite a long time ago that I did my A-levels but I remember that when revising for the final exams, papers from 10 years earlier kicked our asses. Even papers from the old O-levels were tough after studying for A-levels for 2 years - GCSEs are a joke.

The education system, in any country, seems to be particularly vulnerable to capture by bonkers ideologists who prize "equality" and "inclusiveness" above all else, which means dumbing down to the lowest common denominator so everyone can win a prize at the end. It why, no matter what the governments try to do, private education is thriving.

[InclinedPlane]

The situation seems to be the same as in the US, where a high-school diploma no longer guarantees mastery of remedial English and math skills. Forcing colleges to front-load that education before moving forward.

HS graduation rates may be higher today but I'm not sure that correlates with greater mastery of basic intellectual skills.

This also helps explain the increasing reliance on college degrees (any degree) as a necessary prerequisite credential for many office and knowledge worker jobs.