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Is Grade Inflation a Problem?
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Thu, 03/26/2009 - 16:37
One hears quite a lot about grade inflation these days, in the sense that it is often assumed and sometimes proved that for the same achievement or level attained today students get higher grades or better marks than they would have done in the past.
The grades at GCSE and A-level in the U.K. are a case in point.
Is this a problem in the testing, evaluation and assessment of students' English, too? Who can say anything about this?
Diana
Hi Diana
Naively I think it would help if each time national/international exams were changed that their name changed too somehow to reflect which version is being considered! Like you say, GCSE and A Levels have evolved over time so how could my grades from years ago be compared with my daughter's recent grades? But, do they need to be?I mean, we go on and get additional qualifications and life and work experiences and school grades and even degree grades become irrelevant.
One problem I face is with IELTS bands and that the bands are flexible depending on a difficulty of a given version, as I understand it. Students always want to know how many points they need for a given band - and it's difficult to say - and then some info I read recently indicated that for a 4.5 (my students' required level) the requisite number of points on reading was 10/40... I feel really silly standing in class telling students that they only need to score 10 on a paper!
Heather