I think AS's actualy have their place. Obviously I don't know what it was like before the days of AS and A2, but if I had to take all those exams at the end of the second year rather than periodically through the course of the...erm...course, I'd probably go insane. Then again, there is a hell of a lot of pressure on us to take exams and do coursework all the time, there's no nice little quiet bit between exams because the next one's a few weeks away. I definitely think that SATs should be chucked down the bog. My little sister was more wound up than me last year (and that's saying something) just because she had to take her SATs and she was worried she wasn't going to get the grades. SATs don't even matter! It's how they assess the schools! It's not fair to put that much pressure on people my age, let alone kids as young as 8 and 11.
haha, just flicking through these i realise what a bum i am! first time round i got pretty atrocious results, C (geog, D (biology), E (maths), and a C and E for my 2 wishy washy subjects. I retook an exam or 2 in each, getting em to CCC, but my A2's dropped me back to those AS grades, thanks to an essay paper for bio dropping me 2 marks below that C, and my maths teacher leaving a few weeks before the end of term dropping my p3 and m1 down to U/E still, i had a good laugh, blagged my way into uni and am having a rockin time...good luck y'all, and congrats
Yeah I agree with you that AS's do take some of the pressure off, I definitely felt more comfortable going into A2's knowing I'd done half the work. However my main problem with them is that they essentially mean you have exams at the end of almost every year during high school, which leaves teaching entirely geared to getting you through them, and leaving hardly any room for creativity and learning simply for the sake that the topics are really rather interesting. I'd argue in favour of getting rid of AS exams, having A level exams again, but using coursework more to take some of the pressure off at the end. I think GCSE's should be more coursework based as well - WAY too many exams at the end of 2 years! Ideally we wouldn't live in a society where academic qualifications were the central mark of achievement. It sounds a little hypocritcal, since I'm doing a degree at Cambridge, but my reasoning for being here is above all for learning, not for the degree I get at the end of it....
Not that a degree from Cambridge is going to help you in your career *in the slightest*! Nah I know what you mean, it does feel a lot like some of the things I do, I don't get to know about the subject, just how to play the passing exams game. 10 weeks to goooooo...
