Are GCSE's easier now than they were ten years ago? Or are the teachers/pupils better at what they do?

I think GCSE now breaks down the questions into simpler steps. It still has the same questions, but 10 years ago, you probably had to write down all the necessary steps. Now, the same question probably has subparts to it, like 1a, 1b, 1c...etc

Look at the standards of spelling and grammar on this site!

I am a lecturer who often has to work with 16-19 year olds, and I can make some general observations.

Firstly, grades are now considered to be acceptable passes that my generation would have considered to be fails. Some of the kids proudly talk about all their GCESEs and on enquiry you discover they are Es and Ds.

Secondly there is a plethora of soft, non-academic subjects to choose from. So many 'Meeja studies' and too few Maths and Science passes.

Thirdly, I think I can genuinely say that things are easier; I have actually worked through, out of curiosity, some recent papers, and they really are a piece of cake.

Ultimately, how do you reconcile an escalating pass rate with plummeting standards of literacy and numeracy?

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As a student who took GCSEs last academic year I think they vary widely across subjects.

In newer subjects such as ICT it was relatively easy to get a high-grade when they were first offered as options, however now they have been made harder.

Subjects such as French must be getting easier. I got an A for French and know very little about the language, little about tenses or verbs and have atrocious pronunciation.

Many subjects devote a high amount of marks to coursework, which, if you put the time into when it is set is an easy way to make up say 20% of your grade, but if you perform poorly in it your overall result will suffer.

When gcse came out,i was one of the guniea pigs,we didnt have the information that the kids have got nowadays. So yes i would say they are easier.

I think that the teachers are better at teaching the courses, knowing the types of questions that are likely to appear in the exams, and knowing the type of answers the examiners are likely to look for. This means they are better able to prepare the students to pass the exams.

However, I think that the prevalence of plagiarism from the internet is also a factor in the recent results increases. I think it's a real shame that coursework in so many courses is now being dropped as a result. One of the real advantages of GCSEs over their O-level predecessors was coursework, allowing students who may not cope well under exam conditions to demonstrate their performance over a period of time, rather than having to nail it on one particular day.

They may be simpler but they are much broader. The maths courses now include a hugh chunk of the old statistics o level and the D and T courses all have a large element of technical drawing that we never did at o level.
The courses that I teach (Physics, D and T, Leisure and tourism and ICT) all seem to reflect real life much more than the courses I did 25 year ago. Those were very much academia for the sake of it.
Yes, course work is spoon fed in tiny chunks and writing frames make it very easy for students but that has more to do with the silly requirements of the exam boards than anything else. ICT GCSE project 1a - out of 28 marks you get none if you haven't got some info from a non-ict source. You can produce brilliant work and get a U because you didn't cut and stick a picture from a magazine. Stupid so we feed it on a spoon (metaphore!!!)

dont believe it, we just cheat!!! we get so much help from teachers with coursework all we have to do is reword what they say!!! dont know bout exams but what they should do to find out if thet're easier is make a sample of kids take two tests: the most recent and one that was set 10years ago and see which the subject gets the best grades at howver the sylabis(sp) has changed since then so it isnt that fair

This was tested a coupla years back - a whole buch of parents volunteered to take the same exams as their kids. The results were quite significantly in favour of the kids, but the parents walked into the exam with no recent teaching or coaching - what did you expect if they hadn't studied for twenty or more years?

Some of my O/A level material has stayed with me, but a lot of it is atrophied through non-use. O-level Geogrpaphy - been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the matching certificate. I don't need it any more.

Results of the kids vs parents experiment?

Inconclusive.