Tag: A-levels

  • Sociological Perspectives on the 2020 Exam results fiasco

    What a mess this years exam results were! First of all students get awarded their results based primarily on an algorithm, which adjusted center predicted grades up or down depending on how their historical results records. Then those results were scrapped in favour of the original teacher predicted grades, awarded several months ago, unless the…

  • ‘Results’ Day

    Students like to think that their exam results are primarily down their own individual effort and ability (their ‘merit’ if you like), and these are two of the factors which influence their exam results. However, the results statistics clearly show us that social factors such as parental income, wider social class background, gender and ethnicity…

  • Winners and losers from the cancellation of A-level exams

    The evidence suggests that if you’re white and middle class you’ll do OK out of A-levels being cancelled, not so if you’re BAME or poor.

  • A-Level Sociology is Becoming Increasingly Popular!

    A-Level Sociology is Becoming Increasingly Popular!

    There’s been a 16% increase in A-Level Sociology Exam Entries between the 4 years 2014-2018, according to the latest data on GCSE, AS and A-level entries from Ofqual. Here’s a print version of the stats in case the above isn’t that legible! (If it’s not, I might try and sort it out laters!).   What’s…

  • Analyse two reasons why men might commit more crime than women (10)

    This is a possible ’10 mark with item question’ question which might come up on the AQA’s A level sociology crime and deviance with theory and methods paper (7192/3). I’ve just got this intuitive feeling that IF a 10 mark question comes up on gender, it will ask candidates to focus on masculinity and male…

  • The most popular A Levels of 2017

    Maths wins, with 88, 000 entries, followed by English (74, 000 entries) and just to prove we truly live in an uncritical, individualised society, Psychology comes in at 3rd with 57,000 entries. Here’s a tree map I knocked up showing this – the interactive version is at this link Click here for another interactive version…

  • Why boys aren’t really catching up girls at A-level

    The 2017 A level results revealed that boys beat girls to top grades,  with 26.6% of boys achieving the top grades A-A* compared to 26.1% of girls. This is the first time in years that boys have done better than girls at A level, and suggests that they may be starting to close the ‘gender…

  • Do bad exam results matter?

    Results day tomorrow, and I predict that Social Media will be full of comments by celebrities telling students that exam results don’t matter that much because ‘I failed my exams, but I still found success’. This happened last year during The Guardian’s live chat following the release of  the 2016 GCSE results. The chat even supplied a…