Why the GCSE Grade 9 shouldn’t be underestimated

I‘m Aryan, a student optometrist who is also interested in various topics concerning education and data analytics, enthralled by the insurmountable conclusions which can be drawn from such results. 

I’ve been drawing on the concept that the inherent skills and level of ability a Grade 9 is actually measuring is quite high.

It doesn’t matter that it’s a GCSE qualification. That’s totally irrelevant. The 11+ tests high- very high- ability… and yet that’s a test designed for 11 year olds and above.

So it’s not accurate to assign difficulty solely on the pretext of the level of a qualification.

I have been doing research and personal investigation into this topic for over 4 years, and there exists a concept of academic transferability of skills.

It isn’t accurate to say that university undergraduates, simply because they are undergraduates, will “sail through” GCSE level exams because “the content is basic.”. The scope of university undergraduates, their grades, their ability levels, is enormous.

Whether they will do well depends on the demands of their course. It depends on whether their course is focused around rote learning and application of known formulae- as is the case at most non-russell group universities-

or whether it’s about consistently applying and creating novel ideas… as is the case at Russell Group.

* I wanted to make this clarification here for those whom this confused. Sorry about that.

If it’s Oxbridge, which requires exceptionally high analytical and higher order skills, then the course will likely demand the same level of skill as is needed to do GCSE Grade 9 Maths problems successfully.

Research has proven questions can in general- regardless of level- be grouped into different categories based on their difficulty. DM me and I will send you this if you’re interested. I don’t want to bore people here.

There are, in every GCSE paper, particularly Maths- questions which assess basic content or concepts, but which target very high levels of abstract reasoning, and mathematical analysis.

This is really evident in the case of Grade 9 GCSE Maths questions: such questions can indeed be more academically challenging in these facets than questions which are, admittedly, on more challenging content- but which are of a rote or standard nature.

A good example of this might be at a university course which targets foundational levels of understanding. The content in this course may well be more complex than GCSE- but that isn’t the point. 

Question or item difficulty is linked to both the complexity of said content and the level of abstraction needed to answer the item.

You can have a question assessing foundational content (e.g areas of circles and rectangles) but which is exceptionally demanding as measured through YELLIS, a standardised test which can be used to assess the difficulty of different things. The mean YELLIS score of students who average GCSE grades of 9 is around 135. If we measured university students on the same scale, we could infer any differences in demand as compared to averaging all grade 9’s.

During my research I have found many examples of such questions. I am at university right now.

As an MOptom student, I can tell you I have been through university level examinations (both Year 1 and 2) and can tell you that I have encountered many rote questions- or to be more accurate, questions which didn’t need the same level of abstraction as Grade 9 GCSE Maths problems.

My first year optometry exams were on optics. 

Was the content harder than GCSE? In the main. (Though there was some overlap: e.g critical angles, refractive index)

Was the level of abstraction always higher than Grade 9 GCSE Maths questions? In 90 percent of the questions, no.

I’ve only encountered a few questions, if any, which pose the same level of problem solving ability and abstraction skills as those which are set at Grade 9 level at GCSE in Maths. These in the context of my papers, were at the end of the papers usually carrying about 4-5 marks of the total score.

I'm doing MOptom at Herts, for context. I understand the situation may be dramatically different elsewhere, for instance in Oxbridge. For instance, a colleague studying Engineering at Queen Mary University of London told me my exam paper questions are "nothing" compared to the level set by his exam papers. 

My point is that a Grade 9 shouldn't be undermined simply because it's an achievement within a "Level 2" qualification.

Think about it from a different angle.

I could make the same argument about the US SAT. That's their college admissions test- and it only looks at basic high school maths… but that isn’t the point.

People who score 1500 or above are demonstrating exceptional aptitude for problem solving...

And despite this, despite only being tested on basic maths concepts, people who have a SAT score this high have mean IQ's (and hence hypothetical mean YELLIS scores- SAT and YELLIS are taken about at the same age)- of 140 and above! 

Yes, it’s a GCSE. But the ability level entailed by some of the hardest questions on a GCSE paper- Grade 9 Maths questions- is an ability level which is transferrable across to a wide variety of contexts, both here, internationally, and more.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, about the level of abstraction/reasoning required In whatever course you are doing (exams wise) as compared to Grade 9 GCSE Maths problems- see https://thinkstudent.co.uk/hardest-gcse-maths-questions/

I think a comparison between RG/non russell group opinions might also be useful.

Many thanks for reading.