From: gerard@caliban.soest.hawaii.edu (Gerard Fryer)
Subject: Re: O-levels, A-levels etc was Re: THE COMPLETE BRITISH TO AMERICAN DICT.
Organization: Scum Of the Earth and Senile Tenured
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 22:05:51 GMT

In article <1992Sep6.143944.9594@cl.cam.ac.uk>, ag129@cl.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:
|> 
|> I'm surprised Americans haven't heard of A-levels, as they are used  
|> (like the Baccalaureate) quite widely outside Britain, to allow students
|> from backward countries to get a recognised secondary qualification.
|> In Australia I did a general maths A-level, which was at least a year's
|> work beyond the Australian Pure and Applied Maths high school certificates
|> I did later that year. The British universities who regulate A-levels make
|> a lot of money overseas, I think.

This may indicate a double standard.  Do you know whether the A-level
exam in Australia was the same standard as the exam prepared for home
consumption in Britain?  I suspect that the Australian exam was at a
significantly higher level.

Here's my experience, admittedly aeons ago (late sixties).  In Malaysia
I took the University of Cambridge GCE (overseas) exam - supposedly the
equivalent of O-levels (the A-level equivalent at that time was the HSC
- higher school certificate).  Then I went to England and spent a
couple of months at Hendon Tech (actually at an annexe in Burnt Oak) in
preparation for the University of London GCE A-levels.  It seemed like
a bit of a gamble to take the exams little more than a year after the
"O," especially as I had been out of school for most of the interim.
In panic I bailed out of Chemistry so I could concentrate on what, for
me, were the important subjects: Physics, Pure Maths, and Applied
Maths.

Ha!  I needn't have bothered.  The London A-levels were nowhere near
the standard of the Cambridge overseas GCE (in Applied Maths, my best
subject, I wasted much of the time searching for hidden tricks, then
realised with disgust that there weren't any; the entire paper was
fourth-form level).  I felt as if I had wasted my time.  Two friends
from Malaysia who subsequently came to London felt even more cheated -
they had soldiered on to take the Cambridge HSC in Malaysia the usual
two years beyond the GCE, and so found themselves a full year behind
me.  Not only that, but a large proportion of their first year work
(one was taking Physics at Queen Mary College, the other Maths at
University College) was a repeat of stuff they had studied in school.

There were two possible explanations: either the Cambridge standard was
much tougher than the London, or the overseas standard was much tougher
than that applied domestically.  One of my English friends provided us
with his Cambridge A-level questions.  In comparing these with my own
London A-levels we did find that the Cambridge questions were harder,
but only marginally so.  The real eye-opener was comparing the
Cambridge A-levels with the Cambridge HSC.  The HSC was systematically
harder and covered a broader range of topics.  Our conclusion was
inevitable: the overseas exam was intentionally made more difficult to
screen out uneducated wogs.

I am English but in Malaysia I had been coopted into the Chinese
community.  For my two Malaysian friends, both Chinese, I could not
return the favour; England's xenophobia was too strong.  Comparing the
examinations appeared to be the last straw.  In my friends' eyes it
demonstrated that the English are racist and here I was, no longer a
foreigner, obviously English.  They damned me too.  The friendship
decayed.
-- 
Gerard Fryer  (g.fryer@soest.hawaii.edu)     | One despairs of ever explaining 
School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology | research to those who need
University of Hawaii at Manoa                | explanation, for ignorance is
                                             | impregnable. - Keith Mather.
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