Talk:GCE Ordinary Level (United Kingdom)

Duplication
MadmanBot provided a Duplication Report. The duplicated content in question is in fact a direct copy of a previous version of the Wikipedia article, as evidenced by the words "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" appearing on the web page as well. As the content is therefore Wikipedia's own, I have removed the duplication message. --Shruti14 talk • sign 12:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

multiple issues: GCSE / O-Level (UK) / CSE - reversion war
All three page has numerous issues, but as it appear any attempt to correct errors leads to a revision war perhap a responsible adult fancies addressing:

Copied mainly from ( User_talk:83.77.136.150 ) but to duplicate them here:

FYI:
 * However ever many times you hit revert there will still only be 10 years, not 20, between 1996 and 2006, you can verify that one on your fingers, no toes required..
 * The figures in the table I'm building: English O-Level and CSE Mathematics entrants 1977-9 are for years 1977, 1978 and 1979 (those little blue numbers after by title will take you to a LINK with the original numbers in), please leave the years alone.
 * The figures for 8+ passes, in another little table I'm building "Percentage of School-Leavers in England obtaining 'n' O-level(A-C) or CSE grade 1 pass", are: 4.5 and 4.7 - again follow the magic blue numbers to the source, and leave the numbers alone.
 * The first GCSE awards were in June 1988, so there is no pre 1988.
 * The number of subjects, syllabus content, assessment, ..... have changed considerably since those proposed in 1986, the number of subjects has increased from the ~33 in 1988, to over 120 in the list you keep removing the formatting from, the A* was introduced in 1994, controlled assessment expanded..... So please stop removing the content i'm adding, and replacing it with a "nothing changes".
 * The GCSE in not norm-referenced, so any comparison with similar awards will only be valid for the year the data was compared, in this case the comparisons were made in: 1988 and 1994.
 * There are approximately 800,000 pupils in each GCSE cohort, not 6 million, please stop replacing the count of exam scripts with the word candidates.
 * Also please stop deleting the "See also" sections, that link to other variants of the qualification.
 * removal of quoted and cited text from the OECD and Department of Education,
 * please stop removing the previous names / brands the exam boards offered GCSE's as.

83.104.51.74 (talk) 18:29, 26 August 2015 (UTC) 83.104.51.74 (talk) 18:33, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

83.104.51.74 (talk) 20:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Grades not on certificate
The UoL GCE O level certificates do not carry the grade. The grade was provided on an Individual Results Notice which was a slip of paper. Why the grade was not put on the certificate is a mystery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.152.46 (talk) 21:59, 30 December 2016 (UTC)


 * My O, AO, AS and A level certificates all have grades. Perhaps it depends on the exam board or year.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.17.35 (talk) 18:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Of course they carried grades - I've got my certificates in front of me now, all 6 of them, from 1978! Not the UoL certs from the 1960's.

In the 1968 Summer examinations, the London Board awarded passes as A, C and E. There were no Bs or Ds awarded. This was a change from the January examinations of the same year when pass grades were A to E. I have no idea if this continued after 1968. There are no grades listed on my certificate (Victor Middlesex (talk) 17:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC))

The UoL exam board had just A, C, E on the IRN slip for my O levels which I took in 1968/69. I got 4 A's and 3 C's. The IRN slips were supposed to be held in confidence by the school. But my school passed them on to the students.

Joint O level & CSE exams
I believe these were offered in the 1980's (think the courses were described as 16+ O'levels), if memory serves they were a sort of trial run for the GCSE program that replaced O'levels & CSE'S - perhaps someone with more knowledge could add details to the article?

Equivalence of post-2017 grades
A IP user has added the following to the main text, with the edit "Note to correct a serious mistake in and an omission from a table which I can't edit."


 * {| class="wikitable" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: none;"


 * NB The current grade 9 is HIGHER than the previous A* grade was and hence has no equivalent.

For GCSE Mathematics from 1988 there was an extension paper allowing candidates to achieve 3 grades higher than an A (pass, merit and distinction). This was stopped.
 * }

The editor appears to correct about the new grade 9, see these sources:

Presumably Template:GCSE grades needs to be edited to give something like this. I find the table syntax somewhat challenging and I hope that another editor can take this on.

The second sentence about "pass, merit and distinction" looks wrong: surely a pass grade was not higher than an A grade.

Should we should revert these additions? Verbcatcher (talk) 01:57, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Further Evidence that a U Indicates an "Unclassified" Grade?
Is there any further evidence that a U does indeed represent an unclassified grade? Perhaps this is a mistake?
 * As I am old enough to have taken O Levels and had a few "U"s in my time, the following link from AQA confirms that a U was in fact "Ungraded". Click on www.aqa.org.uk/ "Grade E or below was ungraded and not recorded on the certificate". Seth Whales   talk  10:12, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 11 December 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved (non-admin closure) BegbertBiggs (talk) 15:45, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

GCE Ordinary Level (United Kingdom) → GCE Ordinary Level (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) – O levels only existed in England, Wales & Northern Ireland, not in Scotland...see Scottish Certificate of Education. Seth Whales  talk  10:26, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:CONCISE and to maintain consistency with GCE Advanced Level (United Kingdom). While "England and Wales" and "Great Britain" have been used to represent subdivisions of the UK, "England, Wales and Northern Ireland" has never been used as a subdivision because Scotland joined the union before Ireland did. Iffy★Chat -- 13:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * As I say, Scotland (which was, and still is, part of the UK) never took Ordinary Level exams. You might just as well call it GCE Ordinary Level (Europe), if you wanted to be concise, as Europe only has one word, compared with two words for the United Kingdom. Seth Whales   talk  14:07, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISE.  Bait30   Talk 2 me pls? 02:55, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Completely unnecessary. Just because Scotland never used them doesn't mean they didn't exist in the United Kingdom, which is all the disambiguator says. Three out of four countries in the UK used them. The disambiguator does its job, which is to disambiguate, perfectly well. If Scotland used a different GCE Ordinary Level from the other countries of the UK then it would be different, but as it didn't there's no need for a change. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Tracking down o’level results from 1985/1986
I am finding it very difficult to track down who the examination board would of been for o.level exam results in Doncaster South Yorkshire rossington comprehensive school. In the 1985/1986 era 188.223.10.82 (talk) 10:24, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

O-Level Grading Comments are not ACCURATE.
There are some fairly serious errors in the sections referring to grading and grades on the examination certificates. In 1974 grades were certainly applied to all O levels. The suggestion that these were pass/fail PRIOR to 1975 is not accurate. I actually have a set of 10 O-Levels and 5 A-Levels paper certificates from 1974-1976 and they all are clearly graded. One had to achieve a C - or better and even CSEs were graded - though inconsistently in some area. Exnihilox (talk) 16:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)


 * This is true. I did O-levels in 1970 (plus 1 in 1969 and 1 in 1970), and they were certainly graded. This was the JMB, and the grades were as described: pass grades 1–6, fail grades 7–9, and U for (?) unclassified. Other boards had other number/letter systems. I believe that earlier than that candidates were told their actual percentage, but I'm afraid I haven't any sources. Snugglepuss (talk) 09:17, 6 May 2024 (UTC)