Thursday 19 August 2010

Exam Pass Rates Rising?

With today being when students receive their exam results, courtesy of Old Holborn in a tweet comes this reminder of the maths exam from 1952.

Three papers on Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry - total time: 6 and a half hours!

Allowing for conversion to modern day measurements, any youngster care to take a stab at these? Oh and no calculators allowed.

What's that? You don't understand the questions..........

9 comments:

microdave said...

"Oh and no calculators allowed." - Reaches for old "British Thornton" slide rule....

I think I can still remember how to use it!

Witterings from Witney said...

Not even that in my day and any additional paper with 'working-out' also had to be handed in!

Anonymous said...

Alright then, where was the "calculus" paper? Did nine subjects in 1949 and enjoyed every minute of it.

Anonymous said...

WfW, I'm having a lovely time going through the paper.

I thought it was hell at the time, I remember a friend and myself ceremonially burning our log books once we'd finished our GCEs.

Smashing link. Thanks.

Witterings from Witney said...

Anonymous, Christ you older than me! Never mind about calculus paper - it took me three goes to get the basic maths paper and I still dont know how I managed it.........

wg, pleased it keeping you amused.......

Mrs Rigby said...

Aargh! It's the stuff of nightmares!

Not sure if any of the juniors will be able to do them, they're not familiar with the units used. It's all metric these days.

Witterings from Witney said...

So, as suggested, Mrs R - convert the measurements etc and see how they do?
I'm sure your children will do fine - they will do as you are one bright lady!

No pressure there then.......

microdave said...

I failed the Maths GCE at school, and had to do evening classes to scrape through in order to get my first job. I've never been any good at long division, multiplication I can usually make a reasonable stab at.

I'm surprised you weren't allowed slide rules - the thing with them was that you had to have a fair idea what the answer was to start with, or you could get it completely wrong.

In much the same way the metric system makes it easy to screw up big time, unless you have a reasonable grounding in the older systems. Just getting the decimal place out by one could have serious consequences, but mixing up feet and yards is much less likely...

Mrs Rigby said...

"No pressure there then......."

A bit like my bicycle's front tyre!