The Times reproduced a specimen GCSE Physics paper a few months back and to say it was atrocious is an understatement. Very little of the paper had anything to do with Physics and some of the questions were poorly written and in many cases the answers were wrong, there was also very little mathematics involved in the paper. When i did O levels calculators weren't allowed, if that happened today grade results would collapse overnight.

Stephen, St. Ives, England

The main problem today is the exam system is not being used as it was meant as a means for sorting students for the next level of education, O levels for A level and Alevels for university. Today the exam system has been subverted by politicians to prove that they are improving the educational system, yet this is proved blatently false by the statistic that 20% leave school without being literate or numerate, a figure which hasn't changed since at least the early seventies. The exam system is being used to cover up the failure of the educational establishments failure to properly educate children.

Stephen, St. Ives, England

As a well known individual in the field of special education I feel having Chris Woodhead always portrayed as the 'fountain of all educational knowledge' slightly annoying.All in the education industry know there are problems with overall standards.
Chris with his small coterie of private schools under the Cognita banner is hardly doing much to improve the overall standards in the UK.

Rev Dr Matin Phillips, Paphos, Cyprus

I discovered recently that my oldest nephew (22)cannot read and write. To say I was appalled is putting it mildly - after 11 years of state education this is what he has. He's nota stupid boy and verygood with computers but there is a strong sense in UK of pupils being left to fall by the wayside if they might get in the way of league tables.Education seems to be going backwards not forwards.

Name Withheld, London, UK

I am a 15 Year old student studying at the moment and am finding the curriculum slightly challenging as last year they made a withdrawal of the intermediate paper in maths which now means the grouping and sectors in schools have substantially changed. Your right in saying it is important to get good grades but what you simply fail to understand our chances of getting at least a C which is the equivalent to an O level and a pass is simply beyond children. This should be Taken in to consideration!!

kanza, london, mictham

As always, Chris Woodhead, makes an interesting read, but one does sometimes wonder whether he is writing more for a particular audience than dispassionately analysing exam statistics.

A week or so ago, Chris was criticising the glut of grade As at A level. Now, it seems, he takes issue when an exam does actually differentiate more robustly!

We all hopefully aspire to an improvement in the number of students gaining a grade C or above in English and Maths, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that these exams are taken by virtually the whole cohort.

Surely it is inherently obvious in that case, that the distribution of grades in both English and Maths is going to be very, very different to that of the other elective GCSE subjects?

Come on Chris, you can't have it both ways!

Richard, Colchester,

Yet another chapter in this govenment's areer of lying and deceit. The DfCS and its associated quangos are an anti-social force, though the damage was started by left-leaning "educators" long before Blair's vicotires. These people do not understand, or do not care about, the long term consequences of their actions. The real problem Labour ministers have with education is that, for all their rhetoric, they are against it.

John Bald, Linton,

You say that less than a C grade is meaningless. Absolutely wrong. Half of the people in our country have to work very hard to get a C and many get Ds and Es and there is nothing wrong with that. They can use them to get onto college courses or enter vocational training. I am sick of reading journalists who went to university talking as if the only students that matter are the top 50%. There will always be less able people and they will always get the lowest grades, this is not a national problem it is just a natural outcome of differing IQs.

Leo Jones, Holyhead, Wales

All this has got out of hand and the point of exams has been lost. They were originally designed to sort out which pupils could benefit from more advanced education at the next step. i.e. modern school/grammar school or university/technical collage/ night school,
It was never meant to be a measure of teacher effectiveness or political party superiority.
All was well until the politicians hijacked it for their own ends. It was then stuffed, as is everything they touch.
It is totally impossible for all people to be equal and every effort to try to achieve this proves the truth of my assertion.
The only class of people to come close to being equal are the politicians themselves and their near equality lies in their stupidity and crass ignorance.

Doris Rogers, York,

GCSE Maths is a complete joke. No, I'm not some reactionary old dinosaur complaining about falling standards. When you go to A-level Maths and Degree level Maths you realise it even more as they themselves are less rigorous than in other countries. Speak to foreign students, especially french ones you realise what a truely weak state Maths is in this country. Even in America that has a much knocked education system a friend who is Arts through and through had to do some Calculus and thought it amazing that at 16 people struggled through quadratic equations and algebra for months and months. You speak to people who went to private schools where even the below average ability pupils are dragged through what is supposed to be a 2 year GCSE course in a year (or less sometimes) and they'll still get say an A or B. How anyone can honestly look at a GCSE Maths syllabus and honestly claim that it is 2 years hard and challenging work, I don't know.

Paul, Sheffield, UK

I run a tiny online high school based UK. We get students unable to get any work done for years to work again.
It's not magic or mysterious. Just

1) keeping it small and personal. Classes must be maximum 15 or a teacher cannot see students as real persons. Once students feel they are names on a list they act like it, unnoticed /inactive. Or aggressive/ disruptive (to get the attention every child needs).

2) as few rules as possible applied strictly - surrounded by as much respect as possible. Treat young people like herds of cattle and they become herd beasts. Treat them as intelligent, sensitive, sensible persons and they will react the same way - after getting over the shock! + persuasion we really mean it.

I personally teach English to all the students as Director of FirstCollege No fussy mational curriculum. Learning is classic stuff, essays, business letters etc. But they write ABOUT what they love - pop music, cars, football, fashion. No putdowns, endless reassurance, FUN.

Shan Morgain, Newport, Wales, Wales UK

Perhaps the reason grammar schools pulled ahead of independent schools in the GCSE results was because more independent schools are now dumping the GCSE in favour of the harder international GCSE. In the broader sense, the GCSE is rapidly becoming worthless unless candidates have a string of A*'s to their names. The very existence of the A* grade speaks volumes and is such an impressive act of diversion that even David Blaine would not be ashamed to have thought of it.

As far as policy is concerned, why would anyone expect a labour government to favour anything which might resemble a meritocracy? Surely they are favouring "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" just with varying degrees of spin.

Andrew, Oxford, England

Well, an aging insomniac, I decided to have a go at GCSE maths (2006) myself. It's 44 years since I took maths GCE, and didn't get a particularly spectacular result - a C.

Had a few problems, in that I couldn't remember how to do some of the algebra or geometry, so had to work them out from first principles - most I managed, a couple of others I had to leave. The arithmetic was no problem, and seemed ridiculously easy. A couple of the questions were ambiguous and should never have been passed by the scrutineers (the egg question in particular).

Nonetheless, I managed a C, and I reckon if I had just 4 hours tuition to remind me how to do quadratic equations and get up to speed with some of the modern terminology, I could have got an A.

People keep saying GCSE is just one exam. It isn't. There are two different papers, depending upon a student's likely performance as judged by teachers. So this is even more of a confidence trick than our politicians will admit. Poor kids.

monica hall, farnborough,