It was going to be a biggie, or so one thought. All that changed when David Cross took over from Neil Hamilton as Education secretary. He found out that the test wasn’t going to be a simple run of the mill exam. It would be something totally different. The main problem was that there were no tests which would gauge students’ aptitude at that time. It was going to be a biggie.
Well, Cross didn’t panic just yet. He knew that exams don’t just pop up out of nowhere, so he started working on devising a test that would gauge ability according to how well a student studies. He asked all the important people in the Department to help him. After a lot of brainstorming, he managed to compile a group of tests that would be taken in similar times throughout the year. This way, he’d find out average class sizes, study habits etc.
When I read that, I laughed. I remembered the time when I studied and tried to cram everything in, but ended up making very little progress. So, can I get my exam results from 1985? I thought to myself, of course. I’d give anything to know what was going on twenty-five years ago.
The next challenge faced me was to find a site that actually offered the test. There weren’t many around, unfortunately. They weren’t even available on the Internet as I’d soon discover. So I decided to create my own. I figured it wouldn’t take that much longer to get it done and I’d learn some stuff along the way.
The first thing I did was to try and find a way to track my progress. I had the same questionnaires every time I took them and they weren’t particularly difficult to fill out. I also found out that I’d receive the same sort of results each time. So, I thought I’d try and guess my difficulty level. This was going to be a bad idea because it wasn’t going to reflect what I was trying to get!
After a while, I decided that I should try and see how long it took for my results. If I could determine how long it took each time, then I’d be able to estimate my next time period. I knew there were only four time periods in the whole year. It would take me quite a long time to cover all the time periods, so I decided to try and get my results for the entire year. I figured that it was pointless to try and guess if I’d pass or fail; I’d already learned that once!
So, I got lucky and got all the data I needed, which was an answer book. I could print anything I wanted out and keep it with me. Now I can read it over again and try to figure out my time period based on my examination.
Another way to try and figure out my exam times is by looking at how many questions are asked in each section of the test. I’ve heard people say that you can interpret your test scores from the time you take it, to the time you try it. That’s a nice theory, but I don’t know if I believe it. I used my test book to try and gauge the number of questions asked, but it didn’t help me very much. I couldn’t figure out how many questions were asked.
Finally, I did some research and looked up some tables of exam results from other years. I found that the most common time period was between eight and twelve weeks. With this information, I was able to find out the number of questions I had to answer in each time period. With this information, I was able to estimate my time to get my result. I was able to estimate that I probably should take one extra half hour to finish my test so that my speed would be right.
These methods were the best way for me to try to figure out how can I get my exam results from 1985. I did pretty well with these tests, and they gave me the answers I was looking for. These methods were faster than going back and looking up test dates from the past. They also were more accurate than asking my old teacher or just guessing.
