Someone once declared that statistics is the art of never having to say you’re wrong and this one-liner has never rung truer with the wild wild west of the internet coupled with fact-checking diminishing by the day. Unsurprisingly, it can be hard to put one’s trust in numbers, yet this is nothing new. Decades ago, Mark Twain stated that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”, so long story short - anything involving statistics requires some critical thinking to sift through the potential misinformation to discover the gold within.
In our particular case, the exam statistics we collect offer a vital and necessary insight into any skill-related trends, comparison with years gone by, and the strengths and weaknesses of our students across all ages and levels. Every year we collate, analyse and present the findings to all members of staff. In this blog we're going to give you the inside scoop on our own statistics of the Cambridge exam results from the last academic year 2023-2024. (No manipulations, we swear!). To help navigate this at times complex path, this blogpost will go level by level beginning with the Young Learners suite and going all the way up to C2 Proficiency. So, let’s dive in!
YLs (Starters, Movers Flyers)
- Students’ speaking continues to be a strength as they average the highest number of shields in this part across all YLs exams leading us to believe that the specific exam preparation we do prior to the exams is working, especially at instilling confidence in our students.
- Reading and writing consistently receive the lowest number of shields, hence they are clearly the weakest skills which need more practice in class. This is then something we make our teachers aware of and spend time on in our CPD (Continuing Professional Development) sessions to target this specific weakness.
- Listening at Flyers was either significantly harder or the chosen listening for the mock exam was too easy so needs to be changed.
- Students who do these exams and then go on to take A2 Key and B1 Preliminary in the future appear to have an advantage in their knowledge of exam technique and as such, the pass rates for these exams are slowly increasing.
A2 and B1
- Overall results were generally excellent with 100% pass rate in both exams this year even with a 20% increase in the number of students sitting the B1 exam.
- The productive skills (writing and speaking) at A2 averaged at or close to a B1 level, and have been for the past few years, whereas in B1 some variability creeps in as the highest ranked skills over the last three years have been Speaking and Listening.
- Writing at B1, while still generally good overall actually starts taking a dip and becomes one of, if not, the weakest skill. This tells us that the step up from A2 to B1 is a challenge and obviously needs to be worked on properly in class.
- Across both exams, Reading is also consistently one of the weaker skills with most students recording their lowest mark either in that or writing as mentioned above.
- Between the students doing the mock exam and taking the real one, there is on average an 8-point increase across all of the skills, and even higher in the receptive ones (Reading and Listening).
B2 and C1
- Reading always generates the lowest scores. Last year for example, almost 60% of our B2 students had it as their lowest mark in the exam. Writing also scores highly as one of the skills with the lowest part but our analysis has shown that its impact is not as influential towards their overall result. In other words, reading really matters.
- As mentioned above, Reading is critical to passing the exam. Fail Reading and you are putting your passing of the exam in jeopardy, fail Reading and one other part and that likelihood soars, especially if that other part is Use of English.
- It is noticeably harder to get higher marks in writing at B2/C1 than A2 and B1. This leads to some speculation like is it their maturity? The changing expectations? Or some other reason..? Of course, we then support our teachers with ways to help in CPD time such as how to organise a process writing lesson. That is, guiding students through the process of writing in class but without the time pressure of an exam (though doing it under time pressure is also useful as well).
- Exam technique classes are of great help in students’ improving their Use of English mark, especially between doing the mock and sitting the real exam. The average for the past three years has been an increase of approximately 12 marks for both B2 and C1.
- There are significantly more students sitting the digital exam nowadays (~90%) than doing it on paper (~10%). This means that comparing results to extrapolate something meaningful is becoming harder and harder and potentially not worthwhile in the near future.
C2
- Given the small dataset each year for C2 Proficiency, it is often hard to draw solid conclusions as one student’s marks can sway the overall results one way or another.
- Similar to B2 and C1, the productive skills (writing and speaking) remain difficult to get top marks in. However, this indicates that perhaps we could do with some guidance on what our (more than capable!) students need to do to be able to score highly in these parts of the exam.
- Use of English consistently shows the greatest improvement from our mock exam, in fact, averaging an 18-point difference over the last three years.
And that’s a wrap! If you happen to be inspired from this and feel a sudden urge to go play with numbers from your students’ results, we recommend you check out the related webinar on our website. There, you’ll be able to see in detail how I go about statistically analysing our students’ results, as well as see our B2 students’ results from last year in more depth than what you have read here. Happy analysing and as always, happy teaching!
