Good grades in sciences are harder to obtain than the same grades in arts subjects, according to prejudice-confirming research in the UK.

The Guardian sums it up thus:

It’s what scientists have always known: the sciences are harder than the arts and the humanities. Now researchers at Durham University have proved it.

Durham University researchers think that physics, chemistry and biology are a grade harder than drama and media studies and three-quarters of a grade harder than English at ‘A-level’, roughly equivalent to high school diplomas (report pdf).

In the UK press there’s much hand wringing about the fact that “hard” science qualifications may put people off taking these subjects (eg FT). Some teachers may even push their pupils towards easier subjects to boost their school’s league table position, some warn (eg The Daily Telegraph).

“This research shows that science and technology subjects are much more severely graded than subjects like media studies and art,” says Robert Coe, author of the new report on the subject that’s stirred things up (press release).

To reach this conclusion Coe reviewed a host of previous attempts to determine the relative ‘difficulty’ of subjects and conducted his own analysis on examination data from 2006. His work found similar results from five different statistical methods, all of which are rather complicated (maths is hard remember).

These methods either compare the performance of the same candidate in different exams or compare exam grades between people of similar ability, as determined by a reference test of some kind. Science and maths subjects were all at the top of the difficulty range.

Just to stoke the fires a bit, Coe notes, “A student with a grade C in Biology will generally be more able than one with a B in Sociology, for example.”

I’m just going to note now the fact that Coe used to teach maths and the report was commissioned by the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society.

This report, as the press release notes, contradicts an official report from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said all the subjects were much of a muchness. A new regulatory body, Ofqual, told the BBC “There is currently no expert consensus as to what statistical outcomes like these mean in terms of grading standards between different subjects.”