IT BECOMES clearer with each passing year that the A level is broken.
A qualification that awards its highest grade to one in four papers cannot distinguish the most able candidates from the mass of students who achieve that standard.
An A grade now represents the top quarter of the ability range, leaving the most capable 5 or 10 per cent unable to stand out from the crowd.
In some subjects, between a third and a half of students are awarded an A. Their talents and hard work undoubtedly enabled them to cross the required threshold, but nobody seriously argues that every student with an A grade is equally capable at those subjects.
Yet that is the claim made by today’s results — and by government ministers and the examination boards. If an A is an A, then all have equal worth.
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Three A grades have always been regarded as the Oxbridge standard, the level of performance expected of those seeking a place at Oxford or Cambridge. This year, 9.5 per cent of sixth-formers achieved three A grades, around 25,000 candidates. Oxford and Cambridge will admit around 7,000 undergraduates between them this month, including students from other European Union countries. They and other leading universities are being forced to use additional tests to try to be sure that they accept students who genuinely possess the required academic ability, and not simply the required grades.
Not so long ago, three A grades was seen as an exceptional achievement. Now it is commonplace and even five A grades don’t raise many eyebrows, fantastic achievement though it is. The very fact that students do take on five subjects leads the sceptical to question whether the challenge can be as great as it was when everyone did three or, at most, four.
We are assured that academic standards have not fallen and that rising grades reflect the fact that students work harder, are better taught, and better prepared to cope with the exams. Students have more opportunity, it is argued, to succeed.
Fair enough. Except that bright students who would have got A grades in the past cannot demonstrate how all of this additional effort has helped them to improve their results alongside those of their classmates. In fact, they cannot show that they have raised their game at all.
At this point, those who defend the present situation usually reach for a mountaineering metaphor or a comparison with athletics. Mount Everest has not got any easier to climb since Sir Edmund Hillary first conquered it in 1953, they say, yet hundreds now climb it every year. Roger Bannister’s breaking of the four-minute mile was spectacular in 1954 but is a pedestrian time for today’s runners. Neither of these analogies says anything about A-level achievement. The mile record may have moved on, but we still know who the fastest runners are. Those who scale Everest are not seeking access to Oxbridge and other Russell Group universities, where places are rationed.
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If the A level can no longer tell us who merits these places, then reform is inevitable. Ministers and the Joint Council for Qualifications, the umbrella body representing the exam boards, are placing great store on the availability of grades from the individual modules for each exam to help admissions tutors to identify the most able. A pilot programme involving 11 universities is running this year, with a view to general introduction in 2007.
But is it really fair to reject a teenager on the basis of one less-than-perfect module that he or she took at the start of their course? A-level results were intended originally to be the end product of a two-year journey of intellectual growth, not a grab-bag of marks picked up along the route. Boys now trail girls at A grade for almost every subject and their chances of reaching good universities could suffer further from this approach, which favours diligence over inspiration.
A new A* grade, awarded to a fixed proportion of the most outstanding candidates within the A grade, would be a fairer solution. Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the exams watchdog, is exploring this option for 2008 and Downing Street is known to be keen.
With a pass rate this year of 96.6 per cent, the A level has already become a qualification that virtually nobody fails. But it will fail the most talented students — and the country — if it cannot be made more sensitive to their achievements.
WHAT THEY SAY
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‘If it really is so easy, then you do three to five AS levels in a year. I can tell you, it isn’t all easy and dumb’
Michelle Sarfo-Adu, East London
‘How can people say exams are getting easier? More people climb Mount Everest every year than the year before. Does that mean it’s easier?’
Ben Blaney, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
‘[Adding an A* grade] will devalue grades A and B, and increase stress and anorexia among bright 17 and 18-year-olds, as happened when GCSE A* grades were introduced’
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John Dunford, general-secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
‘All of this [talk of dumbing-down] casts a dark and depressing shadow over years of work by students and teachers’
Chris Keates, general-secretary of the NASUWT union
‘Students are working as hard as ever but the exam system needs to keep pace. It needs to do better at providing the information universities and employers need to identify the students who are most suitable’
David Willetts, Shadow Education Secretary