Oh, for 27 years ago, when A-levels were taken by genuinely clever people

The August debate about A-levels and university admissions is upon us again; it’s now as much an annual summer events as the hopes of Britain fielding a Wimbledon champion, or the empty speculation surrounding the beginning of a new football season. I use those two examples because they, like the A-level debate, annually contain arguments from both people who know what they are talking about, and those who are fond of coming up with empty, half-baked and ultimately unhelpful remarks. Much like anything, I suppose.

Will this little rant be the former or the latter? I suppose you’ll have to decide for yourself. I’ll try to make it more thought out than some of the commentary I heard when watching Wimbledon, some of which made you mouth silently at the television, as you wondered if what they were saying actually made sense.

Some of the things you read about A-levels every year makes your heart sink, if only because I can still strongly recall the year I got mine and you have to read the comments in the paper about grade inflation and how we’re now 27 years more spoon-fed than our predecessors.


The broad opponents in the Great A-level Debate are fairly well-established now. In one corner, we have the education traditionalists, the staunch defenders of A-levels as the ‘gold-plated’ qualification. They’re the ones who, at their most extreme, will recall an England where one is invited to imagine A-level maths students as human calculators, or English A-level pupils who could ream off an entire Shakespearean sonnet while paying for their groceries at the supermarket. No-one ever says that, but their tendency towards a romanticism of the educational past paints that sort of picture in my mind when I hear them compare Then to Now.
In the other corner, we have the temporary alliance of the teachers and the Government (who don’t seem to get on for the rest of the year) saying that the latest 0.3% rise in pass rates is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the students who sat the exams. Yet this group will often have to make concessions to the other, claiming standards are high whilst tinkering with the system to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that the traditionalists might just have a point. An example would be the introduction of the A* grade next year, which is designed to tackle the non-problem of grade inflation.

In the middle, we have the youth of today themselves who, bless their little cotton socks, tried their darn best, but are let down by ever devalued exams (or not, if you want to join the second camp).

Politically speaking, the former side in the debate are often embodied by the Conservatives. Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, has said that should the Tories win the next election, he will reward schools that enter students for ‘tougher’ A-levels like physics and chemistry. The point being that the latter side, mostly embodied by our current New Labour government, has presided over a system whereby schools enter students for ‘easier’ subjects like media studies to make their place in league tables look more favourable.


This then, would seem to be the problem with our annual debate and it is symptomatic of a much larger problem with education in this country: the education system has too long been a tool of politicians, pundits and journalists to make their points in various ideological battles.
Both sides in this debate have a point, but they are only capable of hurling two fairly accepted truths back at each other: firstly, that students work hard every year for exams, and secondly, that pass rates and A-grades continue to rise. Confusingly, these two facts seem to work for and against each other.


The fallacy lies in the fact that, for too long, governments and theorists have sought one sure-fire way of testing and measuring intelligence. A-levels are expected to do a lot- move people past GCSEs whilst effectively acting as entrance exams for universities. Once upon a time they could do this quite well, when less people took them. Where once 3As could get you into Oxford or Cambridge, now the increasing volume of people achieving that grade makes differentiation between the hard-working and the child prodigies that bit harder. This is surely to be expected when more people take the same test. If I were a French teacher doing a vocabulary test and marked everyone out of ten, it would that much easier to find the bilingual geniuses if I only had a class of 15. If, on the other hand, I had a class of 150, you then need to start marking people to four decimal places to truly wean out the clever clogs in your midst (if you cared that much about French vocabulary).


So, I seem to be agreeing with the traditionalists when I say that too many people are getting A-grades at A-level. Well, no I’m not. First of all, I don’t agree with the commentators who say that A-levels have become the exam ‘that no-one can fail’, mainly because it begs the question: why would you want an exam with a sure-fire margin of failure? If everyone can pass, it doesn’t really matter so long as you’re still finding the clever ones. At university, most people pass as well. That doesn’t stop a bare pass from being a sign that you probably should have worked harder and drunk less.
Secondly, where I and the traditionalists seem to disagree is that they often seem to take the stance ‘A-level rigour or broke’. Put simply, the A-level used to be the only academic qualification worth its salt around and if you didn’t do well, there was little point in you continuing in formal education. Now, you also have the International Baccalaureate (IB) which is emerging as a rival in some schools. The traditionalists jump on this as another way to return to the ‘golden age’ of A-levels. The IB itself encourages students to take a wider variety of subjects and involves the writing of an extended project, or essay. The implementation of the IB may be beneficial to the Oxbridge hopefuls, yet the two main sides in our debate seem to miss the point of it and any attempts to make the A-levels like the IB have been done half-heartedly and to accusations of ‘dumbing down’. Recent attempts to replace the A-levels with new ‘diplomas’ have been met with limited success, mainly because schools have been reluctant to implement and enforce them and because of fears they will lead to a ‘two tier’ system. The conservative element in this debate refuse to drastically change the A-level; hence Michael Gove’s plan to merely reverse the bias of an already stupid league-table obsessed system.


Both sides are guilty in this debate if only because, instead of bringing in genuine reform, both are responsible for sweeping changes that don’t seem particularly thought out. The introduction of the AS was designed to break up the A-level but merely made it a more exam-obsessed qualification; indeed the phrase Curriculum 2000 sounds like something that was thought up, like the Millennium Dome, by ministers because it was the year 2000 and it sounded cool. Similarly, I would like to meet the evil genius who invented General Studies, the magical qualification that NO UNIVERSITY ACCEPTS. The introduction of unlimited re-sits was also rather silly, as the goal posts were shifted so that the A-level became not so much the exam that no-one could fail, but the exam that no-one could fail five times. None of these changes really did anything except make an exam system which, like any other, already had its flaws, seem more convoluted and unnecessary. Instead, rather than tweaking the exams to make university entry that much more likely, the grown-ups could learn much from the universities and change the way their courses are designed.


The point of the IB is that it’s more than just an academic rigour-fest. There seems to be an interest in developing as an all-round person, there a service and community element. Yet the arch-traditionalists would look on any such deviation from academia as potentially troublesome; you could do it to be a better UK citizen, but should university entry be involved, that dicey phrase ‘vocational’ comes into use again.


A genuine re-think about what makes a qualification might expose that small group of the conservatives who don’t want A-levels getting easier because they want the stupid to stay stupid and wallow in their own ignorance. A qualification that deals with making you an all-round person, measuring your day-to-day intelligence, ability to lead and such other CV-friendly attributes AND challenges you academically, is quite an appealing notion. Incorporating different elements into A-levels such as community service and ending the stigma around drama, dance and media studies aren’t necessary the death knell of academic rigour. It would also be a welcome opportunity to get more people more well-rounded before university and break down the system where-by internships and extra-curricular activities are sadly picked up by families who have connections and extra cash to do so.


Finally, try and dispel the notion that there was ever an unbreakable ‘gold standard’. If university teaches you anything it’s that essay-based subjects alone are marked with a combination of the marker interpreting a marking scheme and using a bit of their subjectivity. Universities, the height of academic rigour, are the most wildly fluctuating places for marks across differing modules. Exams are about the people marking them as well as the people taking them. Science may be more about right and wrong, but if you want to argue that science is more rigorous than the arts, be my guest. That’s a can of worms for another time and place. It’s true that students today couldn’t do a paper from 1982. But then I would probably need some time to retake my 2005 American History A-level and you know why?...because I haven’t studied for it in about four years.

Michael Gove can posture all he wants about getting schools to take on more ‘rigorous’ A-levels. But what he and a lot of governments ministers forget is that they are not the ones who will help a student prepare for an exam in a subject that they enjoy, and which will affect their life….and it is very much their life.

P.S. I am aware I haven’t outlined my plans for changing A-levels very well. I suppose I’ve only thought about it for an hour or so. Cut me some slack though - if I’d thought about it for one more hour, I could be in Opposition. If I thought about it for two more hours, I’d probably have enough to be Education Secretary.

P.P.S. If A-levels were more rigorous 27 years ago, then some, SOME, of the maths and economics graduates must have gone on from their studies to become very successful bankers who, in 2008, did this really clever thing where they lost all of our....oh wait.