21 August 2009

When you get monkeys, Mickey Mouse and A levels all clomped together in the same newspaper headlines, the level of debate that follows is unlikely to be hugely stimulating and so it proved with the coverage of this year’s A level results.

The ‘serial detractors’ as the NASUWT’s Chris Keates called those who continue to question A levels standards may have been out early this year but for many people this particular record is beginning to sound a bit cracked. As one contributor to the Times Ed put it, “I cannot imagine newspapers in other countries running such headlines as “Baccalaureate gets easier” or “Arbitur inflation.” For those who wanted to look a bit deeper there were some interesting features to this year’s A levels. For a start, this was the first year that the new AS levels were being taken, the first year that the Extended Project was awarded and the last full round of summer A levels before the election. All interesting issues but ignored in favour of more traditional themes, three in particular.

First, the thorny question of standards.

Two issues surfaced here. One was whether it was actually becoming easier to get top grades as Professor Smithers, a regular contributor to the A level standards debate, claimed. In fact the numbers gaining A grades this year was not up by an enormous amount, 25.9% to 26.7%, but Professor Smithers’s argument was that “with A levels you see built-in inflation.” This could be seen by comparing A level pass rates with those in the IB. “In 1990 the IB and A levels were about the same in terms of percentage pass rates. There’s now a difference of 20 percentage points. In relation to the IB, A levels have got easier.” Apples and pears perhaps but the Professor’s argument was backed up by claims that several private schools had switched from A levels to the IB and found it harder for their students to pass. Even so it’s interesting to note that the UCAS tariff score for the IB Diploma is being re-aligned for 2010 suggesting that comparisons are never easy to determine.

The other issue that has been around for a while and which surfaced again this year was resits. In its latest research timed to coincide with exams week, the think tank Civitas claimed that part of the reason why pass rates had gone up each year, a modest 0.3% this year from 97.2% to 97.5%, was because of the modular nature of the qualification which allowed students to resit modules until they pass or up their grades. Some students, according to the 150 A level teachers questioned for the research, were resitting up to six times; “it’s repeating ad nauseam” as one respondent put it.

Apart from proving that it’s therefore difficult to compare A levels now with A levels in the past which were only taken once, it’s still not clear that this demonstrates a direct correlation between modular A levels and standards going up. After all, resitting doesn’t guarantee improved rates of success across all subjects, by all accounts it varies from subject to subject and in addition, not every school adopts a wholesale resit policy. This was a point picked up by Lord Sutherland, the chairman of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, who was interviewed in the same week. He felt there should be stronger guidelines on resitting; “I would be inclined to limit it to at most one possibility of resitting and I would also want to put higher weight on the second year so that resitting the easier section to boost your grade wouldn’t be a way of gaining advantage.”

This was a slightly different line to the Conservatives who also pitched in but with the rather blunter instrument of awarding higher points scores for so-called harder subjects. One way or another, the standards issue may well come to a head next year either through the Government’s proposed introduction of an A* grade or through the Conservative’s introduction of a modified points score.

The second theme was also not new and concerns worries about a two tier system emerging in the A level world. The core of the argument is that traditional A level subject areas are disappearing from some state schools in favour of what the Shadow Schools Minister called “less crunchy alternatives.” The result is that ‘gold standard’ A levels, which have a track record for opening doors into higher education and the professions, are becoming the preserve of the independent sector while schools in poorer areas grapple with subjects that their students might find it easier to pass but which don’t necessarily carry the same clout in terms of wider recognition.

You can’t get far here without mentioning media studies. According to the research carried out by Cambridge Assessment, media studies was one of the most popular subjects in comprehensive schools but not in private and grammar schools. Similar divides could be found in other subjects like history and single sciences leading The Independent to claim graphically that “scores of state schools have become ‘no-go’ areas for pupils taking traditional A levels.”

At a time when Alan Milburn’s Report on Social Mobility has raised the importance of educational opportunity to young people’s life chances and when some universities are calling for certain combinations of subjects only, this is worrying especially coming so soon after Opposition proposals to weight so-called hard subjects. It is worth noting, however, that the proportion of students who drop out after an AS subject like modern languages is spread across all schools and that includes independents; that the 20+% rise in numbers taking A level maths over the last two years cannot exclusively be explained by a rise in independent numbers and that the growth in employment opportunities signalled by Reports such as the New Opportunities Paper depends on young people gaining a rounded set of skills.

The third theme was slightly different although it has been bubbling away a bit this year and that is university entry. The worry here is that with money tight, recruitment numbers capped and a surge of 18 year olds encouraged by Government policy to fulfil their ambitions and go on to university, there simply may not be enough places to go round. The Government has provided maintenance support for an additional 10,000 places this year though only in certain subjects but with numbers of 18 year olds not due to peak for another year, this problem may not go away in a hurry.

Various solutions have been suggested: more part-time provision, more living at home, more use of FE colleges but the fact that at least one university has introduced ‘disappointment training’ for its admissions tutors is a rather sad postscript to this year’s results.

© Edexcel Policy Watch 2009. Steve Besley is Head of Policy at Edexcel. Policy watch is a service intended to help busy people understand developments in the world of education. Visit Edexcel at www.edexcel.org.uk