If you got your A’ Level results today, congratulations. (I hope that there is no need for commiserations.)
However, let’s try to avoid jumping onto one of the many bandwagons associated with the ever-rising pass rate of the old-fashioned ‘Gold Standard’ of British education.
First, let’s look at the difference between modern A’ Levels and the ones that far grumpier people than me took in the “good old days.’
In the “good old days,” A’ Levels were marked on a bell curve every year and within each board, so only the top 10% of people taking a paper would get the top grade regardless of how many questions everyone answered correctly . This meant that there was no way of knowing if Joe Bloggs, who took UCLES A’ Level English Literature and got an A, had done as well as Bert Philpott, who took JMB English Lit and got the same grade. In effect, they weren’t the same grade and there was no way of measuring them against each other. The exams weren’t even looking for the same skills.
Worse still, if Joe & Bert’s little sisters took the same exams a year later, their grades couldn’t even be compared within the same boards because, as any fule kno, the bell curve changes with every cohort.
So in the middle of the 1980s (and just in time for me to take A’ Levels) the Uniform Mark Scheme was introduced. This meant that the mark boundaries between exam grades became fixed.
Fixed? Well, according to the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at Durham University, not precisely fixed - because while a 50% mark in one of my A Level papers would have got me a grade C when I took my A’ Levels in 1987, in 2006 it would have got me an A.
But crucially, that doesn’t mean that it’s easier to get a grade A in the 21st Century - because a valid interpretation of the data we have seen so far could be that it is proportionally harder to get 50%.
So we are still left with the question, has so-called “grade inflation” actually happened?
Here’s a few factors to consider when making that judgement:
- Modern A’ Levels require a consistently high level of effort throughout the two years of study, as students have to complete exams at the end of the first year, at Christmas and again the end of the second year, and coursework throughout both years. Compare this with my own course in which all I needed was to collect a full set of notes for all my subjects, memorise them in time for the exams, and then sit nine three-hour papers in five days. In effect, I attended lessons and completed homework (an estimated 24 hours per week ) for 20 months, revised like fury for 4 weeks, and collected my certificates. As a measure of employable skills, my A’ Levels are useless - whereas modern A’ Levels are much, much more relevant because they measure how students perform under steady pressure over two years, meeting continual deadlines.
- The curriculum and syllabus for modern exams are far more specific than they were in the “good old days.” My favourite anecdote is to point out that in the 1980s, I explained how nuclear power stations work for a Physics exam. My answer explained how fissile material heated water, which turned a turbine, which was used to generate electricity. I even explained how Fleming’s right hand rule dictated the assembly of a generator. Meanwhile, a couple of years ago the same level physics exam asked students about the ethics of nuclear power. But this is a glib comparison: I had a choice of topics to answer, and a variety of ways to answer them, so I didn’t actually need to know anything about nuclear power stations - I could have concentrated on another topic and made the choice in the exam. Modern students do not have that choice. And anyway, just because the ethics of carbon capture versus nuclear waste isn’t as precise a Fleming’s right hand rule, it doesn’t follow that it is easier to learn, less relevant, or easier to answer questions about.
- Teaching standards. Yes, I had to comment on them sooner or later. While it is absolutely true that there are no demonstrable or even implied links between the standards that the government demands that teachers meet and pupil performance in exams , there is no doubt that teaching standards have improved over the last two decades. However, Ofsted doesn’t deserve the credit for this. Neither does the ridiculous testing regime imposed by national & local government as well as individual schools (I once counted up the amount of time that a secondary school I taught in spent assessing 14-18-year-old children - it was 25% of their time in school.) The reason for the improvement in standards is the unintended consequence of all the scrutiny that teachers have been under: teachers are now teaching to the test.
It doesn’t matter how complex a problem appears to be, the correct answer is quite often the simplest.
For all the pressure on the education system, for all the debate about skills, standards and professionalism, the truth is that education in this country is delivered by about half a million teachers, all of whom have been told that their job security and their next pay rise depends upon how well their students perform in their next examinations.
