Top A-level grades at highest in six years
Experts take issue with artificial lowering of pass marks in supposedly tougher exams
A-level students have been awarded the highest number of top grades since 2012, as critics questioned the supposedly tougher exams. The percentage of students awarded either an A or A* was at its highest in six years, at 26.4 per cent. Teenagers received their results yesterday. To prevent them from being penalised for taking the harder exams this year, Ofqual ensured that the proportion of children awarded pass marks was roughly the same as last year.
STUDENTS have been awarded the highest number of top grades since 2012, as critics questioned the supposedly tougher A-levels.
The percentage of students awarded either an A or A* was at its highest in six years, at 26.4 per cent.
For the second year running, boys gained more of the top grades than girls, with 26.2 per cent of girls achieving As or A* compared with 26.6 per cent for boys.
A-level students across most of the country received their results yesterday, with many subjects re-designed to exclude coursework and modules.
The reforms, initiated by Michael Gove when he was education secretary, followed years of rampant grade inflation, with swelling numbers of students achieving top grades.
Universities complained that thousands of student A or A* grades would make it impossible for them to distinguish who the very best candidates were.
The reforms also sought to address concerns that many schools leavers were insufficiently prepared for higher education.
Last year, students received results in 13 reformed subjects and this year another 12 were added. Yet for the second year in a row the A-A* pass rate has risen.
To prevent students from being penalised for taking the new, harder exams this year, Ofqual ensured that the proportion of children awarded pass marks was roughly the same as last year, through a process they called “comparative outcomes”.
However, experts pointed out that artificially lowering the pass marks to ensure consistency between different cohorts would create the illusion that students were doing better than they actually were.
Lord Baker, who as Kenneth Baker was education secretary under Margaret Thatcher in the Eighties, said that making exams tougher and then lowering grade boundaries was a “fudge”.
“It is extraordinary, really – you bring in new standards and then they are so hard you have to water them down,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“If you are going to toughen up the exams and then change the boundaries why are you toughening up the exams? That is a fudge.
“You either believe in this philosophy and carry it through and show what tougher exams mean – otherwise it is what Lewis Carroll did with Alice in Wonderland in the Caucus-race where nobody loses.”
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said that using comparable outcomes meant reforms intended to make the qualifi- cations harder would have less impact.
“If you want to make the exams more rigorous, you can change the content of the curriculum, you can change the nature of the exam, and you can change the grade boundaries,” he said.
“The new A-levels are more demanding in terms of what people learn, but actually the grades that students get will end up the same – which makes the whole thing have less impact in a way.”
Last year boys beat girls to top Alevel grades for the first time in 17 years, a trend which continued this year. The significant reversal of fortunes is thought to have been fuelled by the reformed A-levels, which rely upon much less coursework and focus more upon examinations. Until last year, girls had outperformed boys every year since 2000.
Further maths remains the subject in which pupils are most likely to achieve top grades, with 58.1 per cent achieving A or A* this year. At the other end of the scale, English language was one of the subjects where students were least likely to win the top grades with just 11.8 per cent getting an A or an A*.
A spokesman for Ofqual said: “Grade boundaries have been set using statistics to carry forward standards from previous qualifications.
“Senior examiners have confirmed that the standard of work in each subject is appropriate for the grade.”