Tougher A-levels send private schools’ top grades tumbling

PRIVATE schools’ top A-level grades have dropped to their lowest level in eight years, amid concern that they have suffered under the new “tougher” exams which do not permit re-sits.

This year 17.7 per cent of privately educated children were awarded A*s in their A-levels, the lowest since 2010, when the A* was introduced.

There has been a steady decline in the number of private school pupils winning top grades in recent years, according to data compiled by the Independent Schools Council (ISC). This

summer was the second year that students sat the new exams, many of which had coursework reduced or removed. Modules were also scrapped after concerns students were taking endless re-sits to achieve better marks.

Chris Mcgovern, the Campaign for Real Education chairman, said: “It is well known that in private schools teachers or parents do the coursework. Having endless re-takes and re-sits inevitably favours students with pushy, middle-class parents. That is why getting rid of modules and coursework was a good thing. If we can remove some of the advantages for privileged children, it is inevitably fairer.”

The proportion of private school students achieving A* and A has decreased by five percentage points since 2010 (52 per cent to 47 per cent) while the overall proportion of top grades has only gone down by 0.6 per cent. Lord Lucas, the editor-in-chief of the Good Schools Guide, said the drop in top private school grades was linked to improvements in state schools.

“Ofqual [the exam watchdog] operates a system of comparable outcomes which effectively rations the number of top grades,” said Lord Lucas. “Because state schools are doing better, it means, necessarily, private schools have to do worse as there are only so many top grades to go round.”

However, Barnaby Lenon, the ISC chairman, said that while it was “theoretically possible” that reformed A-levels had contributed to the decline, many of the brightest pupils now took the International Baccalaureate (IB) or the Pre-u instead of A-levels. “Independent school pupils have done incredibly well at A-levels, despite the fact that the cleverest pupils are doing the Pre-u and IB,” said Mr Lenon, a former headmaster of Harrow.