The debate must go on

Civitas, 28 September 2007

In August we published a report questioning the value of higher national achievement at A-level. We were interested in examining whether yet another year of rising grades were a useful indicator of achievement and in particular, how these record grades were being obtained. One of the main ways that A-level grades have been increased has been through the introduction of the AS-level re-takes. This in itself tells us that the rise in A-level grades is not straightforwardly down to greater knowledge and skills amongst A-level students.

The introduction of the new A-level curriculum, Curriculum 2000, has entailed an enormous shift from education to exam preparation. Courses are now tightly targeted to maximising exam scores both through a new emphasis on assessment criteria and via the opportunity to re-take modules.
The AS/A2 system splits each A-level course into six modules; the three AS-level modules, taken in the first year of the course, are the easier modules. A key method for pupils to boost their final score is to re-take the AS modules to make up for weaker performance in the harder (taken in the second year of the course) A2 modules. As the exams watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), has demonstrated in its data, repeated re-sitting has become very widespread. The problem with this new pattern is that what the QCA has referred to as the ‘less demanding material in an A-level course’, the AS module, is focused on disproportionately and repeatedly.
The extent of the impact of AS-level re-takes on this year’s overall A-level scores is revealed in today’s Times Educational Supplement (TES). According to the TES, ‘Up to one in seven students who gains A grades at A-level only does so by re-setting easier AS papers…’
The data comes out of a report by the QCA. A breakdown of the effect of re-taking AS-levels by subject uncovers the fact that the percentage of pupils who gained an A in the exam board AQA’s physics A-level would drop from 31.2 per cent to 26.6 per cent if no re-takes had been sat. In AQA psychology, the report shows, were re-takes not included in the final score, the percentage of A grades would see a decline from 20 per cent to 17.5 per cent. The TES points out that were AS-level re-takes not included in the final A-level score, the percentage of pupils awarded an A at A-level would be 21.5 per cent rather than the present 25.3 per cent.
That the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has found that despite rising grades, an increase in qualifications and investment in education standards of education in England remain comparatively low, comes of little surprise therefore. As the OECD pointedly comments: ‘It should also be kept in mind that education participation is a relatively poor proxy for skills.’ Let that be a lesson to us. Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, branded the debate on standards as ‘sterile’. The grounds for an urgent debate look pretty fertile.