And now for something completely different ...

The old Monty Python’s Flying Circus catchphrase could be applied to this year’s A-level results.

As last week’s results showed for the first time ever, we no longer have a national system of A-levels for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. 

Wales and Northern Ireland have stayed with the old system with its emphasis on coursework - while England’s Gove-inspired reforms have left us relying on the sudden-death end-of-course exam.

The trend is the same at GCSE level with the new 9 to 1 grading system replacing A* to G grades in England. Here, there is even a difference between Wales and Northern Ireland, with the latter introducing a C+ grade for the first time.

Which all makes it very difficult for employers and university admissions tutors in interpreting the results that stare out at them from the CVs of individual candidates.

Broadly speaking, at A level if you want someone with a thorough grounding in their subject, look for a candidate who sat the exam in Wales or Northern Ireland. On the other hand, if you want somebody who is good in a crisis, look no further than England.

I suspect, though, that despite all the hot air about how A levels are now tougher in England, employers will not make the distinction. Instead, they will treat grades from the three different countries as if they are the same.

Universities, on the other hand, are said to be contemplating bringing in their own entrance exams in greater numbers to help them distinguish between candidates.

Understandable, but a bit of a downer for the individual students who may now have to sit another exam to gain entry into higher education.

So what’s to be done?  Do we just swallow hard and accept that we no longer have a national exam at 16 or 18?  After all, the Scots have always been different, and everybody seems to have coped with that.

An independent review?

It is at this juncture that I have to express some sympathy for Gordon Marsden, the Labour spokesperson on education, wheeled out to take the flak from John Humphrys on the BBC Radio Four Today programme on A-level results day.

“You’re dodging the question,” cried Humphrys, as he asked whether Labour would return to the old coursework-reliant system.

In truth, he was, but the answer is not so simple as Humphrys would have us believe. I suspect Marsden and many of his chums in the Labour Party would like to turn the clock back to pre-Gove in an ideal world - but then you’d have a yo-yo situation in which every time there was a change of government you’d have a revamping of the exam system. It would be chaos and a nightmare for teachers to implement.

What Marsden called for was a review of the situation - hopefully independently carried out. He argued that cuts in spending had robbed us of teachers and subject options so it was necessary to take stock of the situation before introducing radical change.

I suspect the best we can hope for from such a review is a sort of half-way house - with some coursework being restored, subject to checks to avoid cheating, but an element of the increased reliance on sudden-death exams being retained.

That may well be the best outcome for the education system, as you could judge whether teenagers had the capacity to methodically work out problems and whether they would be good in a sudden-death situation.

I have never been amongst those who have rallied to the idea that you should take politics out of education, believing it to be a pie-in-the-sky call. Democratically elected governments will always have their political agendas to follow, and the only alternative to that is some form of dictatorship.

In this case, therefore, some element of independent thought from government is to be desired.

Richard Garner was education editor of The Independent for 12 years, and previously news editor of Tes. He has been writing about education for more than three decades

To read more columns by Richard, view his back catalogue

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