A-level results once again bring answers to some critical questions. For students, the results should have settled the question of “where next?”. For teachers, they provide affirmation that another class has been launched successfully into the world. For schools, they provide the evidence of teacher effectiveness, and (they hope) something to shout about.
At system level, however, we insist on asking the wrong questions. Attention is fixed on pass rates and boundaries; we’re hyper-alert to signs of grade inflation and (ipso facto, it would seem) declining standards. Top grades are celebrated by students, teachers and schools; but we respond to success in the aggregate as if we were penitents wielding a cat-tail whip.
This year most subjects were examined under the reformed, linear specifications. The A level is now even higher-stakes, with all-or-nothing terminal exams, and no opportunity to bank modular results along the way. Universities have undermined this by making ever more unconditional offers. This is, ultimately, self-defeating.
Linear and terminal exams, without intervening assessment opportunities to indicate ability and aptitude for higher study, require reform elsewhere in the system, not least post-qualification application to university. In a sensible world, students would concentrate on their A levels, receive their results, and then work out the next step in the light of those results.
Some A-level subjects ‘face extinction’
The reforms have had another unintended and unfortunate curriculum outcome. Schools have narrowed the typical offer from four subjects to three in Year 12. Students choose a smaller number of subjects and are inevitably tempted by those that are (rightly or wrongly) seen as giving the greatest purchase in university entry. Not surprisingly, we have seen marked (and quite possibly terminal) decline in entries in drama, performing arts and music, while modern languages, aside from Mandarin, continue to spiral downwards. As class sizes fall, some subjects face extinction.
Students are faced with curricular impoverishment after the age of 16. When AS was introduced as part of Curriculum 2000, some attempt was made to encourage students to choose a contrasting subject as their fourth option - say a language or music, alongside maths and two sciences. This didn’t take root because English universities are simply not interested in breadth and balance. They do not recognise the liberal educational aim of developing what Denis Healey called “hinterland” - the ability to find value in things beyond one’s core discipline(s). University chemistry departments want pre-cooked chemists, already knowledgeable and skilled in chemistry, and they’re not much interested in anything else. This (lack of) vision is fundamentally at odds with everything we as educationalists in the secondary sector seek to promote.
Linear A levels have several advantages over the “learn it, forget it” modular mentality. But as a curriculum post-16, they will succeed only if universities can be persuaded to support post-qualification application, and if a way can be found to broaden the curriculum beyond three subjects.
Oh, and the third prerequisite would be the discovery of an alternative route for those for whom linear A levels are not particularly appropriate. It’s not the fault of A levels that what was designed as a qualification for entry to university is now treated as the national school-leaving certificate.
Kevin Stannard is director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust. He tweets @KevinStannard1
