From today’s Daily Telegraph:
Judging from today’s results, it’s now virtually impossible to fail an A-level. The overall pass rate climbed for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6 per cent of A-levels being graded A* – E. Sceptics used to joke that you only needed to write your name at the top of the paper to pass an A-level, but given the appallingly low levels of literacy in this country it seems probable that more than 2.4 per cent of candidates failed to do that. From which it follows that A-levels are now so easy you can pass one without managing to write your own name. A simple “X” will suffice, even if the rest of the paper is completely blank.
[NB: A* is the new "best" grade, the pass grades then run from A to E in decreasing order of merit, F is a fail]
OK – the author admits he might be exaggerating slightly, but if only 2.4% of students are failing the exam used to decide whether you can go to university, and over 8% are getting the new “ultra-difficult” A* grade (with 27% getting the old top level A grade), there has to be something wrong with the papers being set, or the way they are being marked.
According to the Guardian, research at Durham University has found that a candidate who would have got a C two decades ago would get an A now.
Now, it could be that the quality of education has improved enormously in the last 2 decades, but in the same Guardian article, they state that the UK’s relative position in the OECD’S “Pisa Study” has dropped since 2000:
According to a respected international study, the OECD’s Pisa survey, the UK fell from fourth in the world for school science in 2000 to 14th six years later. It slipped from 7th to 17th for reading and eighth to 24th in maths. The findings were based on independent tests of children’s ability.
Pity the poor school leavers in the UK this year who will be trying to convince universities that their results justify getting a place to study there, as well as the universities, who will be finding it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.
