UFO Info Week-End

Employers and universities can no longer take even an A grade at A-level as a guarantee of outstanding ability

Employers and universities can no longer take even an A grade at A-level as a guarantee of outstanding ability. It is quite unacceptable that the best universities are now having to chose between applicants with the same perfect scores, when on further investigation their abilities differ widely. Once, a candidate with four As was indisputably in possession of a first-class brain. Now above a certain level, everyone gets an A, and the certificate loses all value.The point is that A-levels represent both a means of education and a means of measurement.

Employers and universities need to be able to trust them, as weathermen trust temperature gauges. We need to know about the general standard of learning in schools, just as we need to know about literacy levels. To downgrade the demands of A-levels over time may produce a more rounded education in the end, but it also has the effect of removing any reliable means of answering this vitally important question.The new AS-levels seem to have brought confusion and despair to schools, as any new system is apt to do, and the exams clearly need a great deal of rethinking. But there is one crucial issue which must be borne in mind, and that is the issue of examinations as a guarantee of quality.

If we are to have examinations at all, they must be reliable as a statement of ability. To that end, concerted efforts must be made to ensure that an AS-level in 20 years’ time means much the same as an AS-level now. Furthermore, there must be much more discrimination made at the top end of the marking scale. At present, 17 per cent of entrants get an A, and that is no use to man or beast. If, say, only 4 or 5 per cent of pupils got the top grade, that would clarify the situation enormously.I don’t necessarily want to return to A-levels, though I do think that they produced a higher level of education. But what anyone who cares about the duty to educate children will expect from all examinations is a measure of rigour.

Without that, school leavers are left helplessly clutching pieces of paper of no value. It is irresponsibility of the highest order to pretend that things are getting better all the time. To do so only inculcates the belief that everything is going to the dogs.hensherp dircon.co.uk
More from Philip Hensher. Once, when I was talking to Arnold Roth, the venerable American Jewish cartoonist, we got on to the subject of American sports and games, and I confessed that although I didn’t understand the finer points of baseball or American football, I much preferred to watch baseball and found American football bafflingly busy.”Oh, I agree,” he said “Give me baseball any day.