A level results highlight failure not success.
Published August
This year's A Level results are the first after a huge
change in the manner they are assessed in England. A Levels in 13 key subjects -
which make up 60% of entries - have been made ‘final examination only’
qualifications, which means there are no more modular examinations that can be
re-sat indefinitely and no more coursework assessment.
David Kurten AM, the UKIP Education spokesman, responded,"Of course we
must congratulate those students who have passed, but our happiness at their
success must not blind us to serious flaws in the system. On the surface, it
would see that there is little change in the overall results. One minor feature
of the new system is that boys have marginally outperformed girls for the first
time since 2000. Cries of sexism abound that the new system is institutionally
misogynistic, but these same voices were eerily silent during the 16 years where
girls outperformed boys.
"Yet look under the bonnet and there is a huge stitch-up. The number of
pupils gaining A/A* grades has increased slightly and those gaining a pass grade
(A* to E) is largely unchanged.
"But the standard needed to get a pass grade has been made immensely
easier. There was an early warning of this last week when it was reported that
Ofqual put out a statement asking exam boards to alter their grade boundaries so
that more students would pass. This seems to have happened in the most dramatic
fashion.
"In the reformed A levels the grade boundary for outstanding grades
(A*/A) appears to have decreased from 73% to 70%.
"Even more astonishing is the overall pass mark for an A Level has gone
down from 42% in 2016 to just 28% in 2017. This represents a gross diminishment
in the value of the supposedly tougher reformed A Levels
"Far from making A Levels tougher and more academically rigorous, it
seems that the ‘Conservative in Name Only’ government, via Ofqual, has skewered
its own plans".
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