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Talking up? Or dumbing down?

18 August 2003

A levels have lost their way because, with the democratisation of university education, people can't agree what the exam is for. The problem comes from trying to test achievement and potential at the same time.

Publication of the A level results in Britain last week provoked the usual storm of meaningless protest. If the results were slipping, it would mean that the education system was failing. Since they're not, it means that the exams themselves are not what they were.

This annual ritual seems to indicate that nobody quite knows any more what these exams are for. Like A A Milne's Rabbit, they used to know. A levels were intended to discriminate between the academic achievements of candidates, achievements that would carry them forward (or not) into the equally academic world of university. As such they sought to accentuate difference in the grading system: an A grade was something special; an E grade was not much good. a fail meant that you probably shouldn't have been doing A levels in the first place.

At that time fewer students did. The academic path, with its non-vocational character still rooted in time-honoured traditions of liberal education, was only one of several available to the 16 plus. Now the tremendous growth in the number of universities, the places available and the course on offer, together with the need for debt-laden students to educate themselves to pay their way, has created a trend towards vocationalisation in university education. More and more students go to university and they do so to equip themselves with the specific skills they need to get on in their adult lives.

That means more students doing A levels, since the exam remains the standard pathway to a university's doors. And, that being the case, enough people have to pass their A levels to fill all the places that lie behind those doors. The consequence, whether deliberately or not, is that A levels themselves have acquired a somewhat different purpose. Instead of testifying to the achievement of a certain academic standard they now need to equip candidates with a passport to a university course. The difference is subtle - less a question of discriminating between candidates, more a matter of showing in as positive a light as possible whatever a candidate has managed to achieve.

If there exists here a tendency towards the principle that everyone has won and all shall have prizes, the capacity of A level results to discriminate beten candidates remains essential for the task of shuffling university applicants by grade between the more or less fashionable establishments. It was ever thus: of course: three "A" grades for Oxford; two "Bs" and a "C" for somewhere more modern and less well appointed. Nowadays five A grades doesn't guarantee you a classy Cambridge college but two Es will normally get you in somewhere, provided you're willing to take what you're offered.

Herein lies the fundamental contradiction at the heart of this issue, the reason why people can't work out whether improving A level results are a good thing or a bad thing, and the reason why the exam is required both to discriminate and to celebrate the achievement of all. The increase in university education is a logical extension of the comprehensive school system, the idea that what was good for one was good for all and that an eclectic social and intellectual mix was both fairer and more likely to produce good outcomes. The political project of getting more students into university is inspired by a similar ideal, but is hampered by the difficulty that the universities are wholly selective in their intake.

The principle of selection by ability is deeply rooted. It reflects a clear pecking order that the institutions at the top of the heap are anxious to protect. It is from here, or from those themselves schooled in these elevated academies, that the accusations come of A level "dumbing down", since the power of the examination to discriminate between candidates is their most useful weapon in maintaining their superiority. But for the universities at the lower end of the food chain, more people getting more A levels is an unalloyed good thing because it keeps them in business. They are not overly interested in discriminating between candidates because they themselves have already been discriminated against through being shunned by the applicants with the decent grades.

With A grades now flying like confetti, Oxford and Cambridge have responded with talk of re-introducing their own selective entrance examinations. While the purpose of such a move would clearly be to help them retain their pre-eminence, there lies beneath this a second, more subtle strand, a notion that could be applied in all universities and that might go some way towards softening the rigid hierarchy between them that the A level grading system so effectively perpetuates. For the entrance exam, if properly conceived, is not simply an exercise in re-running A levels to find out who really is the best. It also provides the opportunity to assess candidates on the basis of their suitability for or capacity to benefit from the type of education being offered.

Thus an exercise which, in the case of Oxbridge, may seem merely elitist, actually plays neatly to the increasingly vocational content of many university courses. With their degree representing something increasingly like a career choice for the prospective undergraduate, the university itself as well as the would-be student might benefit greatly from an admissions threshold that tested not simply their qualification (in A level terms) for the course but their aptitude and inclination for the career in question.

With this approach, A level grades lose their importance, and the question then arises whether such relatively specialised exams are needed at all. Indeed early specialisation is often touted as one of the weaknesses of the A level system, requiring students who want to be doctors (for example) to eschew from the age of 16 the pleasures of history or French. Why not, therefore, reduce the vocational aspect of 16 plus education, de-coupling it from the

more logically vocational higher education that succeeds it? Then create a distinct threshold into higher education specific to the course chosen; one that depends not upon the achievement of the applicant so far but upon a measured assessment of their ability and suitability in relation to that course.

In other words, while working towards a broad-based baccalaureate-type exam at 18 or 19, students can be planning ahead, getting themselves assessed by the universities of their choice for the courses they would like to follow. Necessarily those assessments would be of potential, rather than achievement in the subject in question. That itself would be no bad thing provided the assessment was effective. The baccalaureate itself would not be the defining university qualification, although, presumably, candidates would be encouraged to pass it.

The essence of the approach is to separate out the "achievement" exam (everybody has passed, ore or less, and all shall have prizes of a sort) from the "entrance to next stage" procedure, since these are really incompatible functions. Getting students to think clearly about the next stage while allowing them to continue with a broad curriculum should mean both better vocational outcomes and a higher standard of general education - the sort that makes life interesting and diverse.

Copyright Martin Whitlock 2003