The Farce of easy A Levels

What a surprise - A Level results continue to show record improvements, with record pass rates and record A grades awarded.

A Levels have become a farce - they are absolutely getting easier, and I know because I have 9 A Level passes over a 4 year period, and saw them getting easier as a student first hand.

I took Physics A Level with the Northern Examination Association (NEA) in 1990, but didn’t do so well because Advanced Level Maths was integral to the course - differentiation, integration, and similar - and I wasn’t allowed to take A Level maths.

10 years later I began - but did not finish - a Physics A Level from the NEA. By that time, all Advanced Level Maths had been wiped from the syllabus, making the course much easier.

Even in 1990, teachers would routinely tell us about harder elements of the previous year’s syllabus being removed, and as students we would all sigh collective relief.

Trouble is, this has been continuing for decades.

Ironically, modern “Advanced Level” exams are now easier than “Ordinary Level” exams in the same subject from decades previously.

Supposedly, we are supposed to cheer the fact that more students are passing easier exams - when really we should be bemoaning the fact that A Level exams have become a farce and are in desperate need of proper universal standards of difficulty applied across both subjects and examining boards.

As usual, though, the persons who have a vested interest in undermining the education system and now flattering the government with improved pass rates, who are loudest in cheering the record pass rates.

Anthony McClaran, chief executive of Ucas, is quoted as saying:

It is difficult to compare the A-levels of today with those of 40 years ago as the world is quite a different place.
“Many world records are being broken at the Olympics but that doesn’t make the feat easier.”

Um, but if the 100m was run at an increasing decline at every Olympics, and the distance run was increasingly shorter, people would clearly throw the same accusations.

In the meantime, A Levels continue to be undermined, and until such time as standards are held as important, employers such as myself will be increasingly forced to completely ignore A Levels as an achievement of anything of significance.