by David Craig
Despite repeated warnings about the declining content of A–levels in STEM subject areas, the government and exam boards don’t seem to be listening. In 2009, the think tank Reform and a group of 64 maths professors were so concerned about the introduction of a new A–level called the “use of mathematics” that they took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the qualification, arguing that: “The content of the qualification is not of A–level standard and does not provide sufficient preparation for studying at university... (it) may cannibalise A–level mathematics as schools and students seek the ‘easier’ option.”366
The course still went into operation in September 2011. Given the concerns raised by these professors about the standard of this new A–level, it seemed reasonable that they should also refuse to accept it for students seeking admission to their degree courses. However, such an approach was clearly unacceptable to a number of influential figures within the school system. Mick Brookes, the General Secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, described this reaction as “intellectual snobbery”, arguing that the professors: “....should get down from their ivory towers. They should be out in the world where young people live and exist and they should be appreciative that young people have great skills in the use of technology and we have to latch on to that. We cannot continue teaching an outdated 19th–century curriculum.”367
Critics were therefore unhappy if universities rejected certain qualifications within their internal admissions processes. They were also unhappy if academics raised public concerns about any qualifications and/or stated explicitly that they would not accept students with them onto their courses. This appears to leave the preferred option being for these academics to say nothing and to accept any qualification for any course. This raises the question as to who, other than admissions tutors (professors and academics), is really in a position to understand whether or not a qualification will equip a student for study on their course?
Are politicians, teachers or union representatives able to speak with authority on how useful a qualification will or won’t be for a student applying for a particular undergraduate degree? Alternatively, will these teachers, politicians and union representatives be on hand to provide the additional teaching, funding and resource to help the student if the qualification hasn’t prepared them for a specific course? Most universities and professors are keen to receive applications from the widest possible range of applicants. But if they choose to exclude certain qualifications, then the most logical explanation for this is that they don’t want to take on students who will struggle with their courses, divert (very) limited time and resources and who will have a higher likelihood of failing or dropping out.
Perhaps the single most compelling piece of evidence as to the systemic nature of curriculum shrinkage within schools was provided inadvertently in 2011. The Telegraph reported (and videoed) the comments of a senior examiner for Edexcel, one of the UK’s main examination boards, during a meeting with teachers:
“Ms W*****, the chief examiner for Edexcel GCSE Geography, said that teachers should pick her company’s exam because ‘you don’t have to teach a lot’. Ms W***** also expressed her disbelief that the geography exam had been cleared by the official regulator. ‘There’s so little [in the exam] we don’t know how we got it through [the exam regulator]’. She claimed it was ‘a lot smaller [than other boards] and that’s why a lot of people came to us’.”368
Essentially, Edexcel’s sales pitch to schools and teachers could risk being seen as promising that they could achieve good exam results with less teaching and/or with less able pupils. This would, in turn, mean less knowledge for students and future problems for UK universities in dealing with this reduction. The pitch might appear to have been made in the belief that it would appeal to schools. In other words, that promising low content and minimal teaching would secure sales of their qualifications.
This approach could indicate that some exam boards may not be competing with each other on the quality of their qualifications, but on their ease. The implication is that each exam board tries to game the system and get qualifications passed with the minimum content possible. This view was supported by Jon Coles, an ex–director general at the Department for Education. In 2012, he described how:
“... major exam boards were attempting to win business from schools by promoting GCSEs and A–levels as ‘more accessible’ than their rivals. ... setting tests that ‘barely meet’ the minimum requirements expected of exam papers and then haggling with the qualifications watchdog to get them approved.”369
The above suggests that there have been too many sections of the compulsory education system (including teaching unions, exam boards and schools), which have complicitly opted for the easiest of solutions, dumbing down, when addressing the problems expansion has created. Though, any sympathy that we might feel for schools being asked to perform a mammoth and perhaps impossible task without the necessary resources, should be considered against the damage that such complicity has caused to academic standards throughout the education system. It should also be set against the fact that schools, which have engaged in this type of behaviour, have ultimately benefited themselves to the disadvantage of both their students and the taxpayer.
There is, of course, a final party not yet mentioned, which bears ultimate responsibility for the dumbing down of school syllabuses and assessments: the UK government. Their involvement in this farrago has been exemplified by the issue of grade inflation at GCSE and A–levels.
Grade inflation
“Nearly 45,000 people achieved AAA at A–level nationally in 2010. The number of A grades at A–level has grown by over 68% in 10 years.”370
Until 2012, every year A–level and GCSE results improved upon the previous years’ results. We can see this pattern in all subjects between 1988 and 2011:
GCSE grades – In 1988, 41.9% of papers received grades A to C. By 2011, this figure was 69.8%. In 1994, the A* grade was introduced, with 2.8% of papers achieving this grade. By 2011, 7.8% of papers achieved A*s.
A–level grades – In 1988, 77% of exam papers received grades A to E. By 2011, this figure was 98%. In 2010, the A* grade was introduced to offer greater differentiation.371
The A–level pass rate had, in fact, remained fairly constant at around 70% from their introduction in the 1960s until 1980.372 The subsequent rise happily coincided with a burst of Higher Education expansion in what was then the polytechnic sector. The greatest level of grade inflation has occurred in the top grades for both GCSEs and A–levels. A much larger group of students are now achieving the top grades in both exams:
“In 1988, 21.2% of GCSE grades were A or B. By 2011, A*, A and B grades comprised 44.9% of total awards.”373
“In 1993, 30.5% of A–level grades were A or B. By 2012 A*, A and B grades comprised 52.6% of total awards.”374
This phenomenon has created a now familiar series of unintended consequences. How, for example, can university admissions tutors choose between a glut of students who all have perfect sets of A* grades at GCSE and A grades at A–level? This problem was already evident in 2002, when the Guardian reported that:
“Certain courses will typically attract between 25 and 30 applicants for every one place. About half of these will be predicted to achieve three As, predictions that are very likely to be met given that slightly more than 20% of all candidates in A–level exams now gain an A grade.”375
It is for this reason that the A* grade was introduced to GCSEs in 1994 and in A–levels in 2010. Grade inflation has increased at such pace, however, that the GCSE A* grade is now simply the de facto A grade and an A is simply a former B. By 2005, problems were already occurring in Oxbridge admissions: “Oxford and Cambridge together rejected more than 10,000 applicants last year who went on to achieve straight As at A–level.”376
By 2008, the situation had worsened. The Telegraph reported that Oxbridg
e had rejected 12,000 “straight A” applicants that year: “Oxford was set to turn away 5,000 while Cambridge rejected 7,000.”377
The A* grade at A–level also poses new difficulties, however, given the disproportionate success of private–school pupils at gaining A* grades in comparison to state–school students. Research in 2010 by the Independent Schools Council outlined the scale of this problem: “Half the A–levels taken by pupils at independent schools were graded A or A* this year... Across state and private schools as a whole, 8% of A–level entries were graded A*, with 27% getting an A or A*.”378
For the elite universities, the A* grade poses a dilemma. Here is a tool to help them sort through the vast swathes of triple–A candidates. But it is one that will probably result in an increase in privately–educated students, putting the universities yet again on a collision course with politicians worried about any threat to the idea of universities having an important role in promoting “social justice”. Closer inspection of A* grades revealed how significant this advantage was in some subjects. In 2011, the Times Higher Education Supplement reported: “In mathematics, more than 4,000 A* grades were awarded to private–school pupils last year, compared with fewer than 3,500 for the whole state sector. This was despite the fact that just 15 per cent of A–level candidates were privately–educated.”379
Given the pressures of grade inflation, universities have had no choice but to use the new A* grade. By 2011, 15 universities had courses for which they required the grade. The Telegraph reported: “Last year Cambridge and Imperial College, London, were among five institutions to ... require the A* grade. Ten more have included it in offers this year... (this) list includes less–established institutions such as Brighton and Reading.”380
That this requirement has spread so fast to non–Russell Group universities shows the extent of the problems caused by exam grade inflation.
Grade inflation and falling standards
There is no definitive answer as to whether grade inflation corresponds to falling educational standards. Politicians, students and teachers’ unions all argue vociferously that this is not the case. The basic pattern is problematic though – yearly improvements across all subjects at GCSE and A–levels do not suggest random fluctuations or even organic improvement. As with degree grade inflation, the pattern of improvement was constant over more than three decades. There is evidence suggesting that the boundaries set to achieve different grades for GCSE and A–level have been shifted during the years of grade inflation. A number of officials at various exam boards have gone public with their concerns. In 2001, the think tank Civitas reported that:
“Jeffrey Robinson, a senior examiner in GCSE maths for the OCR Exam board, claimed that pupils achieving As and Bs would have received C and D grades ten years earlier. The pass mark for a C grade had fallen from 65% in 1989 to 48% in 2001.”381
When today’s A–level students have their performance in standard tests compared against students of previous years, they also perform notably worse. In comparative research at Durham University, academics found: “... that over the course of the study, students went on to get A–level results on average two grades higher than those who got comparable test scores 20 years earlier.”382
One of the academics involved, Professor Robert Coe, noted that because it did not deal with the content of A–level exams, it did not prove that A–levels were getting easier. He did also state, though, that: “It’s pretty clear the ability levels corresponding to the same grades (at A–level) are going down each year.”383 These findings tally with the declining performance of students on university induction tests. They also triangulate with the evidence presented earlier in this chapter, which suggests that many undergraduates now lack subject knowledge, basic skills and the ability to think independently, despite achieving “good” GCSEs and A–levels.
Expansion is fuelled by, and in turn distorts, the wider educational system. If the goal of increasing participation at universities must be pursued at any cost, this licences any number of behaviours within schools and universities that are the antithesis of a learning society. Watered–down content, grade inflation, teaching to the test... all are implicitly acceptable if they promote expansion.
Despite the problems described above, it should be noted that recent signs within the school system have been more encouraging. For example, the last few years have finally seen GCSE and A–level grade inflation go into a small reverse following a shift in government policy. In addition, concerns over grade inflation have also seen many schools choose alternative qualifications over GCSEs and A–levels for their students, a shift that should (in theory) increase pressure on domestic exam boards to ensure the quality of their curricula. However, the uptake of these qualifications has been much more prevalent within private schools, again raising the spectre of a qualifications apartheid between those pupils who have access to the best qualifications and those who do not.
Unfair access?
“Almost a quarter of England’s sixth forms and colleges have failed to produce any pupils with the top A–level grades sought by leading universities. Some 594 (23.4%) of the 2,540 schools teaching A–levels had no pupils with the two As and a B in the subjects recommended for top degree courses.” BBC News 2013384
One of the most controversial aspects of expansion has been the relative failure of students from state schools to obtain places at elite universities. This failure is even more marked for students from lower socio–economic backgrounds, creating difficulties for the argument that expansion is providing social mobility and social justice. The best jobs and the best graduate returns are generally reserved for students who attend the best universities. The result is that our elite universities have faced mounting political attacks from all parties for failing to provide what has been called “fair access”.
But is this really a “failure” of universities? Or is it that UK schools are failing to provide an adequate number of candidates who are aware of and willing to apply to these elite universities? The answer depends on your point of view. Should universities simply select on the basis of the best candidates that apply, or should they contextualise candidates’ applications on the basis of their backgrounds taking into account the advantages privately–schooled applicants might have enjoyed over their state–educated counterparts?
Before rushing to answer, it is often ignored that many of the UK’s elite universities are already going to considerable lengths to level this playing field themselves. Following several well–reported supposed ‘scandals’ of elite universities turning down state–school students with excellent A–level results, the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris presented evidence to the House of Commons that Oxford was already favouring state–school pupils in its admissions: “...statistics showed that while the great majority of all entrants gained three A grades at A–level, 23% of comprehensive pupils were admitted with slightly lower grades, compared with 17.2% from independent schools.”385
The same approach was visible in 2008, when Cambridge University dropped its requirement that applicants should have a foreign language GCSE. This decision was taken solely to facilitate applications from state–school students, with the university stating that: “… having a formal entry requirement that at least half of all GCSE students are unable to meet ‘was not acceptable in the context of Cambridge’s commitment to widening participation and access’.”386
In 2012, the Guardian newspaper sat in on Cambridge’s admissions process. Based upon their reporting, it was quite clear that the university’s admissions tutors were already trying extremely hard to contextualise applications:
“The phrase ‘a good school’ comes up repeatedly in the tutors’ discussions. It is used most frequently about private and grammar schools, but also some comprehensive schools, and has a double meaning. ‘A good school’ is a high–performing one .... when a candidate comes from ‘a good school’ they are also c
ut less slack.”387
The reality is that the admissions processes of elite universities like Cambridge already discriminate in favour of students from underachieving schools. This is not even a new phenomenon – it was a major reason for Oxford and Cambridge dropping their entrance exams during the 1990’s, as these were perceived to discriminate against state–school applicants.388 Broadly speaking, it would be reasonable to characterise most elite UK universities as highly supportive of various governments’ desire to achieve more proportionate access for state–school pupils. Individually and collectively, the majority of the people working within the UK’s elite universities strongly support the concept of social justice and the belief that a university education can help to promote this.
Ultimately, those who desire to see social justice delivered through universities want them to override their academic selection criteria with social justice criteria. They wish to ensure that there is a greater equality of outcome for entrants to elite universities from different social groups, regardless of performances at interview, their predicted grades in exams or their readiness to undertake a specific degree. This attitude ignores the contextualisation that already occurs and the experience of admissions tutors. It also ignores the role that schools play by not supplying enough credible candidates for Oxbridge and the Russell Group universities.
The media narrative about fair access generally starts by complaining that, whilst private schools only educate 7% of the UK’s children, they account for around 45% of the intake to Oxbridge. On the surface this is startling. But the picture looks very different when we look more closely at the actual applications made to Oxbridge. In 2011, Oxford University received around 37% of its domestic applications from privately–schooled students and 63% from state–schooled students.389 The proportions in domestic applications to Cambridge University were very similar with around 33% from privately–schooled students and 67% from state–schooled students.390 Private–school students have an advantage over their state–school counterparts in gaining entry, but it is not a huge one. The real advantage they enjoy is that proportionally more of them apply to these universities in the first place. If state schools increased the overall volume of applicants to Oxbridge and other elite universities in proportion to their size, this would dramatically close the gap in admissions with private–school students.
