A-level grade inflation to end with results this week

A-level results released this week are set to finally end the “grade inflation” which has bedevilled the exam system.

Grades for 300,000 18-year-olds will be released on Thursday. But for the first time they have been set under newly-published rules designed to stop the number of teenagers gaining top grades from going up year after year.

Exam board chiefs said the new regime has put an end to the pattern of annually-increasing grades.

Critics had warned that the value of the “gold standard” exam was being eroded, while Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, claimed the system was becoming “discredited”.

Earlier this year Ofqual, the regulator which maintains the integrity of exams, conceded for the first time that it was “virtually impossible to justify” what it termed “persistent grade inflation”.

Under new guidelines issued by Ofqual to examiners in June, this week’s A-level scores will be pegged to the cohort’s GCSE performance.

A-level results going back over the last two year, and their corresponding GCSE results, will also be taken in to account. Exam boards are also able to employ other statistics, such as results in similar subjects, for instance, French, German and Spanish.

Simon Lebus, the chief executive of Cambridge Assessment, which owns the OCR exam board, said: “A regime which gives such close emphasis to the use of statistics is going to be less supportive of grade inflation.

“The difference now is that there is much more emphasis on producing results that meet the predicted range of outcomes.

“You would expect outcomes to remain consistent year to year unless there are changes in terms of the cohort or the syllabuses, or in terms of other extraneous factors.

“The challenge is to balance statistics and academic judgement. Other things being equal, you might expect to get a flatline.”

While “flatlining” grades will end the annual row over grade inflation, they could lead to complaints by schools that grades are being artificially held down.

The release of the results on Thursday will spark the annual scramble for university places among teenagers who missed out on the grades they needed for their first-choice university.

The number of surplus places on offer in the clearing system is expected to be higher than usual after this year’s increase in tuition fees led to an 8 per cent drop in university applications.

The A-level pass rate has risen for 29 years in a row and is now around 98 per cent, fuelling concerns about the “dumbing down” of exams.

In the early 1980s, less than 10 per cent of pupils achieved an A grade. Last year, the proportion of A and A* grades awarded was 27 per cent.

Nearly 9 per cent of candidates were awarded the A* grade, introduced in 2010 to “stretch and challenge” the very brightest pupils.

Ofqual introduced new rules last summer, without publicity, in an attempt to ensure exam boards set “justifiable” grade boundaries for A-levels.

The 2011 results subsequently showed a slowing-down in the rate of grade inflation. In June this year Ofqual wrote to exam boards with further guidance that is set to have an even greater impact.

Similar changes have been made by Ofqual to the GCSE grading system, and the results are expected to show a slowing-down in grade inflation when they are published later this month.

Professor A C Grayling, the philosopher and master of New College of the Humanities, a private university which opens in London in September, said there was no question that there had been grade inflation and that A-levels needed reform.

“We need to have a proper look at it but it can’t be left to ministers or institutions alone,” he said. “Most of school education up to GCSE is the acquisition of the basics.

"At A-level you should be acquiring something more complex - the capacity to think well, to work through an idea, to look laterally at things.

“Except that with the introduction of AS levels you have year on year preparation for exams. The constant cry you hear from teachers and pupils is, 'Is that going to be in the exam because if it isn’t, I don’t want to know about it.’

"We have squeezed out the air of curiosity.”

The college, which charges fees of £18,000 a year, has indicated that it will take “Oxbridge rejects” in the clearing system.

Sixth formers with offers from Oxford, Cambridge and other Russell Group universities who drop a grade and are not accepted are invited to attend an “open weekend” at the college in Bloomsbury to be interviewed.

Leading universities, such as Birmingham, East Anglia and Exeter will be bidding for high-achieving students in clearing to take advantage of new Government rules which allow unlimited recruitment of sixth formers who achieve AAB grades or better.

Lower-ranking institutions are already publishing degree course vacancies, nearly a week before A-levels are issued. Bath Spa and Kent have vacancies in more than 50 courses. London South Bank, Lincoln and Plymouth all have places available.

Aberystwyth University is offering a “clearing bursary” of up to £450 in discounts on accommodation fees and benefits such as sports memberships.

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