The unintended consequences of cancelling A level exams
The unintended consequences of cancelling A level exams
Summer 2020 we are relieved of the madness and inevitably of the press photos of Johnny and Jane celebrating getting straight A* in their A level results. Off they would have trotted to a top university who would have happily had their student fees. Both would have different strategies to succeed in their results. . Slow and steady from the girl. While fast and dash from the boy. Both presided over by schools and parenting that gave them the rails to slide into their exams and smash them out the park. Hurrah!
Either way we are now spared their wonderfully predictable success into the grade inflated bureaucratically imposed exam results that serve few accept the institutions that the candidates are being trained to be aiming for. A rough guess would be around 3 papers per subject in the summer with 3 or 4 A levels. All between 2 - 3 hours long with the odd coursework assessment over the year.
These dozen or so hours of concentration reward the pupils with a grade that if they are good at short term memory along with quick regurgitation of facts and prose will lead them coming near the top of their years standardised results. The lack of photos of over-successful beaming sixth form students smashing As in their A level provides us with the time to really think what actually happens at the other end of the spectrum. Those who do not do well in A levels. Whose character, environment and choice has led them up to the poor A level exam results.
The reality is the vast majority of candidates who do not do well at A levels, which is most of the pupils, should go nowhere near the poor university humanities degrees that are aimed at the average exam candidate. They will be ripped off and driven to heavy student debt by humanity courses that could be done better online and without the misery of student and lecturer politics. These online courses are mostly free or low cost with a wide choice. They provide the breadth and depth and the quality of lecture halls without any of the mess that university humanities courses bring.
The alternative in bleak. The graduates in bog standard university humanities courses having paid piles of cash. Supporting over paid university chancellors while end up finding it hard to justify spending 3 - 4 years because the jobs at the end of it are not gold plated. In fact it is the opposite.
In the summer of 2020 Johnny and Jane will have to rely on their school report for their exam. Schools are complex places and to ask them to give predictions as real grades for pupils is like asking a horse to draw a self portrait. There is a chance in this tombola that Johnny and Jane find themselves in result in them might face with the choice of the humanities courses from universities they have never heard of or want to go to. Value for money will suddenly become the buzzword. The middle classes will revolt as the truth emerges from the shake up. The whole exam board paradigm with the Johnny and Jane characters succeeding every summer while other less successful pupils sink into the temptation of accepting the poor value for money most humanity undergraduate courses is now de facto true. Johnny and Jane and the rest of the upwardly mobile classes will have felt the horror.
For more opinions do keep checking the GCSE and A level Exam blog.