10th January 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
In a recent article we reported on concerns about teachers ‘over-predicting’ A Level grades, and the problems this can create in the university application process. The most interesting part about the article is what was omitted, rather than what was said; at no time was there a suggestion that we should review the way in which our university applications work, and it seems as though it’s about time we should.
Obviously the existing system has been in place for a long time, but as applications to university have increased so has the complexity of the system, and the problem has been magnified. When very few 18 year olds even thought about further education, each university had many fewer applications to look at, and competition for places was much lower than today. Students could submit their O Level results, along with their predicted A Level grades, and there was often a lot of room for universities to differentiate between the best and worst pupils. This is partly due to O Levels being much harder exams than GCSEs and hence we didn’t have a glut of students with the top grade in every single subject. Also, with competition for places being lower, there was probably less incentive for teachers to over-predict how well a student would do; if a prediction was requested at all.
As the GCSE results have risen, and as more and more people are applying for university places, we have begun to see a problem with the application process: how does a university really know which of two students have handled the step up to A Levels better (and hence will handle the step up to undergraduate work well too) when they each have 10 A*s at GCSE, and have each been predicted 4 As at A Level. The AS Level system was supposed to address these problems, but hasn’t done so as effectively as hoped, and there is an increasing feeling that we should move away from ‘modular’ courses towards more traditional ‘all or nothing’ final exams.
The strange thing is that no one has raised the possibility of a very different way of examining students, one which works so successfully in many other countries. A continuous examination system, as used in the US, would solve a lot of the problems with our existing system by allowing universities to see up-to-date information about how a student is coping, and remove the need for predicted grades. It would also eradicate the problem of ‘cramming’ which we have so much exposure to as a tuition agency.
Every April and May we receive hundreds of requests from students who have decided to hire a tutor before their final exams in June. Sometimes these requests are well thought out, and are just for 2-3 ‘top-up’ lessons, but it’s much more common that the requests are from panicking students and parents, who have suddenly realised that they need a drastic solution involving 2-3 hours of tuition per day. Most tutors have a story about turning up at a student’s house to find that the student has done virtually nothing since the start of his/her A Levels and is hoping that a month of private tuition can save them. As long as we have ‘end of year’ exams, this problem will continue to exist. No one’s saying that organisation isn’t an important skill for a student to have, but we could help them by requiring constant dedication at school because of continuous assessment.