10th December 2014 1:00
By Blue Tutors
Tutors, teachers and students alike will have watched discussions of the planned A level reform with interest this week.
For the last 14 years, students’ final A level grades have been decided by a combination of exam results which had been taken throughout the two year course. The year 2000 education reforms were driven by an absence of options for school leavers wishing to remain in education. More students than ever were staying on at school, but either dropping out or failing their final exams, leading to the introduction of AS levels. These were intended to appeal to a wider cohort, as well as offer greater flexibility for students. A levels were deemed to be no longer appropriate.
Gove’s return to the two year A level with a single exam is intended to be a return to a more “rigorous” and “robust” exam, while retaining the flexibility offered by the AS levels which some students may prefer. Some universities like AS level grades to base their offers on. Gove intends for AS levels to be co-taught with A levels, but for their results to be unable to be ‘banked’ towards the final A level grade.
But therein lies the difficulty.
Schools will be challenged to resource and timetable the teaching of the two, alongside one another. The summer term of year 12 will be about testing for AS levels and not teaching for A levels. AS level results won’t count towards the A level in any case. Exam boards are under pressure from Ofqual to design the papers to be incompatible, with differing content and very little overlap.
Some commentators have noted that decoupling the AS from A level is a personal mission of Gove’s, one which is not widely supported within the DfE. There is a suggestion that it will not survive a change of secretary of state or a change of government. Many are therefore satisfied to await a change, ahead of its implementation for September 2015.
This, however, does not help our current students, needing to make decisions imminently about their own courses of study, amongst the confusion and contradiction of these reforms.