When I was a boy taking A levels over 40 years ago at a highly selective Direct Grant School, life seemed quite simple. We all took three A levels, apart from those odd creatures who took on Further Maths, with a single set of exams late in June in the Sixth Form. And that was that. However, it wasn’t quite that simple. There were things like S Levels to keep us honest and scared and it was normal to take an extra O Level on the side and pay attention in General Studies lessons, and even take an exam. And this system may have suited boys like me and schools like my school, but that was a minority and it may have suited a world of narrow university study and single careers. Only about 10% of the population went to university, these A levels were too hard for too many and the whole system of specialisation generated the Two Cultures which CP Snow described and the world, and the UK, has often lamented.
So, as the great cycle of the Millennium turned, reform was in the air, the radical Tomlinson reform, which promised an entirely different ethos of breadth and which was still born, and the tinkering reform of AS Levels, four subjects, modules and retakes, exams twice a season and four times a student career. Of course, this did do some good: there was a nod to breadth and the ability to play the exam game time and again did make A levels more accessible at a time when politicians wanted 50% of the population to go to university. However, dumbing down and lack of challenge and grade inflation and A* creation were all products of these good intentions.
And so, forty years on, A levels, after being marched at least some way up the hill, have been marched back down the hill to their starting point, three A levels – although many school will start with four and speak enthusiastically of EPQs - and terminal exams and no second chance. Except this time, we have created students and schools – and universities -so fixated with exam outcomes that there is little chance of studying or caring about any additional academic diversions.
And yet, every voice that can be heard from the other side of the school wall cries that A levels do not provide what universities, the wider academic world and employers want. Those universities want breadth of study and thought, inter-disciplinary problem-solving, communication and team work. It is even being said that the best employers won’t even look at you’re A level grades when choosing their staff: o tempora, o mores. Only this month, the President of the Royal Society, Sir Venki Ramakrishnan wrote as follows:
"The UK risks falling behind its global competitors as a result of maintaining a narrow, outdated model of post-16 education. Our narrow education system, which encourages early specialisation, is no longer fit for purpose in an increasingly interdisciplinary world. Many countries have moved, or are moving, towards a broader and more diverse curriculum in order to equip the next generation with a skill set they will need.”
Of course, the President of the Royal Society must be, by definition, the boffinest person in the UK, but there are many other voices from around the world who agree and say so regularly. Surely, everyone must know in their heart of hearts that a system than is narrower now than it was when I was a lad cannot be sustainable in the future. And, of course, there is an alternative which the President – not Trump - advocates, the International Baccalaureate. But that’s another story.