I’m not too exercised about differentiation at the top; by all means, if it will shut the Bristols and the Nottinghams and the doting mammas up, then publish individualised breakdowns or make them available to universities, or better still, make them interview all applicants, like Oxbridge does, and give them all a proper quota of state school students. In my anarchic moments, I do like Neil’s suggestion of allocating an Oxbridge place to every school in the country for their best pupil and sod the rest!

I would prefer, though, a baccalaureate-style system where young people have to continue a broader range of courses across arts and sciences disciplines, plus a dissertation and community service, to gain their top grade. This would also has the effect of making the school leaving age of 16 redundant - at the election, I was proud to stand on a platform of guaranteeing every young person a place at school, college, training or an apprenticeship.

Grade inflation is, I think, a conflation of a couple of issues, not least of which is the greater importance of qualifications nowadays, where unskilled jobs are pretty-much unavailable without GCSEs. I would argue that teaching is also vastly better. You also seem to be implying (apologies if you’re not) that I think the pass rates should be manipulated to meet the target - I emphatically don’t think that. I’d just like to see secondary schools that engaged our young people better, teaching a curriculum that feels worthwhile and relevant to their lives, in an environment where they are treated with respect.

Having said all that, and having been a staunch defender of the standards reached by A-level students for years, knowing how hard I worked for my own, I was shocked and taken aback to read a celebratory blog post by a friend, who achieved an A and two Bs and will go off to university shortly, throughout which “your” was substituted for “you’re” and “their” for “they’re”…

Additionally, grade inflation is a serious problem when you start saying that 46% of children don’t leave with enough good GCSEs. How do you solve that problem? Obviously, you want the standards to improve. But if the standard required for a C grade is lower and lower (and 16% for OCR GCSE Maths) then what’s been achieved? Cosmetics to suit the purposes of spin.

Lee has commented on this today: http://leegregory.typepad.com/lee_gregory/2005/08/the_annual_moan.html

The only people who say exams are getting easier are disgruntled critics who have absolutely no connection with FE whatsoever, and haven’t seen an exam paper in a good 20 years.

Everytime these people have said this to me, I’ve told them to prove it - take an A-Level exam using the open-college system. If it’s so easy these days, they should pass with flying colours.

Paul
http://www.readmyday.co.uk/blogs/paulleake