Issue 61

28 April - 11 May 1998

The view from the tower

by Don

My elder brother told me the other day that he still has nightmares about sitting his A levels - some 30 years after the event.

This may say as much about his own scholastic abilities as it does about the exam system. But with the A level season upon us and prospective Imperial students praying - or revising - for the right grades I am more than ever conscious of the bizarreness of the present system.

Leaving aside criticisms of the specialised exam system as such, the current UCAS procedures seem increasingly untenable. Currently, 16- and 17-year olds have to make their university choices on the basis of predicted A level grades. The ones I know usually have a higher estimation of their intellectual abilities than may be justified. Good teachers will give good advice, but no one takes kindly to being told they are really C quality and not A. The student then sets their sight on a particular university, and receives an offer requiring, say, two As and a B.

Those in favour of the predicted system will say that it is this which spurs the student to achieve excellence. But I am not so sure, and things can go spectacularly wrong. I have seen students drop grades often due to the quirkiness of the exam system as much as to their own fault, lose their offers then rush around in August scrabbling for a place at somewhere they did not want to go to and on a course they did not want to do. Worse still, I know of a son of a colleague who set his heart on a well-known university (not Imperial) but never even received an offer. He has now fallen into a slough of despond, and has lost all motivation for his A level revision.

Isn’t it about time we moved to a system where students did their A levels, got their results, and then applied to universities? The distortions of predictions would disappear, students would spend the final year concentrating on A levels rather than all the distraction of UCAS application forms, and with the results at hand, there would be a realistic expectation of the choices of university that were open.

Timing of course is the key. But my solution would be to start university academic years in January, leaving plenty of time for A level marking and processing applications. The long summer holidays and the tradition of an autumn start have little rational basis, and are, I suspect, merely the dying embers of an agrarian economy and the demands for a harvest workforce. Better to start refreshed at the start of the new year. University finals students would then take their exams in the autumn with a long summer revision period. And once finished how much better would be the Christmas celebrations that would immediately follow?

The thought almost makes me want to resit my exams again - though I don’t think it will persuade my brother.