Are 'A' level exams getting easier to pass?
Are 'A' level exams getting easier to pass?
Aug 21, 2008: Higher educational institutions in England are at a loss how to accommodate so many 'A' level high graders to choice courses as the pass percentage in the high school examination rises yearly. This would be the 26th year in a row when the percentage has gone up marking a record 97.2 per cent in the results announced last week. More than half of all the grades awarded were As or Bs. Educational experts doubt the government claim that standards are going up because teachers and students are doing better and better. Have teenagers really become brighter and more hard-working year on year, asks the Sunday Times and says many teachers and universities have their doubts.
This is not being questioned in Pakistan where teaching standards are far poorer and private schools preparing students for the 'A' level examination are purely commercial enterprises whose ranking as educational institutions can only be determined by the amount in thousands they charge as fee. And yet as newspaper pictures of high achievers of our Islamabad elite schools, getting seven or eight As (rare and almost unheard of even in England) show, there must something be the matter with this entire issue of examination quality sliding and qualifier quantity rising. And for overseas students, it is quite likely, this standard may have been lowered even further to encourage more of them to opt for this system in preference to their national high school curriculum. Education export is big business for advanced countries. It would be interesting to know how much money in expensive foreign exchange Pakistani students are paying annually as fee for O and A level examinations.
In Britain, more than one in 10 of the 300,000 A-level students now achieve at least three A grades, making it difficult for the top universities to adjudge who is the best. At Oxford last year, it is reported 5,000 applicants were refused admission to choice courses who had come with three As to their credit. The glut of high achievers has forced universities to introduce their own qualifying tests. According to a report, there are some 57 separate university entrance tests, many for popular courses such as law and medicine. The Imperial College, London, has minced no words in saying, "we can't rely on A-levels any more. Everybody who applies has got three or four A's."
Commenting on the situation, columnist Rod Liddle wrote: Our young people are so clever that this year only 2.8 per cent of them failed their A-levels; cynics say that this is because the exams are so easy that a pig's ladder on a stick could gain a B grade – but, as we are often reminded, comments like this demean the very real achievements of our students and should not be tolerated. Instead, let us look forward to the day when there is a 100 per cent pass rate, or even greater -- and every abject cretin can go on to read applied concrete, or may be media studies, at the University of Central Thanet. One wonders quite what level of imbecility is required to gain entry to that exclusive 2.8 per cent. But, I dare say we will find out when the next edition of Big Brother comes to our screen.
These are indeed irrelevant matters and would hardly occur to the largely ignorant ruling class or even to the education establishment of the country. Had it not been so the educational system left by the colonials would have been trussed and trimmed to suit our national needs? It was blamed for creating a servant class and destroyed by corrupt educationists during the sixties and seventies although it had created eminent scholars and men of learning the equals of whom no later system of education introduced in Pakistan was able to produce. Now between the Urdu and English medium syllabi and the madressah and O/A levels systems the national body of education has been so split apart, it is a schizophrenic prescription for disunity of thought and feeling. Instead of nurturing the creative genius of the people, it has created a confused mass of youth that is running helter skelter like motley flocks in a safari park. Most of them would fly away if they got the chance; yes, even the ultra zombies of the suicide squads. Dawn
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