A* levels: lazy and ineffectual
In 2008 the A* was introduced for A-levels and for 2012 entry to Oxford, students will require one or more A*s for subjects including Maths, Engineering and Chemistry. The aim of the A* is to differentiate between the highest achieving students in sixth forms and colleges, pushing the most able and making it easier for universities to select the best applicants.
For the admissions process for entry in 2011 Cambridge, the LSE and Imperial College asked for the grade. Oxford held back from using it due to concerns over teachers’ familiarity with the system (making it difficult to make accurate predictions) and concerns over the access implications of the A*. But how effective is the new grade?
An A* is awarded if a student achieves over 80% in an exam on the UMS (Uniform Mark Scale) with an average of 90% across A2. However, this change is simply a new template laid over the existing framework, there is no re-structuring of the courses themselves and no reappraisal of the way in which we assess students at A2.
This seems strange as both right and left-leaning think tanks (including Reform and Demos), and all political parties have attacked the current system. They are critical of the ability of A-levels to gauge a student’s intellectual and creative skills effectively and the fairness of the system.
The new A* is a statistician’s, not an academic’s grade. The need for a near-perfect exam drives out creativity, flair and risk-taking. It squeezes out the possibility for students to study beyond what is prescribed by the exam itself. Everyone is aware of the students who apply to Oxford with fifteen As at A-level and are then shocked that they don’t get in, the fact is that academic ability and potential goes beyond paper; the A* is a reassertion of our over-reliance on prescribed examination and assessment and the stale, unimaginative thinking that it promotes.
The new grade will likely have a detrimental effect on students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. This is largely down to the low aspirations that often plague students from state schools which are exacerbated by the A* as well as the lack of information about further education and beyond. There are serious concerns about the ability of teachers to predict grades accurately. A research paper by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills shows that in 2009 only 51.7% of A-Level predictions were correct. A grades were the most accurately predicted while C grades were the furthest off. Worryingly, rates of accurate grade prediction were worse for students from low socio-economic backgrounds (by 16%). At the same time, black applicants had only 39.1% of grades predicted accurately compared with 53% of white students. With the introduction of the A* grade it is students from lower socio-economic backgrounds who stand to suffer most from under-prediction. Recent proposals for students to apply to university after they receive their grades could ease this problem, but these are faced with serious questions of practicality.
State schools are less able to coach whole classes to a specific exam due to a wider range of abilities and reduced resources. State school students are less likely to get near-perfect UMS scores at A-level and yet there is evidence from the Sutton Trust to suggest that once at university they perform marginally better than those from the private sector. However, the main problem is that the A* is a superficial imposition that does not promote wider learning. The only discernible effect is a reduced administration workload for universities, a false impression that A-levels are being made ‘tougher’ and a further obstacle to poorer students.
Even ‘elite’ universities such as Oxford have their doubts over the new grade. A-levels have long been criticised for their ability to distinguish students hence their reliance on their own admissions process (including a written exam for most subjects). However, Oxford has been extremely wary of A*s. The university’s investigation suggested that, in the sciences, those students who achieved the grade roughly mapped onto those who achieve the highest banding in the university’s own entrance exams. This sounds like a reason to support the new grade, but the fact that the two match up simply negates the need for the A*. It becomes superfluous in the presence of the university’s entrance exam.
In the arts the case against the grade is even stronger as A*s failed to map onto the university’s own tests and the narrowing effect of the grade goes against ideas of independent study, originality and creativity, supposedly encouraged in Oxford. After Cambridge, Imperial and the LSE adopted it Oxford had little choice but to follow, forced to take on an imperfect model in order to avoid being selected as a backup. Though it is currently used only in science subjects it will not take long for this to spread to arts and humanities (just as requirement rose over the past couple of decades with grade inflation). If one university makes this decision the rest will have to follow, after all half (or more) of Oxford’s success is in its reputation.
The A* is a lazy and ineffectual attempt to fix an imperfect system that threatens both the access aims and academic integrity of UK universities. It clamps down on creativity and alienates state-school students with no palpable gain.
First appeared in The Cherwell January 2011
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