The end of grades?
Today is A-Level results day, and so thousands of young people across the country can breath a sigh of relief that the wait is over. If you got the grades you wanted, well done. And if not, there are many, many options available, so don’t be despondant.
I still have nightmares now about my own A-Level results day in 1999. The results themselves were fine, but the worry remains with me to this day. I occasionally still have dreams where I find myself panicking about the impending results. And it takes me a few seconds when I wake up to realise that it’s all in the past now. The whole of the A-level process was deeply unpleasant, and more work then I’ve ever done for anything in my life. And I’m glad because it taught me the value of hard work, and the limits of my own capacity to do hard work.
The “are they easier?” debate rages on, as it does every year. I don’t think it needs to. Regardless of whether they are easier or not, and regardless of how hard people work, the A-Levels are failing to distiguish between the brightest and the less bright. The award of an A-Level is primarily to reward achievement and learning, but an important secondary purpose is to enable employers and universities to pick those with the most potential. And the system fails here. The government suggests an A* grade as a way of picking out the very highest achievers, but this still leaves a quarter of all students getting an A. There arte schools ditching A-Levels for International Baccalaureates, and of more universities having entry tests now.
What we need is to find a way of allowing the hard workers to get the recognition they deserve, and simultaneously of allowing them to be distinguished from their fellow students.
So why not get rid of grades altogether? Imagine a student who gets 85% in his Maths A-Level. Why can’t this student have this recorded on his certificate, rather than a grade A, which may well fail to dstinguish him from someone who got 75% or 100%? Why not also have a second score shown next to the percentage, giving an idea of how close to the top of all the other students my student came? My student’s 85% may actually be the best result in the country. Or it might be the worst. At the moment there is no way of knowing.
Rather than giving offers of grades or points, universities could request average percentages, or average placings on the list of scores for that exam. Or a mixture. This would also allow them to distinguish between supposedly “hard” and “soft” subjects. An offer of 80% in Maths, and in the top 10% of all entries for Media Studies say, regardless of score. It would also allow universities to tailor their offers if the papers are perceived as easier in one year to the next.
Just a thought…
Rick
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