19 August 2005
As students celebrated record high grades in their A-level exam results this week, schools minister Lord Adonis denied that the examination system was being dumbed down.
Adonis said the expected record 97% pass rate was due to hard work and improved teaching. But he agreed that the exam was failing to stretch the brightest students and pledged to reform, but not abandon, A-levels.
'Continued progress in exam performance is real – it is not the result of dumbing down standards – and the roots of this success lie in a fundamental shift in the quality of teaching in our schools,' he said at a summer school for academically bright pupils.
His comments came as 265,000 students received their results on August 18, and some education experts talked of launching alternative exams.
Geoff Lucas, the general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, which represents 243 private schools, damned the exam system as 'in terminal decline'.
But Adonis said: 'Our young people are being much better taught, their aspirations are much higher, and their performance is improving accordingly.'
He pledged to 'strengthen A-levels, not replace them', to make individual module grades available to universities as well as the overall grade, and to stretch the most able with advanced exam questions.
PFaug2005
