Drop in grades for 'reformed' A-levels unlikely to be down to difficulty

Much of the noise in the run-up to A-level results day focused on the fact that grade boundaries might be reduced in the new – supposedly tougher – A-levels to ensure that this year’s students were not at a disadvantage against previous years’.

The increasingly indignant argument went: how could courses be tougher, and yet the same number of young people get the top grades?

So the news that the proportion of A*-As awarded in these “reformed” subjects went down will be welcomed in some parts.

The truth, though, is that this is unlikely to be a result of how hard any particular exams were – and more likely to be to do with the previous results of those taking them.

Under a policy that has been in place since 2010, Ofqual, the exams regulator, links the grades available at A-level to the mix of grades that candidates had achieved in their GCSEs two years earlier. So, if a group of candidates in a particular A-level had very good GCSEs, more top grades would be available in that subject.

The most we can say about the fall in the top grades in the new A-levels, then, is that those taking them probably had achieved slightly lower GCSE grades than the young people who took the subjects last year.

The changes filtering through to results this year are the fruits of A-level reforms set in motion by Michael Gove in his time as education secretary.

Under these, new A-level courses are being introduced in several phases – it is the first phase, featuring 13 of the largest subjects, that we are seeing in today’s results.

The new A-levels are linear and feature less coursework. Some little-loved subjects such as critical thinking and general studies are also being discontinued. But by far the most important change is the decoupling of AS-levels and A-levels.

This reverses something that has been in place since 2000: the idea that AS-levels exams count as the first 50% of an A-level. For the first time this year, those sitting reformed subjects were just tested at the end of their two-year course.

This could be the end of the AS-level as we know it. Overall AS-level entries dropped 39% this year, on top of a 14% drop last year – and one of the largest subjects, maths, is yet to be decoupled.

With no need to do them, and with funding to pay for exam entries tight, the response of some sixth forms and colleges seems to have been to stop entering students for AS-levels.

These reforms only affect England, and another major effect is that England, Wales and Northern Ireland are going down really quite different tracks. (Scotland has an entirely separate exam system.)

Unlike in England, AS-levels in Wales and Northern Ireland will still count towards A-levels – albeit as 40% of the qualification, rather than the previous 50%.

Exam regulators have been keen to stress that the qualifications will remain comparable, but the effect is that the experience of 17- and 18-year-olds in the different constituent nations of the UK now differs quite substantially.

Philip Nye is a researcher at Education Datalab