Evening Standard comment: The new A-levels are more rigorous: good

The A-level pass rate has gone up this year but not in the 13 subjects that are now decided without coursework, AS levels or modules but on the basis of final exams. In these subjects there were 0.7 per cent fewer top grades.

It suggests the reforms carried through by Michael Gove when he was Education Secretary are working. They were meant to do away with a system whereby students could take and retake modules at will and in which coursework sometimes compromised the integrity of the results.

These A-levels may be more rigorous but they are correspondingly more credible. That is all to the good. And if the bar for the pass rate was lowered a little this year, to take account of the new exam system, that is justifiable — teachers and pupils need time to adjust.

A credible exam system, based on sufficiently demanding curriculums, is crucial for universities, employers and pupils. It is not in itself a bar to a broad education — as Tony Little points out on this page, a narrow and obsessive focus on exams can be at the expense of the other elements of a humane education, not least the development of character. But the exams themselves must be rigorous if they are to inspire confidence, and it was right to do away with abuses which meant pupils could achieve high grades simply by retaking individual modules of a subject.

The gender gap is closing too as a result of the changes; boys are catching up with girls and achieved more top A grades this year. For some years their under-performance has been troubling; the change is welcome.

It’s cause for concern, however, that the numbers taking foreign languages has fallen further — entries for French and German at A-level had already dropped by more than a quarter between 2011 and 2016. And the number of applications for European language degree courses has also fallen by a quarter in the past five years. In the post-Brexit world we still need to communicate with our European friends.

Exams are not the be-all and end-all of a good education but they matter, especially for socially disadvantaged children for whom they are a means of gaining access to decent universities. If they are more rigorous, that’s something positive.

Champion courage

Jeremy Corbyn’s effective sacking of Sarah Champion from the shadow cabinet for saying Britain has a problem with Pakistani men abusing white girls is a disgrace. The weaselly evasions about the matter by other members of the shadow cabinet — not least the shadow justice minister, Yasmin Qureshi — are just as bad. Miss Champion is the MP for Rochdale, where white girls suffered appalling abuse at the hands of Asian men; her outspokenness on this issue is based on knowledge and hard experience.

We cannot hope properly to address a problem which seems to have a strong cultural aspect if we do not discuss it openly. It is not anti-Muslim to suggest this; rather, it is an opportunity for this community to engage in much-needed self-examination on the issue. Miss Champion was saying what people think: if Mr Corbyn doesn’t like it, that reflects badly on him, not her.

Not so red light

The changes in the character of Soho are evident in the way the property empire of the late porn king, Paul Raymond, has moved from strip clubs and the like to its “first creative hive with shared office space that can be let to London’s fashion, media and tech start-ups”. From rooms rented by the hour to desks rented by the day or week — that’s progress, of a kind.