Lessons to learn from this year’s A-level results

It would be good for the quality of life in this country if more A-level students could grasp the difference between employability and earning potential (Farewell A-level English?, 17 August). When it comes to actually influencing the world, studying English language and literature is hard to beat.

During my A-level years (1963-1965), I devoured as much of the work of George Orwell as I could get hold of. This taught me that being able to communicate with both clarity and imagination gives you the edge in many situations (including writing to newspapers). Orwell was hardly powerful in conventional political terms, but he had huge influence and an abundance of what is today known as soft power. While the dominant western model of capitalism is creaking at the seams and life on the planet is at a critical juncture, how about challenging young people with English studies as a route to influencing our common future more than most? It is much more than knowing whether ending a sentence with a preposition is legitimate or not.
Geoff Reid
Bradford

• The decline in numbers of A-level students studying English literature is a serious matter. Mr Gradgrind may want students to be “little vessels … to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim” but today’s world is urgently in need of a new generation that has learned to develop the imagination as to understand what it might mean to be someone else, to resist making the honestly complex into the dishonestly simple, and to respect language again as a vehicle for truth in all its varied depth and resonance. The study of literature is both a humane and political necessity – we must save it or diminish.
Canon Mark Oakley
Cambridge

• While I have some sympathy with your editorial (A-levels should come before, rather than after, universities pick students, 17 August), the solutions suggested would not help schools, students or universities. The removal of AS-levels has clearly caused an issue for universities. It has also put pressure on creative subjects. Perhaps extending post-16 education could be a solution? There are a number of alternatives. Move A-levels to November and give students and teachers an extra term of education, then start the university term in January. Alternatively, move the exams to January and introduce a more radical income-supported, compulsory, community-based project involving both practical, research and reflective elements in the spring and summer terms, perhaps as a basis for an additional AS award. This would allow Stem students to get involved in arts and creative subjects, and arts students to explore the world of science and engineering.

During this time students would be supported in a realistic assessment of their future pathway, whether at university, apprenticeship or in employment. Whatever choices are made it should be driven by the wellbeing and needs of the student and benefit and value to society rather than that of what are essentially business-driven institutions.
John Wardle
Sheffield

• The experts will undoubtedly be correct in their explanation that the slight “fall in grades” was because of more students taking A-levels, rather than studying for qualifications more suited to their talents (Top grades in England suffer a dip but Wales and female scientists on the up, 16 August). Another factor not mentioned, however, is the increased number of students in mostly private schools who are entered for Cambridge Assessment’s Pre-U examinations, as a way of avoiding the newly reformed and more rigorous A-levels. A breakdown of results for all Pre-U examinations, with percentages of entries getting top grades in each subject, is surely needed.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

• The recent revelation of the scale of this year’s A-level grade boundary “correction”, that identified Edexcel candidates for A-level maths needing 55% to get the A grade, while candidates with the OCR board needed 54%, should ring alarm bells. This is indicative of a serious internal mismatch between the taught curriculum, student tuition, the examination, and associated marking criteria. This should be giving the education secretary and the Department for Education considerable cause for concern. The scale of these particular grade boundary “corrections” significantly compresses the effective marking scale and increases the effect of marking error variance. Consequently, the confidence in the accuracy of the resulting decisions at grade boundaries is very much reduced.

It’s not that the use of grade boundary correction is inappropriate, what is in question here is the scale of the correction needed by Edexcel and OCR. Such a significant “correction” points to internal failures in basic educational quality assurance processes. This not only undermines confidence in the examining boards but, more seriously, places the grade outcomes of more candidates into question. The number of candidates attaining the A grade is not an indicator of educational quality, as this is simply the result of applying a post hoc boundary correction. The issue here is that the boundary grade correction tool disguises a significant underlying problem that, if left unattended, will adversely affect all future A-level students.
Dr Egils Praulitis
(Retired lecturer and external examiner), Bristol

• This year’s A-level results day will have seen some young people and their teachers poring forensically over grade boundaries, and a similar level of analysis should be applied to broad statements about which family of subjects are up or down.

For example, A-level geography gained nearly 1,500 entries this year, achieving a 4.2% rise on 2018. Growth was also experienced by political studies, history and sociology. These increases provide an important caveat to the assertion that “participation in selected humanities fell by 3.1%” particularly when only one subject area, English, rather than the full range of humanities, saw a decline in participation. The exam boards have recognised the influence of environmental and geopolitical changes on young people’s A-level choices, so it is no surprise that geography, the subject that engages young people with the world’s people, places and environments, is on the rise. The Society congratulates the growing generation of young geographers who received their results this year.
Steve Brace
Head of education, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

• Are the government ministers and employers favouring sciences over the arts, and A-level English in particular, the same ones complaining that today’s graduates can’t string a sentence together? Incidentally, I’m a philosophy graduate and it was excellent grounding for thinking outside the box and problem-solving in both my previous and new career.
Charmaine Fletcher
Basildon, Essex

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