Calls for A-level exam reform

The head of Britain's exam boards leapt to defend A-levels today as a row loomed over the ever-rising pass rate.

Exam boards are expected to announce yet another record when results are released on Thursday for 250,000 candidates. The overall pass rate is expected to creep even closer to 100 per cent - up from 95.4 per cent last year - while one in four entries this year may score a top A grade. Universities are being driven to set their own tests to select the brightest applicants from the hundreds who apply with top grades.

Now a leading careers official has joined calls for reform, saying the range of marks covered by a top grade is too wide. David Thomas, chief executive of the Careers Research Advisory Centre, said the "alarming" numbers getting A grades represented "dumbing down". He urged exam boards to toughen up marking.

Although A-level questions were harder, examiners were marking the papers more leniently, he said.

But Dr Ellie Johnson-Searle, director of the Joint Council of Qualifications, representing the three exam boards, said she was "absolutely certain" standards were being maintained.

Better results reflected better teaching and harder work on the part of candidates, she said.

Education minister David Miliband is expected to join the row with a vigorous attack on the "reactionary myth" that better results must mean that the exams are getting easier.

But the Government is facing calls to recognise that more students are meeting the standard required by the exam boards to get a top A-level grade - and to respond by making the exam more difficult.

Ministers are expected to deflect pleas for reform by pointing to the review of secondary school qualifications they commissioned from former chief schools inspector Mike Tomlinson, which is due to report in October.

He is due to recommend a new four-stage diploma system for pupils between the ages of 14 and 19 which would replace both GCSE and A-levels.

Mr Tomlinson has already stressed the importance of persuading more pupils to stay at school after 16 and of stretching the brightest by providing more "open ended" questions which offer fewer clues to the answers.

He has also suggested that as a first step, the existing A-grade could be sub-divided into four, to help universities separate the brightest candidates.

Exam boards suggest that universities should award places not just on overall grades candidates achieve, but the grades of each of the six modules which they must pass to achieve an A-level.

Heads of both state and independent schools are pressing the Government to accelerate moves towards awarding university places on actual rather than predicted results.

Electronic marking and a sixterm school year would speed up the system so exam results could be received earlier in the year.