'Time to make A-levels tougher'

A-Levels should be made more difficult to preserve the credibility of the academic "gold standard", education experts said today.

Professor Alan Smithers, of Liverpool University, led the call as more than 200,000 students wait for tomorrow's results.

This year, the pass rate is expected to rise by about one per cent to 95 per cent - less than last year's four per cent increase - but attention will turn to the number of passes at A-grade, expected to rise significantly.

Last year, the proportion of A-grades reached more than one in five - one in three in some subjects - almost doubling in a decade. Elite universities can no longer separate so many A-grade students and turn to GCSE results and interviews or, in some cases, select the pupils from poorer backgrounds.

The expected increase in A-grade passes would create mounting pressure for reform, with defenders of the A-level claiming it no

longer performs one of its key functions - to distinguish the best.

The Government anticipated the response to tomorrow's results, condemning in advance those who argue that higher grades mean lower standards.

Education Minister David Miliband said no one imagined the London Marathon had got easier this year simply because of Paula Radcliffe's record.

But today, Professor Smithers countered: "There came a time when long-jumpers were jumping so far, they had to lengthen the pit. Similarly with exams. No one is disputing students are achieving better but there comes a time when the logical response is to make the exam more difficult."

Up to the mid-Eighties, set proportions of pupils achieved each grade no matter how well they did. As performances improved, that was considered unfair so examiners set fixed standards and awarded grades to all who achieved them.

But maintaining fixed standards is difficult when new exam papers have to be set each year. Last year, manipulation of grades was taken to unacceptable lengths and hundreds of students found their exams marked down unfairly.

Professor Smithers said higher standards "need not mean fewer students. It would simply be easier to discriminate at the top".

The Government has acknowledged the weakness and created the Advanced Extension Award. But today, Andrew Grant, head of St Albans School, said: "Why bolt on a new exam when the A-level is perfectly capable if questions were harder?"