A level playing field?

Byline: By Cathyspencer

An angry debate over whether A-levels are getting easier heightened today as results showed students are scoring record results.

The pass rate rose for the 21st year running and is creeping closer to the 100 percent mark.

Critics are citing the growing popularity of subjects such as religious education, sociology and psychology and abandonment of traditional A-levels such as maths as the reason for the high results.

Rebecca Fitchett, 18, of Whickham School, achieved marks among the top five in the country for religious education. She also got the top grade in English literature and sociology.

Her friend Zoe Bell, who got As for English literature, psychology and sociology said psychology and sociology were two of the harder subjects.

"I can't believe that people are saying A-levels are getting easier," she said.

"Psychology was a really challenging subject and involved a lot of analytical studying. A-levels are not easy. Students have to put in a lot of work to get a good mark ."

Catherine Smith featured in yesterday's Chronicle for notching up more than 45,000 miles in her pursuit of three A grades.

The Emmanuel College student travelled from her home in Berwick to the Gateshead school every day for two years and achieved As in maths, physics and chemistry.

Catherine's success would please Secondary Heads Association general secretary John Dunford, who has suggested girls are not doing as well as they could in so-called `boys' subjects'.

He said the nation's future prosperity could be at stake if something is not done to ensure more pupils took subjects like maths, physics and foreign languages.

This year the A-Level pass rate rose by 1.1 per cent to 95.4 per cent, while the percentage of pupils awarded A-grades increased by 0.9 per cent to 21.6 per cent.

South Tyneside education officials were pleased with their overall borough pass rate of 94 percent, and Newcastle had a pass rate of 94.9 percent.

The provisional figures also showed boys continue to lag behind girls across all qualifications.

Christopher Eccleston from Whickham School achieved five A grades in biology, physics, psychology, maths and general studies, and will be studying natural sciences at Cambridge.

Dame Allan's Schools saw Kate Hall, Louise Richardson, Anna Roberts, Aimee Conway, John Horsley and Alvin Karsandas achieve four As.

Tynemouth College has reported a huge success this year, with two students on their way to Oxbridge and an impressive number of learners achieving straight A grades.

Students including Catriona Rutherford, Vicky Willis, Samantha Patterson, Michael Short, Emma Parker, Holly Brown and Chica Prevatt-Goldstein are a few of many Tynemouth students who, through excellent examination results, have now joined the country's intellectual elite.

Seven girls from Durham High School for Girls have been awarded places at Oxbridge after getting straight As.

Top of the list was Emily Barker, of Stanley, who has been offered a place at Exeter College, Oxford. Her music papers were among the best five submitted this summer. Jessica McCormich, of Esh Winning, was awarded four passes at grade A.

There were celebrations at Roseberry Comprehensive when sisters Sarah and Gemma Owens scored top marks, and Samantha Harris gained three As, one B and an A at AS level.

At Central Newcastle High School, talented musician Samantha Roberts, 18, from Ryhope, is celebrating receiving four A grades and one A at AS level. She is going on to Keble College, Oxford to do classics and modern languages.

Her place is one the condition that she passes GCSE Greek. She gets the result next week.

The high school is also overjoyed for Anna Duncan, 18, from Hexham, who achieved four A grades and two AS-levels at A and B. She is to study maths at Oxford.

This year's exams were taken under the shadow of the events of the 2002 exams, when confusion about the standards of work expected at AS and A2 levels led to problems with marking.

The mix-up eventually saw almost 2,000 students land better grades and led to former chief schools inspector Mike Tomlinson recommending a series of reforms.

In a statement, Mr Tomlinson said: "I have observed this year's awarding process at the AQA , Edexcel, OCR and RSA examination boards.

"I am satisfied that students can be confident that it has been conducted properly.

"The recommendations I made last year have been taken on board."

Are A-Levels getting too easy?

Richard Elphic, committee member for the North East section of the Institute of Directors, says pupils rely too heavily on calculators, computers and parents.

Speaking on behalf of the Institute of Directors, I agree that A-levels are becoming easier because young people are not being encouraged to think independently.

My 83-year-old father is more numerate than the average 18-year-old because he was taught to work out a problem in his mind first before using a slide rule.

Now youngsters will just use a calculator to work something out and if you ask them to think through a problem, they will struggle.

Students can't show that they can think independently. We have had to pull youngsters up on their spelling, but they can't be bothered to pay attention because they think they can rely on their computer's spell checker.

Also, this continual assessment is producing a lot of problems because a lot of the youngsters' grades are down to parents' hard work.

If parents are honest, they will admit that they help children with homework and assignments.

This follows on to degree level, with teenagers turning in work that has been done at home by parents.

It has to happen this way because the youngsters who had parental help with their A-levels wouldn't be able to get a degree.

This has not just been happening over the last few years, but has been done by students and parents over a long period of time.

Also, there are subjects such as religious education and IT which are taking over the National Curriculum and not leaving youngsters with enough time to concentrate on maths and English.

Philip Turner, director of education and libraries at Newcastle City Council, says it is unfair to students to label A-levels as too easy.

Another round of A-level results has brought with it the seemingly inevitable debate over whether or not these exams are worthwhile.

Whatever your opinion, the fact is that A-levels are here and they are the standard by which students' levels of attainment are measured.

It is important that we celebrate the success of all of those students who received their results yesterday and give them the recognition they deserve.

The results in Newcastle this year are outstanding, with a 95 per cent pass rate putting the city almost in line with the national average.

This is purely down to the hard work of students in the city, along with the efforts of their teachers and many parents who give support to their children throughout their years in education.

It would be unfair to take anything away from their achievements by suggesting that their success was the result of exams being `too easy'.

They have been tested by the current system and judged to be successful.

Despite this, it is only right that we continue to look at the country's examination system to ensure that it can meet the needs of today's rapidly changing world.

Part of this process must be to identify why fewer students choose maths, sciences and modern languages.

These subjects are crucial for our future technological and international development.

We live in a world of continuous change and our examination system cannot be an exception to that.

The debate will continue but it really deserves more input than the annual wringing of hands when A-level results are published.

Questions from papers this year

English

1. In `Frost at Midnight' Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes nature as `Great Universal Teacher! What do you see as the significance of nature in Coleridge's poetry?

2. `Pain and loss lies at the heart of Emily Dickinson's poetry'. Consider your view of Dickinson's poems in the light of this comment.

3. How successfully did British governments predict and adapt to the demands of war in the period 1793 to 1918?

4. Explain why governments increasingly intervened in education during the years from 1834 to 1948?

5. A curve has equation 7x2+48xy-7y2+75 = 0. A and B are two distinct points on the curve. At each of these points the gradient of the curve is equal to 2/11.

a) Use implicit differentiation to show that x+2y = 0

b) Find coordinates of the points A and B.

6. A drinks machine dispenses coffee into cups. A sign on the machine indicates that each cup contains 50ml of coffee. The machine actually dispenses a mean amount of 55ml per cup and 10 percent of the cups contain less than the amount stated on the sign. Assuming that the amount of coffee dispensed into each cup is normally distributed find:

a) the standard deviation of the amount of coffee dispensed per cup in ml.

b) the percentage of cups that contain more than 61ml.

7. A fluoride of phosphorus, Y, contains 24.6 percent by mass of phosphorus and has a molar mass of 126g mol. Deduce the molecular formula of Y.

8. Draw the structural formula of the organic product of the reaction between phenylamine and ethanoyl chloride, CH[thorn]COCI.

9. There has long been a debate about the extent to which gifted children have special educational needs. In order to avoid `under-achievement' for these children it is necessary to recognise their abilities very early.

a) outline what is meant by the term gifted, as used in education.

b)Describe a problem involved in identifying gifted children.

c) Explain one recommendation that an educational psychologist might make to a teacher of gifted children.