A*? It won’t get you far.
There’s a big hoo-hah over the new A* grade at A-level – and it’s all over nothing. The new grade is meant to distinguish between very clever teenagers and fantastically clever teenagers. Basically, if you get over 90% in your A2 year, you get an A* and a big sticker saying NERD.
On the face of it, this doesn’t seem ridiculous – and it’s not – but it is pointless. Universities already have access to your individual module results at AS level. They can already see who is getting around 90% and is thus likely to do so again at A2. The new grade serves no real purpose.
All this new grade will result in is clever students wasting more time wringing the last few marks out of papers – which is not education, but jumping through hoops. This is not the answer to improving standards at A-levels. To use a bicycling metaphor, all the government is doing is making kids pedal faster, rather than moving up the gears by making tests more difficult. You still get from A to B (or, in this case A to A* – *chuckles*), but it’s not the right way of doing it. Britain’s education system needs bold reform, not gimmicks.
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