Bursting The Inflated A-Level Bubble

Mickey Mouse A-levels and dumbed down exams. Too many fresh faces chasing too few places. Thousands of anxious pupils await the fickle finger of fate with yet more record results and record straight As. The inflated A-level results bubble lets everyone down.

After jumping through hoops it's time to jump up and down before the smile is wiped away and harsh reality kicks in.

The goal posts have been moved. The rules of the game have been changed. Dumbed-down exams do no-one any favours. Hard-working students know it's all a con but are forced to go along with the ride.

There are plenty of students who've studied their socks off to win a place at a proper university. The Orange Party takes its mortarboard off to them. But for most it's a reward for failure. Youngsters are left demoralised and fearful of a future with nothing to look forward to than a life on the dole and mountain of student debt.

The system breeds failure. Those at the bottom are given false hope and unrealistic expectations with a dodgy course at scum-bag poly. Those at the top are not being stretched and steered away from 'hard' subjects to 'soft 'studies' so schools and politicians look good.

No doubt Ed "Didn't I Do Well" Balls or one of his minions will be shouting the results from the rooftop. Never mind the quality feel the quantity. Another record pass rate from the most hard-working, cleverest pupils in the world. But there's nothing "progressive" about cheating deprived children out of a proper education.

Balls' cock-eyed schoolboy experiment in social engineering has been a miserable failure. The pipe-dream to improve social mobility has had the opposite effect.

Far from closing class divisions, New Labour policy is widening the gap with a system bending over backwards to be so 'equal' it fails almost everyone.

Youngsters deserve more than dumbed down exams and moving the goalposts to massage pseudo-educational credentials and ministers' egos.

State schools are shunning traditional academic subjects, as the government encourages bog standard schools to take ‘soft options’ with 'studies' in the title. More state school pupils should be going to proper universities to read proper subjects. But the system drives down standards.

A-levels are becoming 'Mickey Mouse' qualifications, according to the think tank Civitas, failing to stretch the brightest youngsters and the government is in the thick of it.

Teachers said better marks were not due to improved lesson standards or more talented candidates. The rise in A grades is because exams are easier to pass and students are granted multiple re-sits blamed in part on the 'modular' system, with courses broken up into bite-sized bits to boost scores.

The system is a shambles. The standard now so low it’s a national disgrace. No-one trusts A-levels not least students, parents, employers and universities.

Times are tough. Universities have been forced to cap places and forced to entice over overseas students to make ends meet. This year some 60,000 will find no place and no job to fall back on.

Ministers should have thought of that before setting off to cloud cuckoo land to get 50 per cent of teenagers into university.

Tories are determined to do something about dumbed-down exams promising to toughen up the examinations system, with a focus on harder questions and more credit for youngsters studying 'hard' subjects rather than the 'soft' options.

That's a welcome start but for years politicians of all colours have dabbled in the education game and A-levels have been reduced to a numbers game.

Today that's to be expected from a stalinesque government department of education, schools, dinner ladies and whatever which has built its fortunes on a lie.

The rot trickled down from Whitehall to Town Hall, as an ideological battle was fought between the do-ers and do-gooders. Rigourous study of an academic subject gave way to idealistic babble about the rounded individual.

Exams have no place in that School of Life. Teachers have been turned into learning support workers. Inspiring teachers imparting a body of knowledge to young, eager minds willing to learn are becoming a thing of the past.

A whole generation is being lost in a sea of confidence tricks, false hopes and unrealistic expectations. Just what is the point of giving everyone a worthless piece of paper? Call it a day and dole out a school leaving certificate.

Reward students with success in proper exams by scrapping crippling student fees and loans. Put more money into funding more places at proper universities for proper subjects.

Leave the universities to set their own entrance exams with their own exam boards. Isn't that where A-levels first started?

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Inflated GCSEs Let Everyone Down

The government's obsession with GCSE targets is an inflatable joke. They've let the schools down, they've let the pupils down and they've let themselves down.

Schools are playing the education system and fighting government obsession with league tables, to produce record GCSE results, to stave off closure and meet unrealistic targets. A view shared by the leader in  today's Independent.

With the spotlight on school league tables, today's GCSE results show more and more pupils are being entered for soft option and 'pointless' vocational subjects to boost results and school performance. The biggest jump in top grades since 1990, according to the BBC. 

Traditional tough subjects like physics and chemistry and being replaced by the easier combined science and languages shunned altogether. Single subjects are being rebranded as 'studies' which require less rigourous academic study.

Schools, afraid of being branded failures, are coming under increasing pressure, as the government tries to switch schools to its flagging Adonis academies programme - using PFI schemes to keep public spending off the balance sheet and handing control over to big business backers, sympathetic to the government. 

In June, it was highlighted by the Orange Party here, that the government is planning a cull of one in five secondary schools in England, unless they make the grade and hit the benchmark targets of 30% of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including maths and English. 

In a desperate attempt to boost targets, the government has already threatened to take funding away from so-called 'specialist schools', which promote themselves in areas like arts, technology, unless they deliver.

These schools face being stripped of funding and placed under the control of New Labour sympathisers as part of the 're-education' process.

The 638 schools targeted are being unfairly stigmatised as 'failing' as an excuse to hand them over to the vast army of education consultants and bureaucrats in privately managed academies.

Teaching unions are rightly indignant and reject this "focus on failure and closure".

Meanwhile, the government is trying to massage the GCSE figures by introducing course-work modules and more retake opportunities for students. 

In an attempt to produce a meaningful 16+ examination and counter the spin, some schools have started to switch pupils to the International GCSE which is more akin to the old 'O' level.

Today's artificial 'record' GCSE results come hard on the heels of last week's artificial 'record' A-level results. Both spun in a desperate attempt to prop up the government's failed education policies which are failing our children. 

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Govt A-Level Sham Fails Students

The government has failed its A-levels once again with today's record results, as sixth-formers jump around clutching their fantastic results only to turn round and see everyone is a winner, waving the same fantastic results. 

Ministers and quangoland lackeys, trotted out their well-worn phrases - 'How dare anyone put them down. We all should be celebrating their hard work, not criticising them'. 

But that's not the point, as noted in the today's Guardian.

Time and again, New Labour's 'record A-levels' has been exposed as a sham. A deliberate ploy to try to hit ridiculous targets of 50% in higher education and keep down the unemployment figures. 

They've tried every trick in the book to boost the pass rate and inflate the grades. Making exams easier, watering down exams with course-work, introducing soft subjects, skewing the statistics and tinkering with the grade boundaries. 

It's all a far cry from the days when bright, hard working sixth-formers would be rightly rewarded for their efforts, with a well-earned place at a proper university, studying a proper subject. 

And that applied just as much to the youngsters from working class backgrounds, as it did to the kids from the posh schools, which most of New Labour's top ministers attended. 

Now, for many students, it will a couple of years at Smalltown Polytech - rebranded Bigcity University - 'studying' Media and Computer Games. Until they get fed up and leave. 

Faced with the grades sham, the proper universities are trying to keep up standards by introducing their own entrance exams, because the A-levels are not worth the paper they are written on.

Disillusioned overseas students are being used to prop-up the cash-strapped rebranded polys and offered 'rotten' degrees for their efforts.  Home students are enticed with the sop of easy subjects, with the word 'studies' in the title. Without an A-level gold standard, the student drop out and failure rate at the so-called 'universities' is soaring.

Soon A-levels, in England at least, could be a thing of the past. To be replaced by vocational 'diplomas'. Industry chiefs recently warned the government what everyone else has been saying for ages - the new Diplomas to replace academic A-levels aren't worth the paper they're written on. 

So what next for the failed education experiment? Raising the school-leaving age is a neat way of taking the NEETS out of the rising unemployment figures. Then just give away the A-levels as a School Leaving Certificate. All students get results and everyone passes. 

In the shallow, fantasy world of New Labour, everyone's a winner - except the students, schools, parents, universities and this country's future. 

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Dumbed Down Diplomas

Industry chiefs are telling the New Labour government what many have been saying for ages - the new Diplomas to replace academic GCSEs and A-levels aren't worth the paper they're written on. Dumbing down just go dumber.

The employers' organisation, the CBI, says government plans for Diplomas for academic subjects in England are "an unnecessary distraction".

Of course they are. It's a sham. A New Labour wheeze to justify the billions of pounds spent trying to achieve ridiculous education targets. 

They've tried dumbing down the GCSEs and A-levels, introduced course work to make them easier and a whole range of subjects which require little rigourous academic study in an effort to boost results. But after ten years - that still doesn't work.

They want more youngsters to stay on at school between 16-18 to keep down the unemployment figures. But you can't expect them all to study A-levels. 

Diplomas for vocational subjects (GNVQs) are already taken by students and have been for years. They're simply being rebranded as Diplomas and introduced for both vocational and academic subjects, all rolled into one 'qualification'.

The uptake of the new Diplomas, to be introduced from September, is poor even from the state schools where their funding source dictate what they should do. There's a shortage of markers for the subjects and universities are beginning to set their own entrance exams because the A-levels are becoming worthless.

In the shallow, fantasy world of New Labour, everyone's a winner. More students get good results and everyone passes. It's a School Leaving Certificate by another name. In the US it's called a High School Diploma.

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Educa-shun, Educa-shun, Educa-sham

A top university is to set its own entrance exams because the A-levels are not worth the paper they are written on. And the student drop out and failure rate at the so-called 'universities' is soaring. With A-levels, dumbing down just got dumber.

It's all a sham. A New Labour wheeze to keep down the unemployment figures and justify the billions of pounds spent trying to achieve the ridiculous target of getting half of all school leavers into higher education. 

We all know it. And the sad thing is, the young people know it too - but they have to put up with it. What else can they do?

Once, anyone suggesting a dumbing down of exam results was derided by New Labour, shot down in flames and humiliated. "We should be celebrating students' success," they said. 

Now the words have an empty and hollow ring. The same tired line is still trotted out but no one listens anymore.

Of course A-levels have got easier. That was the plan all along. How else can you hit an unrealistic target? But then came the problem. The universities couldn't cope with the huge influx of students. So the vocational-based polytechnics were turned into universities to soak up the places. Still not enough. Well now students can take 'degree' courses at the old Technical and Art (FE) colleges.

Of course students will drop out - just look at where they're dropping out from. The rebranded former polys, offering studies in anything to anybody, to boost their numbers and income. 

And what are students left with if they continue? Yet another worthless bit of paper and a crippling debt from the university fees. 

In August, we'll still have to put up with the BBC running footage of gleeful sixth formers jumping up and down celebrating their four A* A-levels in silly subjects.

Soon New Labour will just give away A-levels as a Leaving Certificate (rebranded as Diplomas) and a degree if you enrol and just try your best to stay the course. 

The answer? Cut back on the number of A-levels subjects offered to only those that suit the rigours of academic study. And introduce a tight check on standards. Make them worth something again. 

Cut back on the number of so called 'universities' and range of degree courses offered (and make sure engineering is included). And when students do manage to get in - through their own hard work and effort - study for a first degree should be free and with a generous study allowance. 

If A-levels, university entrance and a first degree become something tough to aim for, properly rewarded, it will be an achievement to be proud of and actually mean something.

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