Students Celebrate, But A-Levels To 'Get Tough'

As some 300,000 teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland collected their results today, the A-level pass rate has increased yet again as have the proportion of pupils awarded grade A - prompting moves to make the examinations harder.

The Joint Council for Qualifications has revealed that 97.2% of entries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland passed, up from 96.9%.

The top A grade went up to 25.9% of the entries, up from 25.3%.

In Northern Ireland, 98.2% of entries passed and a third of students achieved an A grade.

Northern Ireland A-Level students in fact outperformed those in England and Wales, with 35.4% gaining an A grade compared to the 25.9% overall figure.

There were a record 827,737 A-level entries and 1.13 AS-levels this year from more than 600,000 pupils.

The subjects showing increases were the sciences with entries for chemistry up 3.5%, biology up 2.7% and physics up 2.3%.

Entries for French increased by 2.8% and Spanish 1.5%.

In England, 97.2% passed with 25.6 awarded A. In Wales, 97.1% passed and 24.1% achieved A.

However, in light of the results, the Government has announced that it is to make A-levels "more challenging" in future.

Tougher A-levels will be set on courses from this September, following successful pilots of the changes.

The existing six modules studied in courses will be cut to four and longer, open-ended questions will then feature in exams.

Professor Deian Hopkins, of Universities UK said "knowledge in itself is fine, but the actual tranferble skills are what matters, and I think we have to strengthen those at every level".

Anthony McClaran, Chief Executive of UCAS, the body which handles undergraduate applications to all UK universities said "as with every year", some people will "inevitably claim" that A-levels are getting easier, "but we shouldn't really take away from the hard work of those students who have done well in their results today".

Jim Sinclair, the Director of the Joint Council said: "These results are excellent and we congratulate all students on their achievement.

"This has to be a day for celebration," he said.

Students starting A-level courses in September will also become the first to be eligible for the new A* grade when they are awarded to those achieving more than 90% in 2010.

(DS)