A-level results. ‘When they were up they were up…..’

A-level results day has arrived again with the extensive media footage of happy and sometimes not so happy, young people opening their envelopes. Understandably, students still like to attend their schools and colleges with friends and their teachers, rather than relying on direct emails from awarding bodies. Perhaps less understandable is why thousands of tech-savvy Generation Z are still required (and prepared?) to sit silently for long periods in hot school and college gyms and complete handwritten scripts! (Exam boards don’t have plans to go ‘online’ until 2030.) Yet England is not unique in this respect.

Though nobody knows their results until the envelopes are opened, the spread of marks has previously been decided by the awarding bodies, who are in turn restricted by government requirement that the number of top grades must not really deviate from those achieved in previous years. This policy was introduced by Michael Gove to stem what he considered to be grade inflation under Blairite governments.

This year, even if the proportion of top grades have increased slightly ( the  28% of candidates achieving  A/A* performance levels – a new high- provided good headlines, though this figure is distorted by considerably higher rates in math’s and languages) scores have finally ‘returned’ to their pre pandemic levels, (during covid, grades were in effect decided by teachers who, understanding the true ability of their students awarded scores beyond what the government regulators would have wanted).

The other notable headline was the high number (83%) of candidates able to access their first-choice university – the loosening of the numbers cap by the previous government, has allowed ‘middle’ ranking universities to increase their intake, at the expense of those lower down and as uncertainty over foreign students remains, secure some extra revenue.

The tightly (over) regulated English examination system of today is wildly different from the Blairite years when ‘education, education, education’   and by implication, increases in performance levels, were considered an important catalyst for increased economic prosperity and the ability to take advantage of increased employment opportunities in the new global economy. Far fewer people believe this now – the results were published on the same morning economic data showed the UK economy continues to flatline – while the importance of education as a potential leveler has fallen down the policy agenda.

Yet the efforts of hundreds of thousands of young people shouldn’t be derided and their enthusiasm for continuing in education should be commended. But in a time when the number of graduate jobs continues to decline, when ‘alternative’ apprenticeship opportunities for 16 -17-year-olds are practically nonexistent (less than 1in 4 apprentice starts are by anyone under 19) there’s no guarantee that such optimism can be maintained.

This year’s data shows a small decline in the number of A-level entries as a proportion of the cohort – though there are still over a million. There’s certainly no evidence that significant numbers are deserting the ‘royal road’ for the new T-levels (with 18 different routes now available, less than 12,000 students completed this year and with under 500 entries several of the routes may be shut down. There are around 180 000 BTEC entries, but over two thirds are in single units taken alongside two academic A-levels.  

Instead, around one in ten of all 16–17-year-olds are classified as NEET, neither learning nor earning. An astonishing figure, when it’s (at least in theory) a statutory requirement to remain in education or training until 18 But with no effective way of enforcing this.