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News24
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National Dialogue: we can't outsource democracy to the state
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Yahoo
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OPINION - If you think A Level results are unfair, I've got some news for you
If teenagers haven't already absorbed that life is unfair, they'll register it by the time they're 18 and find that everyone around them thinks that their entire future hangs on three little letters, or maybe four, these being the grades they got at A-level or its equivalent today. You may well live for eight decades but for those who got their results at 10am – unless they made it to school earlier – it's the six or so hours they took sitting their exams which determine what follows between now and death. That's how it feels. It was fine, chez McDonagh. There were whoops this morning from my daughter's bedroom, which frightened the cat, once she found she's got the grades to get into the Courtauld. But she's tiptoeing round her friends, some of whom fell short of the results they wanted. It's all the more awkward, since it turns out that there are record numbers of A grades this year: 28 per cent of students got an A or starred A, which looks remarkably like grade inflation. There are in fact marked gender and regional disparities when it comes to A levels. Many more girls – 440,000 - than boys – 380,000 - took A-levels than male students. The boys were concentrated in subjects such as maths, physics and economics in which they did slightly better than girls, but it's striking, that disparity in numbers. As for the regional imbalance, it's even more marked, and London is on the right side of the divide. Some 32 per cent of entries here got a starred A or A; a little under 23 per cent in the north east of England did so. I hate to say this, but London doesn't have a premium on native intelligence over Sunderland I hate to say this, but London doesn't have a premium on native intelligence over Sunderland; there's something else at work, and it's probably the enhanced pupil premium that the capital was so good at demanding and getting in previous years, though the number of private schools may also have something to do with it. Private schools are genius at producing top grades. And there are tricks to getting them: A levels are to a dispiriting extent nowadays a matter of jumping through hoops, in giving examiners the chance to tick boxes (it's not a figure of speech) when they see candidate using the formulas and language that they are looking for. In the humanities, and I've been through this twice now, you aren't marked on your engagement with the subject or your knowledge of it, so much as your ability to make the requisite number of points in the required fashion. And if you don't, you're toast. Notwithstanding the inflated A grades, there are lots of young people out there who are feeling like failures because they didn't measure up to a narrow standard of performance in a narrow range of subjects. You want to bring them together for a collective pep talk to say that, actually, once you're at work, no one cares what you did or where you went. No one has ever asked for proof of my university qualifications, ever and certainly not A levels. What matters is whether you're good at your job, a decent worker, a pleasant colleague. People may ask where you went to university by way of conversation, but there's quite a bit of kudos in not having a degree, the currency now being so widely spread. This year, about 38 per cent of 18 year olds will go to university. It carries zero bragging rights. My father left school in Ireland at 14 and went straight to work in a pottery. It's possible to flourish outside higher education. And yet one of my daughter's friends is trying to find a way to tell her parents that actually, she doesn't want to go to university; she wants to join the armed services. I mean, which is cooler, having a daughter who's an RAF pilot or a girl who, after three years of media studies, still isn't quite sure where she's going, only she's going to be taking an awful lot of student debt with her? The more important aspect of A levels is that it's the culmination of about 15 years of education, in my children's case, courtesy of the state. And it's those 15 years which matter, not the exams that mark their ending. That schooling takes up most of a young life, in the course of which an individual is formed by school, teachers, friends, the state and that intangible thing, the wider culture. In other words, A levels may be the culmination of a lifetime's schooling but they're not the measure of it. They're a narrow assessment of a narrow range of subjects, useful chiefly as an entry to higher education, which isn't for everyone. Other aspects of the years at school matter more. If you've done well, congratulations. But if you didn't, it needn't matter. The adventure of life isn't defined by the letters A to C. Melanie McDonagh is a columnist for The London Standard
News24
an hour ago
- News24
Kicking for posts? No Fass-i for Weekend Special if Boks need him
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