Latest news with #Alevels
The Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
It's peak A-level season, but AI is stealing young people's futures before they have even started
The rituals unfold as they always have: hushed shuffling inside a stuffy exam hall, nervous energy silently bouncing off the walls; an impossibly loud clock, counting down to impending doom. This week, up and down the country, rows upon rows of students will sit hunched over their desks clutching 'lucky' pens; praying that their hard work has been worth it. It is, of course, A-level season, which, done right, is supposedly the coveted, golden road to university, graduate jobs, money and a life lived right. Yet, this year feels a little different. Beyond the double doors of the sports hall, the world is changing at a rapid pace. While the next generation of workers study harder than ever, the qualifications they've been told hold the key to the next important step are suddenly in question: artificial intelligence (AI) isn't only analysing data and producing basic graphic design, but diagnosing illnesses and drafting legal documents, too; today's path, no matter how well they score, is muddied. This is a youth whose strange paradox means that the entry jobs and world they're preparing for may no longer exist by the time they reach it. For graduates, recent and future, it's not exactly optimistic. There's barely a corner of the job market left unaffected, and now even industries that were once considered safe – in medicine, or law, for example – are beginning to utilise AI and automation at the expense of human work. This week, Business Insider reported new data that confirms that companies are hiring less, having found that, over the last three years, 'the share of AI-doable tasks in online job postings has declined by 19 per cent'. The report continued to say that further analysis led to a 'startling conclusion: the vast majority of the drop took place because companies are hiring fewer people in roles that AI can do' – and they are hitting junior, entry-level roles first. This month, the first law firm providing legal services via AI was approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. While many firms are using AI to support and deliver a range of back-office and public-facing services, Ltd will be the first purely AI-based company. It is announcements like this that are causing enormous worry for a generation who are looking to get their first foot on a career ladder. 'It means that the graduate job market has changed dramatically, in a very short period of time,' a careers consultant at a leading London university tells me. 'AI is causing a huge amount of uncertainty and a lack of confidence – both on the side of the employers and the students and graduates.' Where are you supposed to begin now, then? How do you navigate getting that first foot on the career ladder once the (promised) stepping stone has been whipped away? 'Even people who work in affected industries themselves aren't sure,' she adds. 'They know what the pipeline was back in their day, but now they really don't know how this is all going to affect recruitment and, ultimately, career trajectories and the traditional ladder.' We all know that AI is fundamentally warping the workplace as we know it – what experts are trying to work out now is exactly how, and how fast. According to reports from PwC, McKinsey, and the World Economic Forum, around 60 per cent of current jobs will require 'significant adaptation due to AI' over the next 10-30 years or so; by then, AI will simply be another integrated part of our day jobs. Goldman Sachs goes one further: by 2045, their research finds, up to 50 per cent of jobs could be fully automated, and estimates that 300 million jobs will be affected by AI. Not even that A* in history can compete. But while these projections feel far into the future, recent reports show that AI is already having a significant impact today. Already, there are a lot fewer opportunities, and according to the Financial Times, graduate job listings dropped from 7,000 in 2023 to 5,800 in 2024. That's a drop of 17 per cent. This means those on the market are more competitive than ever. In 2024, employers received an average of 140 applications per graduate vacancy, according to a report from Times Higher Education; a 59 per cent increase from the previous year and the highest number recorded since 1991. 'The anxiety in this cohort of students is off the scale,' explains futurist, author and Gen Z and Gen A expert Chloe Combi. 'But this situation has revitalised a conversation about which subjects are necessary. Every kid that's gone through exams and university in the last decade has been told 'learn to code', over and over again. But rapid progress suggests some of those high-employment computer science degrees might even become obsolete. In so many cases, there's an AI programme that can do that in a micro proportion of the time it would take a human to do the jobs these kids have been told to aim for. It's awful – and it's not like they've been given or followed the wrong advice, far from it. They've just been given advice that's become outdated in the blink of an eye.' With white-collar, middle-class jobs now more under threat than ever, many are turning to more traditional blue-collar work – trades like being an electrician, plumber, or healthcare worker or hairdresser – sparking conversations about the power of the working class being revalued under this new industrial revolution. Outside of trades, the advice is tentative but also reevaluates what is valuable. Investing in skills like critical thinking, strategic creativity, or very human traits like storytelling, negotiation and persuasion may now prove more lucrative than anything more traditional. The expert itself, has some ideas, too. 'As AI like me becomes more integrated into the workplace, students need to adapt intelligently,' the tool explains, in its ever-creepy self-aware tone. 'Don't only aim for a specific job title – those may not exist in a few years,' is its first point. 'Instead, study fields that build foundational thinking.' Next, it advises to 'combine technical and human insight' by, for example, taking a degree that blends fields, like philosophy and AI ethics, or computer science and psychology. Finally, back to the same point – don't specialise in your career if you can help it; 'be adaptable, not replaceable', it warns, quite bleakly, and 'learn how to work with AI, not compete against it'. That black hole of uncertainty is only expanding. 'In the next 10 years, there's going to be a very necessary transformation of the university system,' Combi says. 'Unless you're very privileged, I believe, a degree that's learning for learning's sake is going to become obsolete. Hopefully, there'll also be a massive resurgence of apprenticeships, and hands-on apprenticeship degrees, which are a combination of the practical and theoretical.' To be fair, this has been necessary for a long time. The promise of apprenticeships as a solid alternative to expensive degrees never really followed through – a combination of historical class bias, the stigma of 'less prestigious' vocational qualifications and a lack of policy and funding has consistently held the idea back. But that could now all change. For now, the quotes have been learned and the equations solved; the sleepless nights and frantic panics will soon be over for another year, and another generation of A-level students who lived to tell the tale. But though it might be unpredictable, they have an exciting road ahead: one that could be the perfect challenge for a digitally-fluent and adaptable Covid-generation. If anyone can adapt, it will hopefully be them. It won't be until after they've picked up those long-awaited results in August that the real test will begin: not the one they just sat, but the one no one prepared them for.
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Mark Petchey cannot coach Emma Raducanu, so his daughter is instead
These two first met in the quarter-finals of the Wimbledon juniors, seven years ago, when Swiatek dished out a more typical 6-0, 6-1 beatdown. The next time Raducanu saw Swiatek, it was on TV in 2020, while Swiatek was surging to her first French Open. 'I did my A-levels in 2021,' Raducanu recalled. 'In 2020, I remember I didn't play tennis for six months. And I was watching this unfold. I was watching my peers, like some that are around my age, do really well. I felt it was so far away. I felt like I was being held back. But it fuelled a lot of fire and hunger inside of me that when I came back after an 18-month hiatus, from competing in 2021, I ended up having one of the best summers.' With regard to Swiatek in particular, Raducanu added: 'She's obviously had a lot more experience, a lot more time playing tennis and competing than I have. I haven't really had the same exposure or level of training because of school and everything. So I feel like now I'm trying to catch up and do double time and overtime work. But yeah, it's still a long way to go.' In their most recent meeting, which came in the third round of January's Australian Open, Swiatek reprised the junior humbling with a 6-1, 6-0 win. Were they to meet on English soil this summer, one suspects that it might be more competitive, especially as Petchey has promised to be available for the whole of the grass-court season without any competing commitments. For the moment, though, this looks a steep hill to climb.
The Sun
24-05-2025
- General
- The Sun
Students in South nearly TWICE as likely to get three A* A-level grades than those in North
STUDENTS in the South of England are nearly twice as likely to get three A* A-level grades than those in the North, data reveals. Just 5,800 of the 258,000 who sat the exams last year came away with three or more top grades. Of those, 3,779 were from the South and 2,021 in the North. Nine out of ten of the best areas for A-levels were in the South. Pupils in reading, in Berks, came out top — with seven per cent hitting the highest grades. Dozens in London suburbs Kingston, Newham, Sutton and Barnet also got top marks. The Government stats show Salford, Gtr Manchester, fared the worst, with a single set of three A* grades. Social mobility expert Professor Lee Elliot Major called it a national scandal, saying: 'These figures lay bare a brutal truth — your chances of the highest academic success at school are still shaped more by where you live than what you're capable of. 'This A-star divide highlights the vast differences in support offered to today's children and young people both outside and inside the classroom. 'Increasingly A-level grades are as much a sign of how much support young people have had as much as their academic capability. 'This isn't just a North-South education divide. It's a London and South East versus the rest Divide.' The Department for Education said: 'We are taking measures to tackle baked-in inequalities.'
The National
19-05-2025
- Business
- The National
2012 Olympics kids are UK's most upwardly mobile
Children who grew up in East Ham during the 2012 Olympics are earning almost 50 per cent more than peers from the poorest parts of the UK today, a survey has found. The London constituencies of East Ham and Stratford hosted the Olympic Games in 2012, and the construction of the Olympic Village there was expected to bring large-scale regeneration to the marginalised areas. Now, East Ham's poorest children are among the UK's most socially mobile, followed by those from neighbouring Stratford and Bow, according the Sutton Trust's Opportunity Index. The annual survey tracks the education level and earnings of young people under 30 who were eligible for free school meals, to assess their opportunities. In East Ham, 35 per cent of pupils who were eligible for free school meals had a degree by the age of 22, compared to 10 per cent in Newcastle Upon Tyne and Central West – the constituency with the lowest rankings in the survey. Those aged 28 who grew up in East Ham earned almost 50 per cent more on average a year (£21,135), than those in the lowest ranking constituency (£14,158). Forty-eight per cent of children in East Ham completed their A-levels with an average C grade, above the national average of 46. Less than a fifth of East Ham pupils were not in school, higher education or work after their GCSEs, four points above the national average, and 25 per cent above the more affluent constituency of Kensington and Bayswater. 'Disadvantaged young people growing up in East Ham, and Stratford and Bow have the best opportunity to become socially mobile in England," Erica Holt-White, research and policy manager at the Sutton Trust, told The National. "Those eligible for free school meals achieve very well at GCSE, and we see young people progressing to university and reaching the top 20 per cent of earners at much higher rates than other young people from similar backgrounds in other areas of the country. "Local investment" in East Ham and Stratford and Bow, as well as the "demographic of the constituency", were among the factors contributing to the high rankings, she said. Yet the survey also showed that young people in London were more likely to move out of their constituency than those outside London, against the 'traditional view' of migration towards the capital. Within the orbit of the Olympic Village in Hackney, the proportion of working adults who are university graduates in Woodberry Down and Manor House leapt from just over one third (36.9 per cent) in 2011 to more than two thirds (67.8 per cent) – more than anywhere else in England and Wales. 'London and the East of England also have the highest rates for disadvantaged young people moving elsewhere by the age of 28, at 13 per cent compared to just 6 per cent of those from the North East," said Carl Cullinane, director of research and policy at the Sutton Trust. The survey revealed a "a startling picture of inequality of opportunity" across England, according to Nick Harrison, chief executive of the Sutton Trust. The training and educational pathways available to disadvantaged young people within their own constituencies determined how they would fare later on. "The life chances of disadvantaged young people remain strongly tied to where they grow up," he said. "If the government genuinely wants to break down barriers to opportunity, we need serious investment in education and economic opportunities in the 'left behind' parts of the UK. "Failing to act is damaging the life changes of too many of the next generation."
Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
There's more to university than the promise of a well-paid job
When I was 18, doggedly indolent and on course to fail all my A-levels, my father staged an intervention. Lowering himself onto his knees before me like a supplicant monk, he knitted his hands together in prayer. 'All you have to do,' he begged, 'is enough revision to scrape through these exams. And then you can spend three years at university doing absolutely nothing.' It was a brilliantly effective pep talk at the time. But no part of it rings true today. My eldest child is 17, and weighing up possible degree courses. To get into a Russell Group university, he will need a fat bouquet of A-grades: there can be no question of cramming, bluffing or scraping through. Once in, he will have to pay £9,535 a year in tuition fees, which is hardly conducive to relaxation. Undergraduates have become much more serious-minded and diligent since the introduction of student loans in 1998. A good thing, no doubt, except that their virtue is not being rewarded. The so-called 'graduate premium' – the difference in average salaries between people who attended university and those who didn't – has been shrinking for decades, and now seems to have gone into reverse. Nearly three-quarters of new graduates earn less than £29,120: the median salary for people aged 22 to 29. Even three years later, they lag behind their peers who went straight from school to work. Some degrees are more valuable than others: the boring ones. Computer science, business, maths and economics are the top salary-boosters. Whereas a degree in philosophy – my son's chosen subject – is likely to shave a couple of thousand a year off his starting salary. A responsible mother, in fact, would be on her knees begging him not to get into university. And yet, for reasons of nostalgia more than common sense, I can't help wanting him to have those three years between school and work. Not just the extra education, but the extra time. I want him to experience the luxury (which it really is now, almost to the point of decadence) of playing at being a grown up, among your peers, far away from home. Even though my years at Newcastle University were just as academically idle as predicted, I acquired skills and memories that set me up for life. How to pay a bill, how to live with other people, how to make friends with boys. Time was so abundant that it ceased to feel progressive and became more like a soft, settled atmosphere: one composed of my flat mates' voices, the smell of old cigarettes, a strip of sunlight moving across the bedroom ceiling. And parties and drugs and snogging too – all of which was instantly anecdotalised, so that we often seemed to be laughing at our misspent youth even as we were living it. University is such a generous interregnum. It comes just at the right moment, when you are composing the internal mythology that will sustain your self-image. It gives you a last shot at making a gang of friends, before you move into the more fragmented social milieu of work. None of this shows up on the fiscal balance sheet, of course. In terms of earning power, it is nothing but a waste of billable time. Worthless, and yet – I still believe – infinitely precious.
