GCSE exam results day.  First off, to all those getting their results today, I hope you get great results.  Achieving great grades is the result of hard work and dedication and no-one can take away from your awesome achievement.  So congratulations.  BUT….that does not mean that we cannot question a system that sees year on year ever improving pass rates and provides for some…..false hope?

Before we look at GCSE results, let’s remember A’Level successes just a couple of weeks back.  A’Level results announced showed again another improvement in pass rates….the 27th year in a row.  Yes 27 years in a row.  The pass rate of 97.5 per cent was 0.3 per cent higher than last year’s.  Are we saying that education has improved so much that children studying today, as a whole, are more intelligent, year on year, 27 years running?  We have a right to question that as slightly suspicious?  Are exam results politicised…is grade inflation the norm?  Within 9 years, anyone taking an A’Level will pass it….zero failures!  Again, within the next 9 years, the number of ‘A’ grades will rise to more than a third of all entries (it is already over a quarter).  Is that a good thing or papering over the cracks?

Are exams dumbed down?  A controversial question.  So, over the past 20 years, the proportion of A grades has risen from nine per cent to 2009’s 26.7 per cent; a study by Durham University last year concluded that an ‘A’ grade today is the equivalent of a C grade in the 1980s.

Perhaps more interesting is that Universities are now starting to introduce their own entrance tests as they don’t trust the validity of A’Levels, to sort the wheat from the chaff.  Cambridge University have publicly stated a third of A-grade mathematics students failed their entrance exam.  ‘A’ grades in maths have soared faster than any other subject – rising by more than 50 per cent in the last decade.  Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said the standard of A-level maths was too low.  “The fact is that the content was adjusted in light of a dramatic fall in entries and, as a result, we have a much higher proportion of ‘A’ grades being awarded,” he said. “This is why we see people being offered Cambridge places on the basis of projected As who do not turn out to be good enough. An ‘A’ grade is not telling the universities what it would have told them in the past.”

The danger as well of ever increasing A’Level grades is the false hope it provides students.  Naturally, students achieiving great A’Level results want to go on to University.  But reports scream that 50,000 A-level students will miss out on a place at university.  This year 52,000 more people applied to University but only 13,000 extra places were made available.  It would be little short of a tragedy if all the hard work by this year’s students is rewarded by no place in higher education or no job. It seems particularly cruel of the Government to raise expectations and then dash them by failing to provide enough places in higher education for UK students seeking them.

For those who can’t get places at University they could be another statistic added to the NEET.  The number of young people not in employment, education or training (Neet) has leapt by more than 100,000 in the past year.  Government statistics show there are now almost 960,000 16- to 24-year-old Neets in England, more than 230,000 of whom are aged between 16 and 18.

Turning to today’s GCSE’s.  Two thirds of exam papers were awarded an A* to C grade and the number ranked A or A* increased by 0.9 percentage points to 21.6%. But slightly fewer pupils scored a C or above in English, from 62.9% to 62.%, and the number taking modern languages continues to fall. The proportion of maths results scoring A*-C rose by 0.9% to 57.2%, with boys outperforming girls in this subject for the first time in a decade. Around 750,000 16-year-olds are collecting more than 5.46m GCSE exams results today. Overall, the A*-G pass rate increased slightly to 98.6%, up 0.2% on last year.

Let’s not take away from today’s results but we cannot allow for year – on -year grade inflation to continue.  Some years children, collectively, won’t achieve the best results.  That is a fact of life.  Other year’s, students will knock the results out of the park.  So, let’s just set the benchmark and throw the dice each year and see how the dice land.  When the Conservatives seek to introduce an honest and fair system, the first year that results dip, you can picture Mandolsen and the new Labour Leader Purnell, criticising the fall in education under the Tories!  Honesty is the best policy…throw them dice DC.

Ed Balls…is told exam results have risen again.  Shock horror eh Ed!