A Levels aren’t worth the paper
Martin Belam’s hit it right on the head with his article “Do boys even take A Levels these days?”. As well as commenting on the omission of boys from most of the national and local media, however, he also comments on the delusional beliefs of some people (who get far more airtime than their opponents) that A Levels are somehow getting easier. As I commented on his blog:
I think you’ve got this one spot on - I got my A Level results this year, and I was amazed to see that the media still keeps bringing out the old “everything’s getting easier these days” argument every year without fail.
God forbid that any students might actually perform better because of better teaching methods or good old brains. No, it must always be the exams that are getting easier, not the students that are getting better.
It’s ironic that not one person who comes out to criticise exams for being too easy has actually sat one himself in the past 30 years. How would he know if they were getting easier?
Oh, and on the subject of only girls taking A Levels these days, maybe boys aren’t half as interesting on results day :)
Now let’s see some of these people come out and actually sit a modern A Level exam, and then we’ll compare their results with ones of today’s students. I’m sure that’ll shut them up.