Let's teach our children a different tune

A-levels are getting too easy, says a well-worn refrain. But today's exams are up to scratch, argues Fran Abrams

There must be a song in this somewhere. Summertime, and the exams are getting easier. The words sound vaguely familiar, though; I'm sure it has been done before.

In fact, the refrain is now playing in a right-wing newspaper near you, and it is beginning to sound a bit tired. After all, it has had a regular August slot ever since A-levels were introduced in 1951; and even before that, the tune was not much different. In 1876, the chief inspector of schools could be heard complaining that "accuracy in the manipulation of figures does not reach the same standard which was reached 20 years ago".

Most recently, there has been disquiet over the fact that the A-level pass rate has gone up by 10 per cent in five years, to 84 per cent. Now, this year, there is a new dimension to the debate: modular A-levels. Most readers will probably not have heard of these, because until now they have not been considered interesting enough to merit expenditure on newsprint. This week, however, the exam boards predicted that the modular exams would raise pass rates - and hey presto, they became big news.

Put simply, modular A-levels are ones that allow students to sit a number of interim tests, rather than having all their marks based on a final exam. If students fail a test, they can retake it without having to repeat a year; and if they want to take time out, they can bank their credits and finish the course later.

Sounds good? It is, according to the exam boards. Their view is that students will be less likely to fail modular courses. They will be more highly motivated, and they can re-sit if they take a test on an "off" day. The pass rate will also benefit from pupils who, having failed several modules, realise that there is not point in completing the course - fewer failures, higher pass rates.

The traditionalists, however, object strongly. They say that a higher pass rate is evidence of lower standards, and that allowing students to take their A-levels in bite-sized chunks is giving them an unfair advantage.

They do have a point. No one wants a system in which a weak student can achieve good grades without reaching the same standard as another student taking traditional exams. But steps are being taken to make sure that this does not happen. The number of resits may be limited, and the time limit for finishing the course could be tightened.

But there is a bigger issue here. Listen for long enough to the plaintive cries of the 'standards-aren't-what-they-used-to-be' lobby and an insidious, subliminal message begins to come through: "If more people are passing, there's something wrong," it hisses. "Why can't we go back to the good old days of the 1950s, when only 3 per cent of the population did A-levels and even fewer went to university?" We don't just want to know that students have mastered a certain body of knowledge; we want to know if they are clever enough to sustain their attention for two years and recall it all on demand.

But there are very good reasons for not going back to the past. One is that we need a more highly educated workforce than we used to - there are no longer jobs for huge numbers of people without skills or qualifications. The other is that the old system failed to tap the natural talents of the vast majority of the population. It was desperately wasteful, not to mention downright unfair.

We have come a long way since then. Universities have expanded and can now take almost a third of young people. If we want to fill all those extra places, we cannot continue with the old, exclusive system. A strong 21st-century economy will be one in which the highest possible number of people are encouraged to strive for their full potential.

But instead of trying to measure, and stimulate, the success of our students, we are still setting many of them up to fail. Despite all the hand-wringing over rising pass rates, 13 out of 14 students are still taking conventional A-levels. Out of every 100, 15 drop out and a further 17 do not pass the final exams. If we do not want to lower the hurdles, we must find better ways of getting people over them.

And that is where modular A-levels come in. These new courses were taken by 50,000 students of maths, English and science this year and are set to grow rapidly, If they do raise pass rates, the reaction should be a rousing cheer, not a weary groan.

Who cares whether a student has passed an exam on Shakespeare's Henry V in the first term of the sixth form or in the sixth term, so long as he has passed it fair and square? What does it matter if he has learnt the complexities of scientific investigation through a series of modules rather than through an almost identical series of lessons on the same topics, examined at the end of the course? One might even ask, in a moment of heresy, whether society would really fall apart if passing exams did get a bit easier, so long as more people were able to go on and learn things that they would not have learnt otherwise.

Some lessons take a long time to learn, of course, and some people, particularly those who are old, traditionalist and set in their ways, take longer to learn them than others. So the chances are that the old vinyl recording will be crackling away on these pages and others like them for years to come.

Maybe the best advice to students worried about the devaluation of their exam results is this: just relax and wait for the fuss to die down. After all, it's only an old song.