A case of exam failure

The reformed sixth-form exams were brought in to give more breadth to the curriculum. But the experts say they haven't worked. Are the universities to blame? Hilary Wilce reports

The new A-levels aren't working. They were supposed to broaden minds, and to dissuade sixth-formers from specialising in only arts or sciences; that isn't happening. Worse, the pressures of the new system have narrowed the scope of what is taught in the sixth-form classroom, so that students have the worst of all worlds: studying much the same sort of subjects, but not less breadth and depth. All the new system has done, according to David Bell, the chief inspector of schools, is to place extra burdens on schools, while achieving "much less than what was intended".

Under the new system, students study one-year AS-levels, and go on to add a further year's study to any subject to get an A2. The majority take four ASs, then drop one subject to take three A2s. The examinations were rushed in two years ago, leaving schools scrabbling to work out how to timetable and teach them. Last summer, they hit the headlines with a regrading crisis, which led to the resignation of the then-education secretary, Estelle Morris. Now attention is turning to whether they deliver what they were supposed to – and many critics are adamant that they don't.

At Sharnbrook Upper School in Bedfordshire the head, Peter Barnard, sees many problems. "It simply hasn't been thought through. Students don't choose broad options, because they ask themselves: what can I pass? What gets me to university? Also, many students now choose to leave after a year because they feel they've got a qualification, and don't want to do another year. This plays havoc with school finance and management."

"The system has added a fourth subject for a large number of people," says John Dunford, the general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, "but not a high proportion of these are contrasting ones."

He lays the blame at the door of the universities who, he says, have only paid lip-service to the breadth of the reforms. "What they have to do is say, you can come on the course if you've got two As and a B, or if you've got four subjects and four Bs. Some schools have tried to encourage breadth, but there has been no external incentive for students to do it."

Instead, says Gwen Evans, the deputy general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, students take the low-risk route. "They know they need to get three A grades to get into a prestige university, so they take the subjects where they think they'll get these, and then they overlap a fourth as an insurance."

Today's students also have other pressures on them. Many need to work long hours in part-time jobs to fund today's teenage lifestyle. Plus they know that they are no longer part of a full welfare state, says Evans, and that they will have to repay hefty student debts. So it makes sense to dispense with those things that have no value to you in the short term.

"And teaching has definitely become more battery-farmish in the classroom. If we start discussing anything that isn't directly about what we're supposed to be doing, the teachers always pull us back," says Liza Miller, a Kent sixth-former who is studying English, history and psychology. "They say, 'Look, this is really interesting, but we've got to get on.' It's really frustrating, because we're at the age where a lot of us want to debate things, and I don't think they like it either. They always seem to be stressed-out."

Some schools complain that the new exams have squeezed out extra-curricular activities such as sport and drama, which many saw as an important part of the sixth-form experience. "We have had to reduce our enrichment programme a little, because we couldn't fit in everything we used to do," agrees Margaret Ingram, the deputy principal of Hills Road Sixth-form College in Cambridge. However, she says, all students still have to take enrichment courses as part of their college experience, and "by and large" she feels the new system is working.

Others agree, saying that as the examinations settle down, and teachers and students get more used to how they work, the broadening effects are starting to show. Lisa Hardin, a 16-year-old who lives in Norfolk, has just decided on her four AS-levels – history, art, economics and chemistry – after weeks of indecision. "At first I was going to do geography instead of chemistry. I wanted to do chemistry, but my science teacher said that I might find it more of a struggle because of not doing the other sciences. He wasn't trying to put me off. He was just being honest with me. But then I thought, well, I can always drop it if I'm not enjoying it, and he agreed."

In spite of all the problems, the reform is steering some students in the right direction, says Gareth Matthewson, the head of Whitchurch High School in Cardiff, one of the country's largest comprehensives: "And it has improved the work ethic of Year 12 students, no doubt about it. Year 12 used to be a bit of a lazy year, but now they have to keep at it."

However he, more than most, is aware that this is only a halfway station between the old ways and something totally new. As the head of a school that offers some students the International Baccalaureate, he knows that the only surefire way to get students to study more broadly is to force them into it. And as chairman of the National Curriculum group that draws together heads' associations, independent school bodies, and sixth-form and further education colleges, he also knows this sort of approach is on its way. "We're backing a baccalaureate-style qualification, the kind of package that is more than the sum of its parts, and the kind where all of the parts are important."

That would make many schools happy. Sue Kirkham, the head of Walton High School, in Stafford, says most of her students don't opt for A-level breadth. "What I'd like to see, in an ideal world, is a single coherent 14-to-19 structure with breadth built into it over that entire period."

Sooner or later, she'll probably get it. Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools, who has been charged by the Government with overhauling this stage of the curriculum, last month set out his vision for a Bac-style qualification that would encompass academic and personal development. His report, due next year, is certain to bring that vision closer.

But it will need to be introduced much more carefully than its predecessors if it is to get the goodwill of battered schools. Chris Bridge, the head of Huntington School in York, speaks for many when he vigorously rejects the short-termism of David Bell's pronouncement on A-levels. "I think this is disgraceful. The last thing we need at the moment is another major change," he says. "We've just bedded it into the new system at great cost, and got it up and working, and now he's running it into the ground!" And like many, he says, he increasingly loathes the way in which schools are tossed around by a "a culture in government that looks only to go round in circles, and doesn't bring us forward."

education@independent.co.uk

A-Level stories: breadth vs depth

Hayley Clarke is the Govern-ment's dream A-level student. She has used the new system to continue with a broad range of subjects, including a language, a science and a humanities subject. Now in the first year of the sixth-form at Walton High School, Stafford, she is taking history, French, maths and chemistry. However, her experience highlights exactly why so many students avoid such a route.

"I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I thought a variety of subjects would give me more choice in the future. But I am concerned now whether I've taken the right ones. I wanted to do a science, but I'm probably going to drop chemistry after AS level because I'm finding it really hard. The change from GCSE to AS level is just so big."

One of the problems, she says, is that not being a specialist makes studying harder. "Things come into different sciences and reinforce each other, so people doing both physics and biology have that behind them, while I don't. So in maths we're studying mechanics, and those who are also doing physics understand it a lot better than I do."

However, she says she enjoys the challenge of maths, and from that point of view is glad she isn't doing only humanities.

Parini Mankad, a Year 13 student at Walton High School, Stafford, has not taken the chance to study a broad range of A-levels – and for very good reasons.

"I'm taking physics, chemistry, biology and maths. I've always liked biology, and I've liked maths since GCSE. I want to be a doctor, so I knew I needed chemistry, and my careers adviser suggested I should do physics because he said it could help me with the core curriculum in the first year at medical school.

"I did think of doing history or PE instead of physics. I know that nowadays medical schools say they are looking for other subjects, and that they like it if you have a modern language or something like that. But they clashed on the timetable with the other subjects I was doing, so I couldn't do that.

"A few of my friends have taken arts and sciences, but others have done practical courses – art and technology – because they are good at them. I've got a place at medical school in Birmingham, and I feel I made the right A-level decisions."