You've passed! So what now?

All over the country excited school-leavers have been texting and calling their friends and families to say they are among the 94.3 per cent who passed their A-levels. But are the results worth the paper they're printed on? Here Nicholas Pyke examines the evidence, while below we canvass opinion from the great and the not-so-good

An astonishing thing happened last week. Ruth Lea, the combative head of the Institute of Directors, came out with a statement about A-levels that everyone agreed with. Ms Lea has made a speciality of pouring scorn on the public examination system and, on behalf of Britain's small businesses, has been unswerving in her view that GCSEs, A-levels and degrees are getting easier. Year in, year out, she plays Mr Punch to the exam boards' Judy. But on Thursday, in response to yet another record haul, she appeared to shift her line of attack, admitting that exams have changed in nature and in purpose since they first got going in 1951. "A-levels used to be highly discriminatory gold standards, selecting undergraduates for a highly selective university system," she explained. But not any more. Now, in contrast, they are designed for "an age of mass entrance to university".

The IoD thinks this is a bad thing and says the qualification has fallen victim to "endemic and rampant grade inflation". A 94.3 per cent pass rate is certainly high. Does this mean A-levels are "dumbed down"? Or is it all the result of honest toil, as parents, teachers and government ministers like to assert?

The answers are probably "no" and "no", but firm evidence is hard to come by. Even the Government's curriculum experts failed to reach a conclusion when, after a comprehensive analysis of 20 years of scripts, they decided there was no reliable basis for comparison.

There is no doubt that pupils are working harder and are taught more efficiently than in the past. Exams are more important to pupils, schools and governments than ever before. Few leave school at 16, and if they do there is no work. Schools teach to the test, ruthlessly, and flaunt their results in the competition for middle-class pupils.

At a broader level, exam grades have been rising across the Western world. No one knows why, but rising prosperity and the increasing attention paid to girls are important. Much of the average improvement is the result of girls first matching, then overtaking boys. Average performance on intelligence tests has also risen.

Grades really started to shoot up in 1987. The GCSE replaced the previous two-tier system of the O-level and Certificate of Secondary Education and, suddenly, middle- to low-ranking pupils were expected to study and achieve alongside the "A" stream. Marking coursework improved the chances of girls, who still lose out to boys under the pressure of the examination hall.

But Stakhanovite sixth-formers are only part of the explanation. In 1987 there was also an important statistical change that has allowed, if not encouraged, the upward drift of results – the move from "norm" to "criterion referencing". In the past, even good students could fail if they came in the bottom 30 per cent of the rankings. Now the old fixed pass rate has been abolished and instead papers are judged according to an objective mark scheme which could result in any distribution of grades – including As all round – depending on the quality of the answers. Sadly, it is less scientific in practice. It turns out that individual examiners are incapable of true objectivity, so their conclusions have to be "moderated". And exam board statisticians admit that the climate of rising expectations has probably influenced the overall results.

This move away from a fixed pass/fail rate is at the heart of the IoD complaints. Small businesses want a reliable means of weeding out young dunderheads, and believe the state-sponsored exam system should do it for them. Public exams used to serve this purpose because so few people took them. An A-level guaranteed drive, intelligence or certified membership of the respectable middle classes. Now it shows that you've done the syllabus, in common with 200,000 others.

Rather more serious is the criticism that A-levels are cumbersome, outdated and damage thousands of students for whom there is still no acceptable alternative. A narrow, specialist exam, it remains unsuitable for non-academic teenagers despite the introduction of the AS-level (half an A-level) and the vocational A-level. The obsession with A-level results is even seen to be restricting the more academic students by depriving them of opportunities for wider study. University tutors complain that their new entrants are less well-informed and less well-read than in the past.

Ministers are torn. They know that the curriculum for students aged 14-plus is a shambles and needs redesigning so that everyone benefits, not just the 35 per cent who go to university. Influential voices in Downing Street favour the multi-subject baccalaureate used by most of our international competitors. But they are loath to scrap the A-level, fearing criticism and the uncertainty of an untried alternative. Which means we're probably stuck with the so-called "gold standard" for some time to come.

And if you didn't succeed, take comfort from these heroic failures...

Interviews by Andrew Johnson and Clare Newbon

Richard Branson, businessman

The last thing I would ever do is discourage anybody from going to university – my daughter is studying medicine. However, I don't think it would have worked for me as I wasn't the most academic kid and I really wanted to do something in business. University is a good grounding for people wanting to become entrepreneurs now in the way it wasn't in the 1960s, when I started out. We would never have dreamedof universities embracing subjects like business studies. Nor were there the special courses that now exist in media studies and other creative businesses.

Sir Patrick Moore, astronomer

I didn't go to university because of a gentleman named Adolf Hitler. I was 18 when war broke out. When I came back my Cambridge place was still open. I could have got a government grant to go, but I wanted to pay my own way on principle. I think I would have enjoyed it very much before the war, but not so much after – it was a different world. I think if I had gone I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing now. Young people should definitely go to university, but they should take a proper degree, English, history, science – not one of these tiddlywink degrees like media studies.

John Humphrys, journalist

I left school at 15. I passed the 11-plus and got nine O-levels, so I suppose I could have gone to university. But Splott in Cardiff where I was brought up was a very working-class district. It just wasn't something we did, but that changed very quickly. My younger brother went to university – he was the first in the family to go. I can't say it held me back. I always wanted to be a foreign correspondent and I was one at 27. But I wish I had gone, and I've got chips on both shoulders because I didn't. I've got kids, and it isn't even remotely possible that they won't go to university.

John Bird, founder of The Big Issue

I left school in 1961 when I was 15. Shortly afterwards, I was sent to a boys' correctional institution for stealing and fraud, but I learnt a lot while I was there. If I had gone to university I probably would have wasted my time chasing girls – one of my obsessions back then. I am one of those people who believe you should go to university when you are 30-plus. I think we should encourage people who have been working for several years to relish a break from work and free-wheel for a while. I didn't feel I missed out. I was just as bright as everyone else when I went on to study as a mature student.

Jilly Cooper, novelist

After O-levels I went to a crammer in Oxford. The ratio of men there was about 10 to 1. I went out every night and was yearning after some undergraduate or other. I really ploughed it and ended up getting an interview at St Hilda's College. But lots of big women in tweeds made me think, hang on! I don't like this – it's too much like school. I didn't bother going to the third interview. I suppose my mother wanted me to write like Margaret Drabble but I'm more of a popular writer. I do think university should be fun – you have to just sit up all night and talk.