The A-level furore must not obscure wider failures in the education system

With all the inevitability of a slow-motion train crash, the crisis over this year's A-level grades claimed its first victim yesterday. As Mike Tomlinson, the head of the inquiry, said, "It was an accident waiting to happen." But it will take more than the rolling of Sir William Stubbs's head to restore confidence in Britain's education system.

Sir William may have been unwise to have threatened the exam boards with a public inquiry if many more pupils obtained better grades – or to have allowed himself to be perceived as threatening them, in Mr Tomlinson's delicate formulation. The real failure, however, seems to have occurred at the OCR exam board. If it had had confidence in its exams, marking and grades, it would not have been panicked by Sir William into making late changes to pupils' results.

Mr Tomlinson faced the traditional incredulity of the journalistic profession yesterday when he asserted that no one had acted improperly, and that the "big accident" was the result of multiple misunderstandings. But he has a point.

Sir William thinks he simply observed that the exam boards would have had to explain themselves if the move to modular A-levels resulted in a sharp jump in grades. He may have misunderstood how such a comment might be misunderstood. Some of this year's supposedly anomalous results could also have been the product of teachers and pupils misunderstanding the requirements of the new exams.

Mr Tomlinson also made a broader point when he said everyone could make different judgements about how many marks should be required for a particular grade – "and we could all be right". For the affair has moved what everyone ought to have known into the harsh glare of the media spotlight: that marking and grading is a highly subjective business.

All the more important, therefore, that it be carried out in ways which are open, accountable and free from pressures that are political, even if only with a small p.

That is why the buck that has been passed to Sir William should not stop in his office. Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, has not done anything improper in the sense that Sir William so foolishly alleged. But she was responsible (under David Blunkett) for the move to modular A-levels, which is the starting point of today's problems. More importantly, the change has imposed a needless and counter-productive burden on pupils who now have to sit public exams for three consecutive years from 16 to 18.

No wonder she announced her sudden conversion this week to the idea of a Continental-style baccalaureate, long advocated by this newspaper. That would mean a single set of six exams – broader than A-levels but each one less burdensome – being sat at 18.

Nor is Sir William's replacement at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority nearly enough. The QCA's conflicting roles of devising the curriculum, setting national tests and regulating public exams should be split.

It is of course important – not least for the thousands of students involved – to resolve the grades obtained in the 12 subjects identified by Mr Tomlinson, and to attempt justice in the allocation of university places. But the furore should not be allowed to distract from the wider failures of the Government's education policy. This week, the Government failed to reach targets for basic standards in English and maths for 11-year-olds that were once so important Mr Blunkett promised to resign if they were not met.

Strange though it may seem, the "accidental" mis-grading of several thousand A-levels is relatively easy to put right. The weaknesses of our education system are far greater than that.