A-LEVEL STANDARDS

Similar questions concerning standards must be asked about A-level mathematics. The statistics we present in this section constitute only part of the picture, and we welcome the inquiry recently initiated by the government into mathematics and science qualifications. Simply inspecting examination papers tells one little. The preparedness of incoming university students depends not only on grades, but on a combination of syllabuses, style of examination questions, mark schemes and their implementation --- above all on the way they have been taught and on the mathematical experience they bring with them.

Until 1986, A-level grading in mathematics was roughly `normed', i.e. a Grade A was awarded to about 10% of candidates, Grade B to 15% , Grade C to 10% , and so on, with some 30% being condemned to fail. Since then the percentage of higher grades awarded has increased significantly. The comparable percentages for 1994 were: A 25%, B 18%, C 16.5%, `fail' 15%. The evidence presented to this working group is clearly inconsistent with any suggestion that the much larger proportion of today's students who achieve a Grade A at A-level mathematics can in any sense be said to perform at a level comparable to the smaller proportion of the cohort pre-1986. There is no doubt that there has been, in an obvious sense, a devaluation of grades. This observation is supported by evidence presented by Professor C. Fitz-Gibbon to the 1995 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Newcastle in which she reported that A-level mathematics candidates in 1994 with a given score in the International Test of Developed Abilities achieved roughly two grades higher than candidates with comparable scores in the same test in 1988.

This devaluation, by itself, is not what concerns us. In those cases where previous exchange rates have ceased to reflect underlying conditions and needs, devaluation of a currency can sometimes bring economic benefits. It can be argued that there were strong reasons for reducing grade standards in mathematics A-level. For example, it has repeatedly been shown to be more difficult to obtain good grades in mathematics, physics and chemistry than in other subjects --- see, for example, Nuttall (1974) [21] and most recently Fitz-Gibbon and Vincent (1994) [10]. Insofar as this may have been a major deterrent to recruitment, one can understand the pressures to award higher grades. This in itself would have no harmful consequences, provided the mathematical integrity of the courses had been maintained (for example, by deliberately reducing difficulty levels while ensuring that fluency was achieved in a large coherent core of common material), and provided the reliability of the assessment procedures made it possible to interpret the new grades (e.g. if a 1994 Grade A were reliably equivalent to a 1979 Grade A or B). The neglect of these provisos has devalued our academic currency in a way which threatens to undermine the credibility of all 18+ assessment.