Three days after the Prime Minister's petulant sneer that only reactionary twits claim education standards have fallen comes pretty devastating evidence that this is indeed the case. The Independent Schools' Inspectorate has said that A-levels are too easy for Eton:

' "A-levels do not permit very able pupils to demonstrate their academic capabilities to the full," the inspectors said bluntly. AS-levels - the first half of A-levels - failed to stretch most of Eton's 1,294 pupils, they added... Last year, three-quarters of the 882 A-levels taken by 259 Etonians were awarded a grade A, and almost all the rest a B. The inspectors contrasted the inability of A-levels to test what the pupils knew with the quality of Eton's "stimulating teaching", which allowed the most able to "reach the highest level of attainment of which they are capable". In virtually all subjects, the examination syllabus was "the minimum not the maximum for study", they said.'

No doubt the government will dismiss this assessment too as the work of reactionary 'elitists' -- the mention of Eton is enough to send even Blairite ministers back to the class-war barricades. However, the verdict is unmistakeably devastating, as the Telegraph story makes clear:

'The inspectors said Eton's results put it in the top five per cent of schools nationally, suggesting that A-levels were too easy for 15,000 other candidates too. Tony Little, Eton's headmaster, agreed. "You've only to consider the 5,000 straight-A applicants rejected by Cambridge last year to see that A-levels are no longer capable of discriminating at the top," he said."We have to teach our pupils a form of double-think so they understand that the grades required by universities are not the standards that they should hold dear. It's quite a lot to ask of them." '

Indeed it is a lot to ask of all of us. Relatively few schools, after all -- even in the independent sector -- deliver an education of sufficient quality to compensate for the destruction of exam standards. The overwhelming majority of children are being swindled out of a proper education, the universities are simply unable to distinguish between one candidate with five A grades at A-level and another, and the country no longer has people educated enough to do the jobs that need to be done. In short, a disaster.

Posted by melanie at May 5, 2004