BSA: If it's August it must be A levels

Friday, 15, Aug 2008 12:00

There was a time when A level candidates got their results in little brown envelopes handed to them in school by the Examinations Officer or the Head of Sixth Form, and the Careers Teacher was on hand to advise about what next if the results weren’t what you hoped, and you went off with your mates for a coffee and home to receive parental pats on the back and throw away the text books.

There was a time when there were no TV cameras in the school hall, and no reporters, and no pin-up type pictures of happy gorgeous girls on the front pages of all the papers, mouths and eyes wide open with delight because of the results in their hands.

There was a time when A level results belonged first to the student, secondly to the teachers of each subject, thirdly to the whole school and just barely, at Speech Day, when the Head could reel off a list of successes with pride, just barely, eventually to the local press and the outside world.

Ah, those were the days. Now A levels belong first to the outside world, not because the world cares about an individual’s results, but because the world will use them to judge a school. Is it good? Is it bad? Did it do better than last year? Or worse? Should it be closed?

So an exam which used to allow students to demonstrate that they were fit candidates for further study at university, has become the means of judging a school.

Using an exam to do this takes no notice of anything else: where is the school and what are its resources? What was the ability of students when they entered the school? What kind of parental support do they receive? Even, according to today’s papers, what were their parental expectations, because those can affect student success, it appears.

In an ideal world, every student would get an A grade for every subject, and all the schools would be excellent because those results would prove it. But expecting every student to get an A in everything he studies is like expecting every child who ever learned to swim to be able to swim like Phelps.

And according to this logic, if they can’t all swim like Phelps, we should fire every swimming teacher.

In the real world, we do know that we need people with different talents to make society work. We need lawyers and plumbers, we need actors and artists – actually we must need those quite a lot, because they are the people who regularly collect honours and become Dames and Knights of the realm, don’t they?

And we need sportsmen, to win medals. There are many sportsmen with degrees, and presumably very good A levels before that; but I’ll bet there are also a lot of sportsmen whose talents are demonstrated on the track or field, not in the exam room. Let’s hope they do not trip up their schools in the league table race.

In boarding schools, we like to think there is a place for children whatever their talents, and facilities and staff to support and nurture all a child’s ambitions. So congratulations to all the A level candidates in our boarding schools, and thank you also for their many contributions to their school communities outside the classroom.

Hilary Moriarty

National Director

Boarding Schools’ Association