Concerns About A-Level ‘Dumbing Down’
The unending press releases, that A-levels schools have already dumbed down, are seriously damaging the confidence of the public in the system. This is a report advised by Simon Lebus, who is the head of qualifications department at Cambridge University.
Lebus want to have an open debate about demands to sustain exam standards while making qualifications more flexible. He also opened the idea of creating a new exams regulator, if more alternatives to A-levels are proposed. Lebus says is has already been difficult to pinpoint exactly what has happened about the whole issue of standards; nonetheless, it has been notoriously complex, not to mention technically challenging.
Starting next year, ministers are introducing 17 new diploma types, which could eventually replace A-levels GCSEs as the ‘qualification of choice’. There will also be wider use of the International Baccalaureate, which will mean the introduction of significant scopes of confusion as to how the qualifications compare.
