to hope that universities do start making offers only when A Level results are known?

[grovel]

Then we can scrap A/S levels as a predictor. Teachers will have 2 years to take youngsters from GCSE to A Level standard without an intermediate set of exams. A lovely sixth form summer when kids can learn and think without revision.

That was the way it used to be. Gcse's one year and a's and a'levels 2 years later. Worked fine then, conditional offers based on predicted grades.

We shouldn't need the predicted grades IMO. Just take the final A levels a bit earlier.

YANBU
As someone who can still be bitter about lousy teacher predictions xx years on, totally think it's fairer to go on results actually achieved.

eh?

My son only got a conditional on getting certain grades, nowadays Universities have to know the results before you get a confirmed offer.

The suggestion is that rather than the current system (having predicted grades, applying to University, having conditional offers, taking the exams, finding out your actual grades, and then having your offer confirmed), you would take your exams, find out your actual grades, then apply to University and have a confirmed offer straight away.

Fabbychic, that is my point (perhaps badly expressed). I would like to see A/S levels scrapped to give teachers and kids two years to explore their subjects without some wretched exams in the first year of sixth form which wastes a whole summer term with "intermediate" revision. A levels (A2) could be sat a couple of weeks earlier than they are now to get them marked in time for students to apply with definite results. Universities, on this basis, could offer unconditional places. They might need to hire more A2 examiners to get the job done quickly but it would be cheaper overall because there would be no A/S papers to mark.

The teachers won't have two years. If this system is implemented then the A level exams would have to take place earlier, this would mean that weeks of teaching time would be cut off the end of the school year for year 13.It is already hard enough to get the curriculum content covered in the time available as it it. And the AS exam would probably still remain (although I think it should be scrapped anyway as an intermediate exam, and only remain for candidates who are not up to taking the full A level)

I think that the only way that this could happen is if Universities started term later in the Autumn, say a couple of weeks into October. This would mean that they didn't finish for the summer in June, but worked into July and finished at the same time as schools.

AS levels are not there to help universities decide, they are there so that teenagers can choose a wider range of subjects and drop one or two after a year without it being a waste of time.

Often the one that gets dropped will not be the one they expected, which shows the benefits of being able to try different courses.

ASs were never a predictor before this year, except that you could guess what they were from predicted grades which were possibly unreliable anyway.

I quite like the module system...haven't a clue how to work out how many marks I need for an A/A* in summer, but it gives you a second chance and a break in the middle. The thing is that there is no real step up from GCSE to AS in terms of difficulty- it's just getting your head round the brand new mark scheme, which is convoluted and tests very little which is important (at least in essay subjects like English Lit).

I'm a current A-Level student and whilst I like the idea of having my results in hand when applying - it just won't work. It's hard enough to fit in what you need to learn before the exams, without bringing them back by weeks

Also, right now my faith in the exam boards to mark the papers accurately is limited. Mistakes are costly, and the quicker the boards have to mark the papers, the more mistakes are inevitable made

Lastly, how on Earth can you cram the entire university admissions process into a couple of months? One of the choices I have applied for now need November through March just to interview all the applicants they select!! It would be impossible for them to do it in much less time than that, and other uni's would face similar. IMO, this would result in a more unfair admissions process than the current one

Oh, the exam boards don't do too bad a job! The thing is, you could mark by their mark schemes a dozen ways- my teachers don't even know how to explain it- so I guess in that way it's not so great. I think before 18, exams should focus on what you know rather than how you think. Yes, the emphasis before the exam periods should be on developing independent thought etc etc, but for four years it should be purely about learning lots of dates and formulas and whatnot off by heart. Then we wouldn't get exam boards tying themselves up into knots trying to pay lip service to both and selling everyone short. And we would also know a lot more, rather than concentrating on having an AQA English essay style and an AQA History essay style and a rubbishly MFL essay style, none of which are v. useful.

The Ideal Solution, of course, is not to have such masses applying to uni! This is how on earth it could be managed.

I don't agree that exams should purely focus on factual recall. That is not such a useful skill in the modern age, although of course good general knowledge is important. You can look up facts if you have forgotten them, you can't look up how to investigate something, or how to present a coherent argument. We have, thanks to modern technology, all the facts we need at our fingertips, available in seconds.

Yes- and once something stops working, all the brains in the world will be no good? Not a v. good state of affairs.
But we are not taught how to present a coherent argument! And if people in private school are...they're "spoon fed" and have unfair advantages...
It really says something when state unis make allowances for state school pupils...

I think it should return to the old way, and stay just like that, but with an enforced 'year out' where the children do work placements. Places like old people's homes, daycare centers, respite centers etc. they would be able to apply after getting their actual results and the universities would have plenty of time to process the applications, and the students would get a little life experience before going to university.

Er yes, schools (at least all the ones I have worked in) do teach pupils to put forward their arguments in a coherent and balanced way. That is what all A level essay based subjects tend to be about. The very nature of discursive essay writing teaches you this skill.

Even before technology if you didn't know something you could look it up in books. Factual knowledge and memorization is an important skill and it does definitely still have its place. I did two language A Levels and if you haven't learnt your vocab or your grammar, no amount of good essay writing will get you through. There has to be a balance between what you know, and how you can apply your knowledge.

Oh I do French and German, in upper sixth atm. AS, at least, is not about grammar...really. I knew very very little German grammar when I came into Y12, drifted through the year without learning much more, and was resigned to getting a bad mark in summer- well, I didn't. My dad was shocked at how little work an A needed- he remembers working really hard for his high school diploma. Everything seems to hang on your content mark not so much what you know.
Surely by the sixth year of learning a language, we should have been introduced to more than one book! Essay based A levels aren't particularly stringent in the way of knowing the stuff inside out. My English Lit teacher had us reciting the AOs at the beginning of every lesson at the runup to the exam...why weren't we reciting sonnets or something! Oh yes. It's because English Lit now requires formulas. I don't know why they don't just print them in the front of the paper.

When I did A Levels, Literature was a pretty much compulsory element of year 13. That was back in 1996. I do think it has got a bit easier now that schools can opt out of actual hard things like reading real books.
And I think the topics are fairly uninspiring for A level too. One major problem though is that students generally have little to no knowledge of, or interest in, any sort of current affairs or topical debates, either in their own country or in the foreign country being studied.

Actually to get a high grade in MFL a good knowledge of grammar is important. Many of the multiple choice style reading questions (insert the correct word into the blanks, match the beginning and the end of the sentence) are more a test of your grammatical abilities than your comprehension of the source text. I have taught lessons that demonstrate that if you know enough grammar, you can pretty much save yourself the hassle of reading the source text too much, and can definitely get at least 50% of such answers correct without doing so at all.

YABU about the proposed application system and scrapping AS levels.

I don't see the problem with the current UCAS system. If a student gets much higher grades than predicted, apparently they can use "UCAS adjust" to trade in their choices to different universities with higher grade requirements. Cramming everything into the summer seems ridiculous from an administrative point of view. The course applications, interviews, offers, accommodation allocation etc would all have to be done in a few weeks!

As for AS levels, as another poster said, they are there to enable students to take a broader range of subjects in Y12 and narrow down in Y13.

The one thing I would change however is the option for constant resits. It would be one resit in the case of illness, serious mitigating factors etc under my regime - no second attempts just to have another go and bag a few extra marks

I disagree with that...there a lots of politics enthusiasts in my History class. They get very het up :o a good lot of people in my sixth form know the ins and outs of what's happening at the moment, and they might not even take it as a subject. I'm surprised whenever people complain about teenagers not being interested in current affairs because I know loads of 16/17 year olds who are v. interested. I suspect the problem lies in the fact that teenagers are more and more alienated from adults nowadays (started in the 60s, as most things did )...the very idea of there being a "teenage" does its bit in the separation, and that's why we get great gulfs between what people are interested in and why some groups are discouraged from the onset. Something to work on once we've got some spare time...

In History...they give us huge questions, lots and lots of lovely tangents to lead us astray, and only 45 minutes of time for each Q! I have no idea how much or how succintly I should write to get 45 marks...

• a lots

I am the OP and am glad I raised the subject. Have learnt a lot from this thread.

I know we live in 2011 and that the world has moved on from my time.

I was sad, though, that my DS did public exams four years in a row (he did a couple of GCSEs early). I was sad too that he never had a year after GCSEs to change gear as we did. He went to a brilliant school with great teachers - no complaints at all but they were working to a timetable. Summer terms were revision terms. That's a third of the year lost.

My remedy might be wrong.

Difficulty with a compulsory year off or even earlier exams is that a lot of knowledge will be lost before the start of the uni course. I'm thinking particularly of maths where a gap year is actively discouraged, but also languages where if you don't use the vocab regularly, it disappears [wonders what happened to own 8 years of German study...]

Other countries manage an application process post results. Can anyone shed any light on how they achieve it?