With a third of A levels being at A or A star and presumably the proportion to increase how are universities going to select students for high status competitive coiurses?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/aug/14/students-squeezed-out-university-courses-bumper-crop-top-a-level-grades?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcATtEpdjbGNrBO0ShXBkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEeF2JA4R42PnBId2QTWTFQ95frB8yvf0pY8AzajXUe5PVrefFR3aDd56drkKc_aem_LR9dNpZoutWCESSQrZoh5A#Echobox=1786725857

Oxbridge can use interview and additional tests in selection of students but where does this leave other universities? Will other universities such as Durham need to introduce their own interviews or tests to stop applications becoming a lottery?

I have looked at some of the Oxbridge rejection threads and there are many unlucky applicants with perfect grade profiles at GCSE and A level.so have we reached a point that the perfect 'grade A' student does not hold the prestige it once did and you are now just one of many.

I think we need to introduce an A star star grade as we have to accept grade inflation is a thing so we just need to accommodate to make university recruitment (and employment) make sense.

Teachers need a very strong and deep understanding of mathematics to teach further maths. As teaching standards dropped, teachers are not at the same level as they used to be. Syllabuses (or syllabi) are made easier to compensate.

Not really. My post is not due to him being a Labour PM. I would have said the same of a Tory one who had done the same thing.
It has been a mess.

@6ate9 Plenty of schools offer FM. Some obviously don’t. Yes, you need maths grads but schools can federate to offer FM and dc choose a school that offers it. Most who take it are good mathematicians and need it.

The standard of teaching for Maths and Further Maths has dropped, which has lead to Maths degrees becoming easier too. At one time you didn’t need a Masters to do a PHD (just a good Bachelor’s degree.)

@6ate9 Does anyone care though? Degrees are easier and who is bothered by that? It’s pretty obvious dc are not brighter but are taught differently. They still get the same careers though - except there’s way more competition because employers do test! They know they can be more choosy and a string of As doesn’t mean DC is the best for the job.

Because lots of bright DC aren’t being failed anymore by crappy state schools like they were in previous decades.

Standards of teaching has improved as has general welfare, guidance and motivation of bright students at schools.

Degrees have lost their prestige. It was a bad move under Tony Blair to want over 50% of pupils to participate in higher education. The damage has been done. We have a lot more important things to worry about, like when will it rain!!

To me it's the number of 1sts being dished out by unis that is the real shock. Students with A level grades of all Cs getting 1sts at random unis. But we are told all degrees are equal. How is that possible?

Up until the late 60’s it was predominantly Private school or grammar school students that went to uni.
Then for a few decades after most grammar schools were done away with bright students were failed miserably in shitty state schools

Schools have improved all round for the bright capable students who want to work hard to get into uni and they are succeeding.

School and exams are much harder than they ever were. So these A and A stars are well deserved and worked hard for.

Ds has just received 3 A stars in maths and science. I’m completely surprised. State school, got 7s and 8s at GCSEs. I knew he was bright but I’m trying to work out if he’s as bright as it sounds! He’s definitely not a teenager who spends all his time studying.

I do think those headlines are misleading though. At his school, he got the best grades. There were some who got individual A B C and I guess they would be included in those stats. And I guess at private schools and grammar schools those results As are the norm. But at a bog standard state school they aren’t.

Also remember that this years cohort had just started secondary when covid struck. Ds spent a lot of his first year perfecting his Xbox skills.

Because 16-18 year olds are younger and often less focused than when they go to uni so it’s not always a true reflection of their capabilities during GCSE or A Levels.

Plus it’s all down to end of year exams so having to revise and remember 2 years of what they’ve learnt in one exam during a short set time.

Different exam boards asking easier or harder or ridiculously obscure questions than the other.

This is obvious.

He’s just naturally bright and retains and understands information well enough to use it effectively.

A lot of DC just do.

Others have to work harder for the information to take hold

and others just can’t.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner wrote
I think maths is an odd one though. It’s now the most taken A level and that wasn’t the case years ago. Far more now have access to FM. They didn’t years ago. Plus they didn’t need it. Maths was divided into pure and applied but you rarely saw FM.

I can’t find all the figures I’d like - probably you’ve looked at this.

Maths was the most popular A level in 2000 and has been since 2014. (See chart 3.4) There was a dip, probably caused by deliberately making it harder in Curriculum 2000.

I did an AI search to ask which was the most popular A level in 1970, and it said it was Maths, but I couldn’t find that in either of its sources including Wikipedia so I think it was flattering me.
Wikipedia did have a pretty graph showing A level grades in June 1989 - 2026, though.

I can’t find out how unusual F Maths was a long time ago. I sat it in 1970 at my (not very good) girls grammar school and taught it at the end of the ‘80s at the local regional college, with colleagues who had been teaching it there for some time. Presumably it was also taught at the two more academic sixth form colleges in the town.
DH managed three Maths A levels - Pure, Applied and Further - at his very good boys’ grammar in 1971.

I wonder also if there has been a shift in emphasis from breadth to depth of knowledge. Yes, syllabi may have been wider in the past, but if hardly anyone was getting the top grade then it suggests that average exam performance was fairly low as a percentage of marks achieved. Now, however, syllabi may be narrower but it’s not uncommon to score full or nearly full marks, suggesting mastery of the whole syllabus as well as the necessary exam technique. So in essence, different skills and levels of knowledge are being rewarded.

I have no idea whether a levels have got easier or not but I'm pretty sure that teachers prepare their students for them a lot more these days. Once the curriculum had been covered my dd spent weeks at school/college practising past papers and exam technique for both gcses and a levels.

As I recall in the 80s we were just taught the subject and left to get on with it.

Plus a surprising number of students seem to have tutors for a levels. A friend's uni son has a waiting list for maths tuition whilst another friend of mine tutors loads of kids for mfl.

My dd is heading into y11 at her “outstanding” comprehensive. When I compare her secondary school experience to mine, there are two or three areas where schools seem to have improved vastly since the 1990s.

First, dd’s school talks to the students about learning styles, learning agility, “growth mindset”, and actually teach the kids HOW to revise, slowly building up from Y7. They talk to the kids about converting failure into success. They talk about wellbeing. They start discussing careers in y7. My school did none of that in the 90s. Being taught how to be an effective student, and how it sets you up for life, actually changed my DD’s entire approach to her education.

Next, there is a wealth of online study support resources that didn’t exist when I was at secondary school. Not just YouTube videos, apps to learn a foreign language, and resources like Seneca or BBC Bitesize, but also the huge variety of museums which have online resources, and online libraries. When my dd wanted to learn how to draw a face, she watched an online tutorial. Several years later, she’s heading for a 9 in GCSE art. And so on. A whole world of learning opportunities in your bedroom. This wider access allows even the poorer motivated students to participate, since usually kids have some kind of internet-enabled device like a phone and WiFi at home.

Related to the availability of resources is use of tech. My dd could touch type at the age of 10. By y9 her PowerPoint skills were equal to mine (and I’m good at powerpoint). These skills make kids more efficient in their studies.

Third, being smart isn’t seen as deeply uncool nowadays. My DD’s school runs subject “drop ins” during the lunch hour. Practical subjects like art or D&T might have two catch up sessions a week. Some of these groups are for the lower school, but all Y10 and y11 kids have an opportunity to go and talk to a subject teacher once or twice a week if they have problems or want some supervised study/work time (really helpful if your home life isn’t conducive to study). The school also runs a one-hour homework club after school every day for the same reason. And lots of kids go. They are encouraged to seek help when needed, and the teachers make time for them.

I disagree with a pp that these kids are more immature than we were in the 90s. They have a self-awareness that I envy; they know how to learn independently at a young age, and I think that is a big contributing factor in A level success.

So whilst I believe grade inflation is “a thing”, I think there is a lot to be said for modern methods of teaching. I’m a fan.

@AugustDieSheMust Neither DH nor me had access to FM in the 70s. Mainly because no one needed it. He was at a better grammar than me but it wasn’t needed. Some dc at his grammar only passed 2 A levels in both maths subjects. dH has his old school
magazines listing who passed what.

I did Further Maths at sixth form at a comprehensive in the 90s (45% A-C pass rate at GCSE so not an amazing school)

I guess I don't really understand the comment up thread about employers needing a more accurate way of measuring how clever candidates are that doesn't resonate with me a few decades into a career. Surely many employers aren't just after the super brains. It is a mixture of intelligence, ability to adapt to the work culture, resilience, bring and share ideas, work to deadlines if the role requires, learn to lead a team potentially etc etc. So the person with the very best grades in the land is still not going to suitable for all the graduate jobs in their sector. Not at all.

Only 8% or something get 3As and above and you have A*s so not really a problem.

Excellent post @SonaliS- couldn’t agree more.

Re FM - my grammar school didn’t offer it in mid 1990s. Most of the other physical sciences students in my year group at Cambridge had done it at their schools though, so I was at something of a disadvantage and it was tough to keep up!

Error: 16% get all As and above. 2% get all A*s and above. You can still differentiate

Such simplifications. Completely different level of difficulty if you get 3 As or A stars in Chemistry, Physics, Further Maths, Latin, Greek, English lit vs softer less academic subjects- we all know what they are. Some A levels are self selecting, in both ways.

Polytechnics became Universities in 1992, not post-Blair, which was 1997